The Rangers Standard

For me one of the difficulties we have is that we appear to lack a coherent narrative of what we are as a club and a fanbase. We don't have a positive central narrative that we can always fall back on and the subsequent vacuum has encouraged the incredible blandness that has coloured official club publications for many years. I'd also suggest that this lack of an agreed positive narrative has hindered areas like self-policing of certain songs/behaviour within the support, but that's another argument entirely.

I'd go back to Graham Walker's article on this site entitled 'Rangers: The unheard story', which I believe highlights some issues of key importance in relation to this idea of a club/fan narrative, in particular the continued significance of Mo Johnston. That signing was a very public gesture that sought to decisively demonstrate the end of the "signing policy", but there has been little mention of the wider significance of this event in official club publications, etc. What we have instead is a vacuum where official club publications and many fans betray a head in the sand attitude in the midst of justified and not-so-justified criticism even after all these years.

I'd highlight what I believe to be a key point in Graham's article:

"It is not enough to fire-fight and to go into reactive mode whatever the provocation and the vilification. We need to acknowledge that there is something in our past that, with facile and uncontextualised use of selected evidence, enemies are able to skew public perceptions against us. Until very recently we have not attended sufficiently to the club’s story: we have been too content to accept a simplistic notion of being the ‘establishment’ club when our history is so much more complex and grounded in the struggles and sacrifices of ordinary and often poor people. Since the cultural swing of the 60s, being in any way ‘establishment’- orientated has been a curse rather than a blessing and too few of us have appreciated this."

I believe that until we have an ownership/senior management with an appreciation of the nature and complexity of these issues and willing to engage with them, then we are simply shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic rather than mapping a path back to a position of power in Scottish football that is built on a solid and long-lasting footing. We will continue to have a club that skirts around the issues and allows other to control how we are viewed, with usually negative consequences.

Ah The Rangers news, good times. My favourite day of the week for doing my paperround was always a Tuesday. I would go to the newsagent after school to collect my run of Edinburgh Evening News and on top would always be my copy of that weeks Rangers News. The joy as you sauntered around delivering the daily dirge while reading the report on the reserve game at Clydebank, checking what time the bus would be picking you up that week and best of all if you were a member of the young supporters club seeing your birthday mentioned in that weeks edition. Unfortunately I grew up and developed the News didn't and was left behind!

The monthly mag was a wasted opportunity. I had high hopes for it. That it could be something akin to this forum and debate Rangers and our surrounding culture in a reasoned way, it turned out to be another glossy catalogue to tempt us to buy Rangers, or Rangers endorsed, product a premium price.

Still great article brought the memories flooding back there.

Really good article, Colin.

I think you make some important points regarding how the Murray regime suppressed any serious discussion around the club - it seems to have been his way or your access to all things Rangers were removed, and not just for the in-house Rangers publications. That might seem like the sensible thing to do from Rangers' owners' positions, but in the long term it has really hurt the club.

Some good points there Colin, particularly when you said:

“Celtic View is unshakable in its defence of Celtic. It promotes everything about the club in a positive manner, and it embraces the clubs history, culture and its place in Scottish society.”

Compare and contrast to the Rangers News which actually airbrushed the red hand of Ulster flag out of photographs. Celtic's weekly magazine is the frontline of their PR machine, as is their club website and the variety of other websites that they undoubtedly support and feed information to.

PR, public relations, spin-doctoring is an important aspect of all public and business life today. The company or organisation that wins the PR war will be dominant, sadly, we, Rangers FC, lost that war without a battle being fought.

The phrases, anti-Irish racism and sporting integrity were introduced to the public domain by the myriad of Celtic web-sites and callers to Radio Clyde and Scotland. Whilst, we, the Rangers support were trying to boycott those radio stations, the Celtic PF machine were pushing their agenda unopposed. Note their latest campaign is to introduce the ‘punishment Vs consequences’ argument. We have it seems not been punished yet!

A classic example of Rangers ineptitude in the PR war was their response to the Mark Walters racism in Scottish debate, extract taken from ‘It’s off to the match I go.’

Rangers’ PR was no laughing matter either. For a number of years the club had been systematically attacked by certain individuals in the media. Perhaps I was becoming paranoid, but these attacks seemed to be organised, and on the increase. A classic example coming in an April 2002 edition of the Sunday Herald. Sanjeev Kohli, Scottish comedian, journalist, and Celtic fan, wrote a piece commenting on the absence of Asians in British professional football. Midway through the article he developed the theme onto racism in Scotland, and made a quite preposterous statement:

‘Mark Walters arrived at Ibrox and was showered with exotic fruit by his own team’s supporters.’

Not only was that just not true, it was a barefaced lie, and Sanjeev Kohli must have known that. He must have known that the barrage of fruit came at Parkhead, not Ibrox, and from a set of supporters much closer to his own heart. But why let the facts get in the way of a good story? Rangers should have stepped in and demanded a full retraction and apology. Regrettably they did neither, and a completely fabricated slur on the club was allowed to grow arms and legs.

The myth did indeed grow arms and legs, it was repeated without challenge in the Evening Times a few years later, and then in the FourFourTwo magazine. It was another PR battle lost.

Hopefully the new owners at Rangers FC, whoever they may be, will take steps to address the problem, and the re-introduction of the Rangers News would be a good first step, but not the sanitised publication that it became, but a pro-active, hard hitting publication that defends the club, promotes its ideals and offers a platform to its support.

What is seventy2 magazine colin

Gazza162 wrote:
I agree with this post completely but feel compelled to suggest that this independence of thought is not necessarily working to our favour at the moment. I have wondered how, on the "phone ins" etc. there is a remarkable uniformity in the views expressed by the celtic support. I can only think that they are taking their lead from one source, could this source be the Celtic View? I think it might be.