With a race every fortnight so far this winter, one of my in between weekends, i.e. one without a race, saw Queen's Park go to Ibrox to play Rangers in a Scottish Division 3 fixture. Yes, I did write that and it happened. Queen's Park went to Ibrox to play Rangers in a Scottish Division 3 fixture.
Screeds of news print, web space and TV and radio time has been taken up by the demise of the team known as Rangers formed in 1872. To cut a, ahem, rather extensive story short, the Scottish Football League's lowest tier now boasts a team called Rangers. This game was billed as the oldest derby in world football. I'm tempted to go into an argument about how it's actually one of the newest derbies since the current club are only a matter of months old but I won't. I guess if they call themselves Rangers, they play at a ground which displays the name Rangers, they play in blue shirts and their fans call them Rangers, it must be Rangers. Therefore, we made the short journey looking for our first win over them since 3rd May 1954 when we won on the toss of a coin in the Merchants Charity Cup semi final after a 0-0 draw (incidentally, we lost the final 3-1 to Celtic). To put that into perspective, Coronation Street didn't begin for another 6 years! The last league win was a 2-1 success at Ibrox on 20th March 1948 in the Scottish League A Division. It wasn't enough to avoid relegation that season.
I certainly hoped we could avoid a heavy defeat though being in a minority of 800 or so Queen's fans in a crowd of 49,463 made you a bit fearful for our team. We did our utmost to make our presence felt in what must have been a partisan atmosphere to the players, one where only about 1.5% of those present want to see you win. We weathered the inevitable early Rangers storm and forced our way in, carving out some openings, including a ball across an empty goal begging for a tap in and a Longworth shot over the bar. I was though quite relieved to reach the sanctuary of half time.
We had certainly gained in confidence and gave as good as we got though you always feel a home goal is coming. It did in 57 minutes when a Dean Shiels cross wasn't cleared and Lee McCulloch reached it. 1-0 and 98.5% of the ground cheering to the Superman theme tune while a small corner sits on their hands. Another new experience.
Unbowed, we kept going then the moment we all hoped for after 63 minutes. Andrew Robertson played a ball to Jamie Longworth who played it right back, putting Robertson clean through on Rangers keeper Neil Alexander. One corner of Ibrox rose. He took a touch, looked up, shot...and whacked Alexander's legs. A scramble saw the ball go for a corner. I had a sinking feeling at the time that our one moment had come and gone. So it proved. In injury time, our keeper Neil Parry was lobbed by a 30 yard effort which came off the bar. McCulloch got the rebound. 2-0, Superman from the DJ again and that was that.
So the Ibrox experience wasn't the worst. We competed well and had our moments. However, in the end, it was 3 points lost and being toppled from the top of the league. As Queen's fans are fond of saying, keep the faith. I'm sure they said the same after the Celtic defeat in 1954.
Above: pre-match. Correct, it's a bowler hat.
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