Staying silent is not an option
There's been no greater Old Firm disparity in my lifetime
I watched my first Old Firm derby in 1960.
The Govan ferry over from Partick’s side of the river Clyde, a lift over the turnstile at Ibrox and a justifiable hammering from a distraught mother when I got back home for not telling a recently widowed woman that her ten year old was going off to sample the mystique surrounding this unique sporting event.
At no time over the course of the fifty-eight years that have elapsed since then has there been able to be witnessed a greater disparity between the clubs. On and off the field.
Even when Rangers won their Nine in a Row Celtic would still give them a game worthy of being called a contest and occasionally win some of them as an act of defiance, if not a promise of regaining the ascendancy in their localised rivalry.
The mystique has now been replaced by the certainty that Brendan Rodgers will see to it that Rangers will live in Celtic’s shadow, and the shadow lengthens with every passing meeting of the clubs.
The worry for those who support Rangers is that capitulation now encompasses a refusal to even discuss the matter.
The club’s decision not to allow anyone to discuss the five goal mauling from Celtic on Sunday was the final act of surrender.
There was a day when Rangers took five goals off Celtic at Ibrox and Tommy Burns stepped forward in his club blazer to handle whatever media duties needed to be carried out in the immediate aftermath of defeat.
He did it because he was the supporter in a strip and Tommy instinctively knew how the Celtic fans were feeling.
If they were distressed by watching their team being torn apart by their greatest rivals then Tommy felt it was his responsibility to explain how the occupants of the dressing room were handling being so obviously second best.
The most dignified acceptance speech I have ever heard was when Sandy Jardine, at the age of thirty-eight, was given the Player of the Year award at a function which came twenty-four hours after Celtic had won the league title on the final day of the season.
He was then assistant manager of Hearts, who had been within seven minutes of winning the title the day before.
The words that Sandy spoke oozed class and dignity in the face of despair. The qualities you need to show when the game has delivered you a hefty kick in a sensitive area.
Is it the case that no-one in the present day Rangers squad feels any kind of empathy with the fans, or did someone decide, in their infinite wisdom, that it was somehow better to depart Celtic Park on Sunday while ducking any questions about an abject performance?
Or perhaps they were simply in a hurry to get to the club’s awards dinner.
There is no justification whatsoever for supporters, no matter how disgruntled they may be, to threaten public order by turning up at the venue for that event and venting their spleen.
Staging what must have been the most subdued awards ceremony in living memory wouldn’t have made any difference to the circumstances of the day. Better to just get it over and done with.
Next year’s function, on the other hand, had better be worthy of staging or Rangers are in deeper trouble than even the most pessimistic of their supporters suspects.
Dave King had better have the gargantuan level of fresh investment Rangers need to build a new team or else he loses the moral right to remain in control of the club.
King has been an Ibrox board member during the mis-management of the club’s affairs that ultimately led to administration and liquidation. He’s now got a second chance at putting things right and there are signs of there being what we shall call, with a massive injection of understatement, ample room for improvement.
Steven Gerrard will be entrusted with masterminding Rangers’ revival and it has to be assumed that he wouldn’t have gone anywhere near the manager’s office without knowing he would be given loads of the only thing that is one day going to give Rangers a fighting chance of mounting a legitimate challenge to Celtic. Money.
Otherwise he has made the biggest slip-up since falling on to the Anfield turf and watching in horror as Demba Ba ended Liverpool’s league title-winning dreams.
No-one is saying the game as a whole will go under unless Rangers are restored to greater health, only that it would make life more interesting.
And that goes for Brendan Rodgers as well as the disaffected who are licking wounds that actually require major surgery.
If Gerrard doesn’t work the future for Rangers may not bear thinking about.
We live in a simple, straightforward time. Celtic are desperate to win an historic ten titles in succession and establish bragging rights that could last a lifetime.
Rangers’ sole intention is to prevent that from happening because their fan base would never forgive if Celtic achieved their aim.
This is your life, Stevie G.