gaspard

would be interested to hear what retail infrastructure you think we as a football club have. rangers direct are long gone , we have had nothing in house since jjb 12 years ago. how times have changed, on signing with jjb we got 18 million up front, how handy would that be now? was that signing on fee at the expense of retail profit margins? must have been. but it did supply a cash injection. short termism from our former custodians, perhaps. but i think we are a million miles away from regaining control of our own retail operations.

2 actually

intentions are worthless without integrity. what are we seeing here? the result of a deal where both sides appear to have lacked this virtue, sd have inserted a punitive clause and rangers have accepted in the misguided hope that they could circumvent in the future. neither side have shown respect for each other. lack of integrity can be calamitous. look at the emission boffins at VW, very smart, thought they could outwit the testing regulatory authorities, thought they were acting in the best interests of their company. but zero integrity and we all know how that ended.

if anybody thinks that the board haven't made a blunder, then the title of this thread should provide a clue.

the club have various mouthpieces to leak info and let their positions known to the public, we are all aware of that and who they are. if you thought i was suggesting that this club would come out and publicly call for an embargo on its own merchandise, perhaps i should be making myself clearer.

just giving the club £15 quid for nothing is probably more difficult than you would think. gifting an assumed profit margine from a replica top sale is in my opinion unrealistic and would provide a tiny fraction of retail revenue potential. do you recall the rfff effort? the sums raised would just about cover our current legal bill to our and Ashleys solicitors. that puts it in perspective for me. remember its not just the hummel tops we are speaking about here it's all branded merchandise, everything from birthday cakes to jeweller. maybe a boycott will aid our case, i simply don't know, all I'm suggesting is that untill somebody within the club let's that be known then i will treat all reactionary calls from anywhere out with, as perhaps well meaning but ultimately ill informed and suspicious.

i have read the article and concede that his perspective differs from the smsm he is entitled to think and say anything he likes but my question remains, do you think his calls for a boycott are prudent or premature?

further to my post above, and to save corrections, I'm well aware there is no deal , yet, my premise assumes a resolution with sd will be forthcoming

SD, sell replica kit from adidas, nike, new balance etc. can't see any issues with hummel that couldn't be overcome

what you describe is whats just happened. 1/2 mill in legal costs to contest a contract WE signed just over a year ago. can't be that good. for what it worth i do not support a boycott though, if we have had to settle out of court we should accept the situation for now, get on with it, support our club through its retail division. does anyone think an embarge will make sd walk away empty handed? history tells us otherwise. somebody will make a few quid from a boycott but it won't be rangers.

given terms of the 2017 renegotiated contract, why do you think we would be free to go to whomever at the termination of this one? the condition were made public at first hearing, i have them printed on my desk.

dart, i think it may be more accurate to say that most fans believed we would part ways with sd in 2018 or at least have an opportunity to do so. i certainly thought this was the case and the club statement at the time mentioned no fixed term to new deal. whilst this is technically accurate the reality is somewhat different. good grief, its just cost 1/2 a mill to contest a contract we signed just over a year ago.

a long time, unless some hummel shirts hit the shops.

they were appraised of the material terms and were able to match those conditions, they were probably entitled to see the incidental details too, hence the settlement. rangers paid sd 3 mill for this retail millstone, honestly, it makes me worried about the competency of our legal advisors and as a shareholders gives me little confidence in our governance.

not sure about that at all, where has it been said that sd agreed to match blind?

concur, and do you think JD would have gone to the expense, time and effort to tender if they had known SD was getting a swatch at their business strategy?

technically you are correct technically

in 2017 rangers announced the renegotiated deal with SD, and clearly stated there was no fixed commitment, well a rolling contract that gives them the rights to scrutinise competitors tenders then match them, looks more like an eternal commitment to me. TRFC and SD hope that the new arrangements will be long standing but there is no longer a fixed commitment on that front. We will rely on combined commercial performance and drive to cement the relationship going forward.

no over a year ago

that statement was June 2017

Thanks Dart, info like that always makes one dig a wee bit deeper, every days a school day. Alex Craig was born in Galway in 1886 and was the first player born in what is now the Republic of Ireland to play for Rangers. Craig made 102 appearances for Rangers between 1904 and 1911 before joining Greenock Morton. He returned to Rangers in 1914 where he made a further 42 appearances over the following two years. Craig’s career pre-dated the foundation of the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) and the Republic of Ireland team that we know today. However, he won 9 international caps for the then Ireland team that was run by the Belfast-based Irish Football Association (IFA). Craig’s time at Rangers briefly coincided with the arrival of a second player at Rangers who was born in the Republic of Ireland. James Lowry-Macauley hailed from Portarlington in County Laois and signed for Rangers in 1910. He made a single appearance for the club before later playing for Huddersfield Town and Preston North End. Lowry-Macauley’s international career included 6 caps for the IFA-run Ireland team of that time. The first and to date only Rangers player to win full caps for the Republic of Ireland senior team was Alex Stevenson who was born in Dublin in 1912. He played 12 times for Rangers between 1932 and 1934 and the records indicate that he scored 7 goals during his time with the club. Stevenson is one of those few players that simultaneously represented both the FAI and IFA-run teams during the 1930’s and 1940’s.

Well done Dart, good piece and of course topical. RSCs are still the lifeblood and a cohesive force throughout the Rangers global community. there appears to be very little unity anywhere else nowadays, any moves or machinations attempting to use the RSC system to create virtual or pseudo clubs for whatever reason should be exposed and resisted. CS, regarding KP Brake club, probably pre-Ibrox but I would assume the brake was used to take the KP lads to away games.

About a fortnight, but valid point re programme design, editing and production, nevertheless plenty time to prep for Hubbard Cup. What were the chances of the first game after he crossed the Jordan being against the other club he played for? opportunity missed. Anyway Pete, as you've probably gathered had a bit of a man-crush for Mr Hubbard and as far as our new manager is concerned, probably due to pragmatic cynicism in juxtaposition with a generally pessimistic and cantankerous demeanour I am somewhat less sanguine regarding the appointment of youth coach rev2 than most.

As I said only my opinion, we had a friendly at Ibrox not so many years ago against Spurs which was played for the Walter Tull Trophy, a player who never kicked a competitive ball for us. I naively expected the Bury game to be played for the Hubbard Cup, would have taken very little effort to do this, a trophy, commemorative medals and a feature programme. Very least the club should have done for a great player , HOF inductee, ambassador for both RFC and RSEA, a man honoured by Her Majesty and regular attender at Ibrox until illness prevented him. Gerrard could easily have been the programme feature on first competitive game, and I would go as far as to suggest that if the circumstances were to have been explained to him our manager would have insisted on the Hubbard tribute. If Steven Gerrard is still coming to Ibrox when he's 87 I'll gladly make a case for him too.