Is Donald Findlay right? Discussing our Rangers addiction.

[Frankie 8,562]

http://www.gersnet.co.uk/index.php/latest-news/289-is-donald-findlay-right-discussing-our-rangers-addiction

 

Waking up to another Rangers controversy is nothing new. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Monday, a Thursday or a match-day, there’s always another Rangers related story to keep this ongoing farce alive. From the boardroom to the dressing room; from the small grounds in Scotland to the businessmen of Singapore; the bizarre nature of what has happened to one of Scotland’s proudest institutions continues to make waves wherever and whenever you care to cast a sideways glance. It’s impossible to hide from.

 

Now, I’ve not read all of what Donald Findlay has said to journalist Stephen McGowan in today’s Daily Mail. The ‘debate’ surrounding about whether or not Rangers are a new club isn’t something which particularly attracts me. For me, the opinion of the law lords and football authorities is enough – Rangers is the same club with their history and successes intact from one company vehicle to the next. In many ways though, does it really matter what they or Donald Findlay think? I still follow follow Rangers with the same excitement and love I’ve always done. I always will. Many hundreds of thousands agree.

 

However, and here’s the rub, some do feel differently and I can empathise with that. Why? Well, there can be various reasons. For one, the club’s reputation has taken a huge hit – doesn’t matter how fraudulent Craig Whyte and his associates' actions are proven to be, our club almost died. It doesn’t matter with how much disdain the Scottish football authorities, fellow clubs and fans and the Scottish media approached this fall from grace; we had to start again in Division Three. In that sense, of course the club’s reputation has changed forever. No Rangers fan alive has had to experience such a dramatic change in fortunes so it’s inevitable our mind-set has as well.

 

Moreover, since administration, the situation has hardly improved. The Rangers brand (and tradition as well perhaps) is no longer associated with success and pride and honesty and hard work. Instead, embarrassment, dishonesty, manipulation, excess and fraud are now bywords for our club. Yes the team on the park may still be the team we love but unlike our fathers and their fathers before them, we’ll now forever have to associate on-field displays with the performance of the boardroom. Some may find it easy to refrain from such, but many others cannot. Not as long as the money we pay into the club can be withheld by companies with a somewhat different relationship. That particular landscape has changed forever; it’s undeniable.

 

Moving on, and even within our fan-base things have altered for the worse. Small minorities they may be but the division amongst some fans is bordering on the obscene at times. Bear antagonising bear is not only counter-productive but downright bizarre. Disagreement can and should be healthy but some supporters have taken that to all new levels. In the modern era of online debate that may well be inevitable but it’s a change from previous times and it’s not a good one. These aren’t arguments in private RSC cubby-holes but very public fall outs which can be seen by all. They help no-one.

 

Considering all the above, it’s perhaps more surprising to suggest anyone doesn’t approach supporting the club differently. To be clear, it’s not that our love has decreased or that our history and success has somehow been removed (such arguments are ludicrous) but that what has happened in recent years has changed us all forever. Indeed, it has to – we have to learn from our mistakes and ensure it doesn’t happen again. That’s not to say we can do so easily – we can’t – but if we try to hide from it then we’re no worse than an addict glossing over their dependence.

 

To sum up, while I fundamentally and strongly disagree with Findlay in terms of Rangers still being the same Rangers, he is right to an extent. Of course the club is the same one we've all supported but there are elements of recent events which will have affected us all in different ways. Perhaps it's the divided fans taking each other for granted, perhaps it's the club's total disdain for our opinion, perhaps it's the media apportioning blame to the wrong people, perhaps it's the manager refusing to learn from his mistakes, perhaps it's the constant stress amidst the whole farce but no matter the issue, it has become very difficult to support Rangers nowadays. It should be fun, it should be a release from the everyday hum-drum but it's not - in fact I'd say supporting Rangers is just another daily stress and only our fans will understand just how bad it's been. For some, even someone like Donald Findlay, the challenge may be too much but shirking from his opinion won't help.

 

To that end, if anyone has found the last few years hard then we should be working together to talk through our worries - not hide from or belittle them. Supporting Rangers isn't something you can turn on or off. It's an addiction which infects the soul. Thus, I'd say anyone who hasn't had their heart broken and their faith challenged is in the minority. However, broken hearts can be repaired and reputations restored.

 

My name is Frankie and I'm an addict.

[der Berliner 3,743]

Just to get the full info ...

 

Former Ibrox vice chairman Donald Findlay says Rangers are a 'new entity' which must establish 'its own history and tradition'

 

Donald Findlay feels sorry for Rangers fans who have stuck by the club

The former vice chairman does not know if Rangers will be promoted

Findlay is saddened to see a great club struggle

 

By Stephen Mcgowan for MailOnline

 

Published: 10:25 GMT, 1 November 2014 | Updated: 10:54 GMT, 1 November 2014

 

To the chairman of Cowdenbeath nights with the directors of Rangers are not the occasions they once were.

 

Donald Findlay QC should be comfortable in the midst of David Somers and co. He was once one of them. Vice-chairman of the company indeed.

 

But these days he neither recognises the faces or names of the Rangers board. Or, indeed, the 'new entity' – his words – that they represent.

 

'Welcoming them to Central Park will be no different to welcoming anyone else for me,' Findlay tells Sportsmail, a vague waft of pipe tobacco detectable in windowless side room in Glasgow's High Court. 'Why should it be?

 

'I don't have many old friends there now. None on the organisational side.

 

'I know Alistair McCoist and Durranty. But I don't actually know who is involved there any more.

 

'Rangers coming is a big occasion for the club and the town of course. The last time they played Cowdenbeath in a league game was April 1971. The game was originally scheduled to have been played on January 9 – but was postponed because it was the Saturday after the Ibrox disaster.'

 

This appreciation of the history of Rangers is a feature of the conversation. Findlay, trademark whiskers now greying slightly, is wistful on the past and shows no compunction over turning his legal mind to one of the most heated and prolonged debates in Scottish football.

 

His learned friend Lord Nimmo Smith may have declared otherwise. But to Donald Findlay the Rangers which visits Cowdenbeath on Tuesday is not the same Rangers he once served.

 

'It is a different club,' he tells Sportsmail bluntly. 'They may play at Ibrox and they may play sometimes in royal blue jerseys.

 

'But you cannot pass on that which is undefinable. And that is spirit and tradition and all the rest of it.

 

'To me this is a new Rangers which has to establish its own history and tradition.

 

But it's not the Rangers I know. To me, genuinely, it is a new entity.'

 

In Rangers circles this kind of thing is heresy. When liquidation became inevitable Charles Green, the former Chief Executive, insisted vocally he had paid £5.5million for the assets and history of the oldco in May 2012. Recently, Livingston's programmed editor lost his job after wading into a contentious topic in a match programme.

 

Asked why he flies in the face of the consensus among Rangers supporters - that they remain the same club they always were - Findlay insists his view is a personal one. In his mind – he is now 63 – things have changed.

 

'Well, the view I have is one expressed to me by a lot of other Rangers supporters.

 

'There is just not the same sense of things being done the Rangers way.

 

'A lot of Rangers supporters – and these are the guys I feel sorry for – paid their money and remained loyal and followed the team through thick and thin. And they tell me there is just something missing now.

 

'That's not only my view. It's what I am told by people from the inside in the sense that they go to Ibrox. Something has changed, something is missing. It's just somehow… different.'

 

This sense of creeping disenfranchisement with the running of Rangers is not unusual. Among fan groups talk of boycott is now rife.

 

Suggesting that a club playing at Ibrox in blue jerseys before Rangers supporters might be a 'new' Rangers, however, triggers a fresh stream of consciousness in one of Scotland's great adversaries.

 

'You can buy assets,' he concedes, 'but you can't buy history. You can't buy tradition. History and tradition are in the heart and in the mind. You can't buy that.

 

'I don't care what anyone says.You cannot buy Ibrox, you cannot buy the Blue Room, you cannot buy the trophy room without actually understanding what it means.

 

'I mean what every little piece of it means right down to the crests on the radiators in the Blue Room that were made in the same shipyards which made the Queen Elizabeth liners.'

 

There is the sense that Findlay, a formidable adversary and hired gun paid to represent some of the most notorious criminals in the country, has given this some thought.

 

'You could argue that if they (Rangers) had moved from Ibrox to a brand new stadium at the time the whole thing collapsed, called it Rangers and played in blue that you would automatically be taking all that history and tradition with you.

 

'Well, maybe some people can. That's fine. Good luck to them.

 

'But for me personally tradition and history is in here.'

 

He jabs a finger on his left hand towards his heart, an imprint on his black waistcoat clearly evident.

 

'It's not in material things. It's understanding what the material things mean.

 

'It's understanding what a genuine privilege it was to walk up the marble staircase.

 

'Not every Tom, Dick and Harry should trail up the marble staircase at Ibrox you know.'

 

In recent years, of course, a long process of Tom, Dicks, Craigs and Charlies have done just that. Findlay won't be drawn on what he thinks of this.

 

'So I'm told,' is all he offers.

 

Suum cuique. What he IMHO get's fundamentally wrong is the idea that something actually changed "with the football club". When SDM bought it, or if a King or Kennedy had bought it in 2012, even when Whyte bought it ... what has or might have changed for the club? Does the change of the company running the football club does anything to tradition, history, feel for the club in the heart of its supporters? Do we or any other football supporter think about the boardroom, the directors or the holding company when talking about NIAR, the Ibrox Disaster, Gazza, Meiklejohn or Alan Morton? Do supporters even start to create a link between the high-ups and what was and is achieved on the park? I do not.

[Super Cooper 0]

Mr McGowan is the most bitter hate filled bigot writing in the UK just now.

[RANGERRAB 3,653]

Findlay is talking utter nonsense and he knows it. His fall from grace as Rangers vice chairman obviously still hurts him.

The new club debate ended long ago. The football authorities and law lords decided the club continued.

Frankly Findlay is just mischief-making talking to a yahoo so-called journalist like McGowan

[Rangersitis 0]

Just to get the full info ...

 

 

 

Suum cuique. What he IMHO get's fundamentally wrong is the idea that something actually changed "with the football club". When SDM bought it, or if a King or Kennedy had bought it in 2012, even when Whyte bought it ... what has or might have changed for the club? Does the change of the company running the football club does anything to tradition, history, feel for the club in the heart of its supporters? Do we or any other football supporter think about the boardroom, the directors or the holding company when talking about NIAR, the Ibrox Disaster, Gazza, Meiklejohn or Alan Morton? Do supporters even start to create a link between the high-ups and what was and is achieved on the park? I do not.

 

How many games have you been to at Ibrox over the years?

[simplythebest 0]

Never understood why Findlay still gets hero worshiped by many of our support

[Rangersitis 0]

Findlay is talking utter nonsense and he knows it. His fall from grace as Rangers vice chairman obviously still hurts him.

The new club debate ended long ago. The football authorities and law lords decided the club continued.

Frankly Findlay is just mischief-making talking to a yahoo so-called journalist like McGowan

 

It is plain to see that you failed to understand what was said, but did you even bother to read the article? His view, and that of many other Bears who have watched the team for years, is not about what the law says, that argument is one used in the petty, inane bickering between Rangers and Celtic fans, mainly on social media. He is pointing out what the Rangers of today represents compared to what it did in earlier years. The difference is there for all to see, and much of it was also expertly described in Frankie's piece.

[simplythebest 0]

It is plain to see that you failed to understand what was said, but did you even bother to read the article? His view, and that of many other Bears who have watched the team for years, is not about what the law says, that argument is one used in the petty, inane bickering between Rangers and Celtic fans, mainly on social media. He is pointing out what the Rangers of today represents compared to what it did in earlier years. The difference is there for all to see, and much of it was also expertly described in Frankie's piece.

 

The club was very different from what it used to be long before administration and the current regime

[Blue Moon 1,289]

What a fabulous article, Frankie, and written with such pathos. It really touched me and reminded me how much I love the Rangers when all the rest of the rubbish is set to the side.

[Ruff 0]

It's the "new entity" part that got under my skin, I actually agree with some of what he said with regards to tradition, I don't think many of us will be less than disgusted with what has been happening over the past few years, traditions have not been at the forefront of all who have came and went nor are standards and pride. But I know - like most of our fans - about our history, our traditions and our standards. Our Club hasn't lost any of those things, our Club has lost people who will honour them and appreciate that they are in control of an institution, an institution that is known world wide, an institution so meaningful to so many people that when X,Y or Z board member makes a gaff it embaressess thousands of people and we feel it more than the individual that goofed. Is it too much to ask for an individual to come to our Club and respect our history, traditions, standards and pride whilst also remembering and appreciating that any of his/her actions will affect thousands of fans?