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Rangers tell Graham Spiers & Chris McLaughlin they are "no longer welcome at Ibrox"

chilledbear

By chilledbear
in Rangers Chat

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ian1964

ian1964 10,761

Posted
Posted
As long as he paid for his ticket that is okay.

 

 

Rangers FC, having grown brassed off with some of my opinions about the club, sent one of their sentries to see me last week to tell me I was banned from Ibrox as a working journalist.

 

“Come on, Graham, let’s see your money,” crowed a number of Rangers fans on social media. “Pay your way in like the rest of us.”

 

So last night I did just that. Rangers these days are said to be hard-pressed for cash so I happily handed over a wad of mine to take in their Ladbrokes Championship opener against St Mirren at a bulging Ibrox. And, I have to say, it was thrilling.

 

As a journalist, you almost forget the sheer, visceral excitement of going to the game as a punter, so consumed are you with making your deadline. There is an enjoyable bedlam and tribalism to it all. Last night I found myself surrounded by a bunch of good-natured Rangers fans, in a place I previously wouldn’t have dared set foot — the west enclosure.

 

I’m not angry with Rangers over my ban. The club feels put-upon and besieged by critical comments about its business, and this is the Rangers reaction – ban ’em. The idea of barring writers, some might feel, had disappeared with the fall of the Berlin Wall, but not at Ibrox, and indeed, not right across British football. Many clubs are at it, including Celtic.

 

In commencing my “punishment” I’ve worked out that I’ve attended perhaps 500 Rangers games for free, and that includes many a European or Champions League junket. For a football fan like me, that’s a pile of freeloading. So, as absurd as my ban is, maybe I’m due Rangers some kind of reparation, a wedge of my dosh.

 

There was a certain irony in all this for me. All through my youth I paid week in, week out to go to watch Rangers, before a point came where university and then journalism meant the ritual was no longer required. So here I was, after a near 30-year gap, back in my old routine in Govan.

 

I’d forgotten what a thrill it was. What a racket Ibrox fans produced, the more so for the fevered excitement in these parts over Mark Warburton’s continuing rebuilding of Rangers.

 

The stadium was thronging, filled with almost 50,000 Rangers supporters who are now entering their fourth season of misery since the liquidation of 2012, but who have stayed, in the main, oyal to the club. It is quite a testament to them.

 

Around me, clad in their red, blue and white, were young and old — and plenty of women, a growing and welcome trend in football. I have to say the Rangers female support last night made quite an impression on me: passionate about their team and lending the Ibrox atmosphere a different and special quality.

 

It seemed a fine game to me, although Rangers began to make slightly heavy weather of it until Dean Shiels made it 3-1 with a few minutes remaining. But enough of such details. These are for the sports reporters to relay.

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