FT Linfield 0 - 7 Rangers (Miller 11, 28, 31, 53; Kranjcar 25; Kiernan 27; Garner 83)

[der Berliner 3,548]

Never really bought into the Blue Bros thing. With all due respect to those club, I couldn't give a flying damn about Chelsea or Linfield. Means nowt to me and I don't really know anyone that buys into this thing tbh

 

And probably hundreds will agree with you ... and no problem with that. I for one just let them have their fun or camaraderie.

[BEARGER 1,829]

Vice-chairman's article in yesterday's Windsor Park match programme

Posted : 4th September 2016 at 09:32:41

 

Linfield Vice-Chairman BILLY KENNEDY looks back over half a century to memorable trips to watch Glasgow Rangers.

 

Dual loyalties are not uncommon in football, even at a senior level, but provided the interests do not compete within the same jurisdiction, it is quite acceptable to be attracted to two different clubs, albeit in different countries.

 

Linfield board colleagues of main admit to being big fans of Chelsea or Manchester United. In my case, I have been a life-long Linfield supporter and Management/Board member at Windsor Park for 43 years, and, like them all, when it comes to priorities there is only one club that I am unequivocally pledged to.

 

However, I do have a genuine and abiding interest in Glasgow Rangers Football Club and this can be traced back 55 years when I first entered the magnificent portals of Ibrox Park after walking along the famous Copeland Road.

 

As the then secretary of the Frontier Linfield supporters' club in Newry, I led a group of like-minded guys from counties Armagh and Down to Glasgow in 1961 to see the Rangers play Motherwell. It was a trip that left a lasting impression and since then I have made countless visits to see the other Blues in my life.

 

In the early 1960s, we travelled over to Glasgow from Belfast on the all-night Burns and Laird ferry, landing at the Broomielaw dock near the city centre and heading to the Ibrox Cafe or the Bellahouston Hotel (now the Swallow) on the Paisley Road West for breakfast.

 

The Glasgow Rangers are a huge club, world-renowned and celebrated in verse and song and in the annals of Scottish history. I still have vivid memories of the 1963 Scottish Cup Final between Rangers and Celtic at Hampden Park which was drawn 1-1 with Rangers going on to win the replay.

 

The Rangers team I can best associate with from that period was: Ritchie, Shearer, Caldow, Davis, McKinnon, Baxter, Henderson, McMillan, Millar, Brand and Wilson. This was a highly talented and stunningly successful Rangers team with 'Slim Jim' Baxter the main lynchpin.

 

John Greig, the highly acclaimed "Greatest-ever Ranger" was then just coming on the scene at Ibrox as a promising young half-back and defensive mainstay.

 

Later, I was to become very friendly with Willie Henderson when we worked together on the George Best testimonial in Belfast in 1987. I also got to know the late Alex Willoughby and Davie Wilson from that era. And, of course, there was Billy Simpson, a Linfield and Rangers legend of the 1950s, a Donegall Road man.

 

My Rangers interest was also complemented by the late Malcolm Brodie, Belfast Telegraph sports editor and a 'Bluenose', who would often reminisce in his broad Glasgow accent about supporting the Rangers while growing up on Clydeside in the 1930s and early 1940s.

 

My visits to Glasgow for Rangers games were not always happy occasions - there was big disappointment in 1969 when Celtic beat the Gers 4-0 in the Scottish Cup Final at Hampden Park, in what was to be Alex Ferguson's last game in a Royal Blue jersey.

 

And, of course, there was the terrible tragedy in January 1971 with the Ibrox Disaster which claimed the lives of 66 supporters. Then, I was still secretary of the Linfield supporters' club in Newry and, in a genuine act of reconciliation at a time when the Ulster Troubles were beginning, colleagues and I got involved with the William Maley Celtic supporters' club in Newry to raise money for the Ibrox victims. We raised £1,500 - a considerable amount at that time, with generous donations lifted in pubs in the nationalist town where traditionally the clientele would not have been sympathetic to Rangers Football Club. It was a quite remarkable initiative, with representatives of both the Linfield and Celtic clubs travelling up to Belfast City Hall to hand the money over to the Lord Mayor for distribution to the Lord Provost of Glasgow.

 

Later, in the early to mid-1990s in my role as a Belfast News Letter journalist, I travelled over to Ibrox Park for one-to-one interviews with Graeme Souness, just after he began the Rangers revolution, and also with his successor Walter Smith, as well as John Greig.

 

Rangers visits to play Linfield at Windsor Park on no fewer than six occasions in the past decade and a half have brought me great pleasure. However, the highlight for my Linfield Board colleagues and I was the occasion our Linfield team was invited to play Rangers at Ibrox Park in April, 2013.

 

This game further bonded the close relationship that exists between our two Clubs and was appropriately categorised as a meeting of the 'Blues Brothers'. Let us today again savour yet another encounter between our two famous clubs.

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[Scott7 5,662]

My affiliation is with Arsenal. Not as brothers but fellow nobility.