Over the last decade at Rangers, the club’s supporters have got so used to boycotts, boardroom malfeasance, and bad news stories that they can often depressingly feel like the norm.
After the club was unceremoniously papped down to Scottish football’s bottom tier, it felt like open season on everything from the stadium, to the staff, to the club’s identity, to the fans.
From dodgy kit deals to dodgier coverage, Rangers fans have somewhat gotten used to being the butt of a bad joke and are naturally very defensive when things go wrong.
But what about when things – at least on the surface – appear to be going right?
The club’s fans are so conditioned to this negativity that there’s always a feeling of when everything’s running smoothly, that there is something very wrong just around the corner.
With everything finally appearing to come together on the field, a progressively minded boardroom at the top of the marble staircase, and a talented staff behind the scenes, it was about time something dropped.
It’s hard to blame some supporters for being perturbed at the news that Reach PLC – the owners of the Daily Record – are set to publish the club’s programmes this season.
Rangers wanted fans to sign up to matchday programmes with the vision being of supporters supping a beer, watching RangersTV and reading the booklets amid behind-closed-doors matches.
It’s actually a pretty good idea and a potentially solid revenue stream amid the coronavirus shutdown – and one we’d be praising more highly if it wasn’t Reach.
But amid Club 1872-led boycotts of the Daily Record, upheld IPSO complaints, and reports from fan media that the paper has had press rights revoked amid a barrage of negative coverage, the newspaper’s name is a dirty word at Ibrox.
So you can’t blame the likes of Club 1872 and a range of other fan media expressing their disappointment at the news that the paper’s holding company secured the contract to publish the club’s programmes.
But whilst Reach PLC have had a very close involvement with Club 1872’s press complaints against the Daily Record, any suggestion the two are one and exactly the same is ultimately misleading.
It’s reactionary and, in this context, inappropriate.
The Daily Record are no more Reach PLC than any of the hundreds of publications which come under their media umbrella.
Publications which include programmes at Chelsea and Liverpool which are published in an entirely different department.
That doesn’t make it right – but it’s a very important bit of context.
Reach is the biggest publishing PLC in the United Kingdom meaning they have the facilities to cost-effectively achieve Rangers’ expected demands with the programmes.
Finding something insidious in the club trying to provide a programme directly to supporters amid the pandemic is probably an unfortunate by-product of years of genuine boardroom corruption and in a mistrust of the Scottish sports media.
But whilst there’s a definite argument here that signing up with the publisher fails to take the temperature of the support, they obviously offered the strongest deal for Rangers.
It’s also a deal over which it is important we don’t make assumptions on the finer details of without knowing them.
This regime has invested heavily on and off the pitch, aiming to bring the team, stadium and brand at Ibrox up to a pioneering standard.
The argument that they don’t ultimately have the club’s best interests at heart is a threadbare one and whilst the Reach deal isn’t without scrutiny, there’s also a suggestion Rangers have earned our trust here.
So whilst there’s talk of boycotts and an air of negativity, it’s important that Rangers supporters look at the bigger picture.
By boycotting the club’s programmes and this creative initiative which has been started with the fans in mind, the biggest losers in all of this will once again be the club and the club’s supporters.
And for far too long – that has depressingly felt like the norm too.
