After Sunday’s celebrations, there was barely a Rangers fan in Scotland waking up Monday without guzzling what felt like half of Loch Lomond after indulging in half of Loch Katrine.
Headaches aplenty and war-wounds too, cheeks dusted with smoke and the closed-eye image of bouncing supporters was about enough to snap the hangover into focus with a reminder of why we’d done it.
Rangers are Champions – what a feeling, what a moment, and what a time.
Let’s get this straight right away – the pandemic wasn’t going to stop us celebrating – and they knew that before it happened.
I don’t say this with any arrogance – I know first hand the painful impact of the Covid-19 pandemic – but this was a moment that transgressed any level of sensibility for people who’d spent 12 months adhering to guidelines and bluster from a government in transition and under pressure.
This was a celebration – not a riot – and a giant flare-sparked flicker of happiness in a year painstakingly devoid of it.
Not a single one of us wanted the moment to pass us by – we bleed Rangers, we love Rangers, for some people, this might be difficult to understand but for us it isn’t. It’s the opposite. It’s simple.
For the last 10 years, Rangers have been kicked at every opportunity, smug elite and middle-class commentators and politicians digging the fans below them whilst rivals have had a field day, seemingly immune from the same depth of criticism reserved for those at Ibrox.
To be a Rangers fan at times over the last decade felt like justification for dehumanising commentary and sensationalist tabloid rabble – we were punched, kicked, elbowed by anyone willing but stood on both feet alongside a football club toiling for stability and identity.
What a slap in the face the reaction has been – how dare we celebrate something so precious to us which has been talked down and ridiculed for so long?
How dare we take decisions into our own hands and let that moment ring out loud enough that the entirety of not just Scotland heard it, but the world too?
How dare we do it in a way which isn’t agreeable with the very people who did much of the kicking?
This was our moment – and no matter if any politician says differently – Steven Gerrard handing out £20 notes and season books wouldn’t have stopped it.
The notion that a tweet would’ve goes beyond the ridiculous and into the fantasist – potshots at Rangers are out of order and the government need a reality check.
This was not a failure of Rangers, but a failure of government.
As Douglas Park’s letter lays out, Rangers made it clear that these gatherings would likely happen, and that government had to take some kind of responsibility for it.
Instead, that same government who are lambasting us now, let it go ahead without any sense of preparation and are now using that same dehumanising language we’ve all gotten so used to, to describe us.
How can Rangers control the supporters outside of Ibrox? How can this government not even remotely empathise with the emotions of the fans?
A “disgrace” they say, a term they didn’t dare brand Celtic fans at Hampden or St Johnstone in Perth. These are scenes which have been repeated in Liverpool and Leeds – ones which would’ve adorned different colours had Celtic lifted the title.
Nah, the disgrace here is that a government and their spokespeople – some of them clearly bitter for different reasons – refused to help facilitate the celebrations sensibly.
Not only that, but despite repeated warnings ignored them and have since come out with a defensive reaction which is polarising and insulting, quarrelsome rather than productive.
Rangers fans were always going to celebrate this long-awaited, emotional victory – at times it feels like the government was always going to react this way about it too.
It’s been plenty salty across the city at Celtic Park as well – the club’s official Twitter account had Gers fans in stitches with their Old Firm comments.
