As Rangers hosted the first home game of 2020 the club welcomed the Stranraer directors into the Blue Room to take part in the famous Loving Cup ceremony.
The Ibrox club have hosted the ceremony every year since 1937 and it is a unique tradition which celebrates Rangers’ long-held association with the reigning monarch.
Beyond that, it is also a special commemoration of former Stoke City Chairman Sir Francis Joseph gifting the cup to Rangers as a thank you.
Rangers were given the Loving Cup by Sir Francis after the Ibrox side travelled south to take part in a special friendly against Stoke to raise funds after the Holditch Colliery Disaster.
This is information which is readily available on the internet, including on the Ibrox club’s website.
This was also repeated by managing director Stewart Robertson as he hosted the ceremony last night, as shown on a special video uploaded to the club’s social media.
The ceremony is regularly lambasted and ridiculed by rival supporters – as one would unfortunately expect – and there is much ignorance about its origins.
The Daily Record would run a story off the back of the aforementioned video concerning comments Steven Gerrard made to sporting director Ross Wilson during the ceremony.
There’s nothing wrong with the paper highlighting the quip from Gerrard where he compares the whisky inside the cup to that from last year’s ceremony.
But the newspaper appears to have ignored the origins of the special ceremony despite that information being readily available and mentioned in the video they base the story on.
In comparison, the Scottish Sun mentions how Rangers came into possession of the cup.
The story simply says that Rangers came into possession of the cup by “being handed the one that was spare”.
Rangers host the ceremony as a special thank you to Sir Joseph Francis who requested the club do so after the charity match at the Holditch Colliery Disaster.
So why not just say that? With so much ignorance on the subject, would it not be more suitable to properly represent the ceremony if you’re going to cover it?
