Rangers FC Thread

[JamesieM]

Just a pity they couldn't have got this out in time for the final and made a few bob out of it!

Just been to two JJB sports stores to try and find something decent for my 65 year old father to wear and they only had junior tops or sleeveless nylon tank top things...

I'm staying in Warrington so getting a taxi to Altrincham and then the tram right into Piccadily (every 6mins) and then off to wander around town. I've got a Warrington taxi coming in to pick us up at 2am so should be sorted.

Not sure where to have a drink, should be in by 1pm, but going to enjoy the day anyway. Got a Union Jack with Stepps True Blues across so watch out for 4 of us!

[allycoops]

head for albert square mate, you can get the metro from picadilly to St, Peters Square, alot of pubs all around there, Bar 38 has seating for around 1000, with a very big outside patio if its nice weather. big party planned for there and five minutes walk from the big screens. calsberg bars in the fanzones along with stalls selling food, flags etc. Big screens up and running they showed the chelsea game yesterday (god knows why they didnt show man u game??)

[JamesieM]

Weather forecast is to be 20C and sunny so should be an excellent day....beer garden sounds just the place

[C64]

do u think witchy will notice edited post http://www.digital-kaos.co.uk/forums...5929#post15929

Sneaky git!

[allycoops]

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1ZYgnJEyHg[/YOUTUBE]

We have support from everywhere, :rangers3:

[McMav]

quality

[allycoops]

The Rangers Widow from the times online

Lost dreams come to life for Rangers fans Melanie Reid, the Rangers widow
When the Uefa Cup final kicks off, it is going to be a bit like that W. H. Auden poem that is so popular at funerals. Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone. Scotland will resemble some post-nuclear wasteland, with the tumbleweed blowing eerily along empty streets and the odd rabid dog scuttling for cover. Parked in back alleys, police cars and paramedics will sit, waiting, listening to the muffled heartbeat of the nation.

Don?t be frightened, too, if you feel the UK tip a little on its axis as the combined weight of so many Rangers fans leave Scotland and head for Manchester, and Land?s End dips a few feet into the water. This could be the biggest population exodus from the north since the troop trains left for France in 1914.

Do I exaggerate? Of course not. I am married to a fan. And all over the nation, us dutiful Rangers widows will huddle over our knitting, our hearts in our mouths, hoping for good news from the front line. This tournament feels as though it has lasted as long as a war.

We have endured the phone calls from the pub, telling us that ? once again ? the game has gone to extra time and penalties. We have seen our men ? portly, middle-aged and eminently respectable ? dancing round the living room to mark first the quarter-final, then the semi-final victories. We have listened to incoherent eulogies to Nacho Novo and David Weir and Carlos Cu?llar. Did we complain? Did we say ?you?re gibbering, go to bed?? Never, not once.

The fact is, this final represents many things, and some of them are much bigger than football. Rangers Football Club stands in many ways for post-industrial Scotland itself: diminished but yearning for a return to the elitism and machismo that was once its by rights. This is about dreaming lost dreams.

Rangers was the club of the skilled shipyard workers on the Clyde at Govan. Thousands of men would charge from the gates of the yards, turning the pavements black. They worked long, physical hours and on Saturday came their reward, when they went to the pub at 11am, then poured into Ibrox, up to 100,000 of them, to cheer on their team.

The culture of this skilled, aspirational working class came to be that of the team. The shipyard workers were hard-working Protestants; members of the masonic lodge; and loyal unionists. Blue, red and white was not only the colour of the Rangers strip, it was also the colour of the union flag.

They were arrogant, these men, with a fantastic pride and belief in themselves. They knew that they ran the engine room of the Empire. They had that sense of being giants, of status, of possessing real economic clout. They wanted their team to win, and they usually did.

This social supremacy flowed in the veins of Bill Struth, the Rangers manager from 1920 to 1954. Struth insisted that his players turn up at their club wearing suits and bowler hats. In the visiting team?s dressing-room at Ibrox he famously had the hooks mounted high on the wall, so the opponents had to stand on the bench to hang up their jackets ? and be instilled with fear of the giants they faced.

Senior policemen, civic leaders, politicians, businessmen, newspaper editors: all were keen to be part of the Rangers elite, creating a considerable powerbase by association in the West of Scotland. Vestiges of which linger, like the faint smell of wood polish in a dusty hall. There was a time when the club were one of the biggest in Britain, far richer and more powerful than Manchester United or Chelsea. But as Scotland declined and its industrial might withered, so, too, did Scottish football.

Rangers found themselves no longer so mighty. And the team and fan base that had travelled first class all their lives hated being in a second-class position.

You can play amateur psychologist ? us Rangers wives have to ? and wonder if this is why the fans are now some of the most demanding in the world. From the knuckle-draggers right up to the captains of commerce, it is as if received in their folk memory is the belief that their rightful place is at the top.

And now they are heady with a sense of pride that their team, under-resourced in comparison to other great teams, are punching way above their weight to reach the final.

Is it any wonder our husbands regress, filled with an almost childlike sense of joy and pride? To get to the final is enough to lay the ghost of those vanished glories. And if the team win? Well, they might just deserve to stay for that extra

[JamesieM]

excellent post Allycoops, seen it a few times today and makes a pleasant change from the mhedia dragging us down into some type of cheating scandal like Juventus, Marsaille et al.

Attempts to take the shine off our day by some just won't work!

Anyway, all packed I have the checklist....

ribbons for car check
union jack car flags check
R/W/B balloons for car(doxen of each) check
giant R/W/B bow for front of car check
union jack bunting check
CD of rangers songs X12 for pubs check
Rangers top check
Old tatty gers scarf from 80s check
Giant Union Jack check
Luck underpants check
Carry oot check
Ticket!! check
Old Man (68) check

Anything else will have to wait....good luck to everyone in Manchester and whatever the score be proud to get there. We need to enjoy ourselves and do Rangers, Scotland and GB proud- have a good one boys

[allycoops]

time you leaving jamesie? I'm leaving the house about 4am tomo, dont know how im gona sleep tonight, dont sleep well at best of times, , take a photo of ya motor and post it up,

[JamesieM]

Leaving late afternoon via warrington...i've taken today off work to prepare as i'm neither good to man nor beast today.

I've got a windows mobile phone so I should be able to get some snaps uploaded if I get time to sit down tomorrow.

this excitement is genuinely not good for me....god knows how my old man's angina is going to cope

[allycoops]

BAR 38 MEETING UP CANCELLED

BAR 38 MEETING UP CANCELLED IN MANCHESTER,

bar38 have now decided that no Rangers fans will be allowed in wearing football Colours.

still make for that area though picadilly/peter st, handy for fanzones and plenty of pubs who wish to make money,

[C64]

Remember to pack your hankies guys, and remember to take a note of the Samaratins number before you go.


There are no Rabid dogs in Scotland, that Melanie Reid is a clown

[allycoops]

the invasion has begun

The invasion has begun


by Graeme Murray

A red, white and blue army left Ibrox Stadium today as a convoy of Rangers fans set off to join thousands already in Manchester.

Every car, pick-up truck, transit van and mini-bus was covered in flags, balloons and scarves as around 200 vehicles began the journey through the city en route to Manchester, where tickets are selling for up to ?2000.

Music blared as CDs belted out Rangers songs and a deafening procession of tooting car horns signalled the start of the journey.

Merchandisers at Ibrox were doing a roaring trade as fans snapped up last-minute flags and Uefa Cup T-shirts.

In one car, decked out with flags, Myra Fielding, 49, travelled with son Jack, 10. She said: "The atmosphere is going to be fantastic, it's a once in a lifetime chance.

"I don't really care how long it's going to take us to get there, we're really looking forward to it."

Also travelling was a family from Rutherglen and a group of fans who had come all the way from Australia.

Rab Smith, 57, from Melbourne, had travelled with a group of fans to Scotland. Initially from Johnstone, he moved to Melbourne in 1982.

He said: "There's about a dozen of us from Melbourne in our party. I'm really glad to be home, this is unbelievable."

Also making the trip was Cooper Black, 2, and his dad, Alex, 37, from Cambuslang. Mr Black said: "It's not often you get the chance to be in a European final, so we're going to love this."

One of the most colourful vehicles leaving Ibrox was a group of six from the Glasgow city centre bar Madness. Travelling in a Lincoln Navigator, the fans were decked out in Union Jack cowboy hats and their American car had red, white and blue ribbons on the bumper and even on the car's hub caps.

Central Station was also besieged with fans heading to the game by train.

The crowds included John Macinley, 32, of Pollok, who was wearing a Union Jack top hat, and his pal Roddy Finchley, 34, also from Pollok, who was wearing a jester's hat.

John said: "It's going to be a momentous night. To have Rangers in a European Final is unheard of and if we win it Manchester will never have seen anything like it."

meanwhile, thousands of fans were already in Manchester, for what will be the club's first European final in 36 years.

@witchy get ta fu*k :rangers3::rangers3::rangers3::rangers3:

[C64]

I'm rotten with jealousy mate

Hope ye's have a great time, but I hope ye's get beat,

[allycoops]

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPnH55rOigc[/YOUTUBE]


ALTOGETHER NOW witchy