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Hildy

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  1. Hildy
    Why do you reckon that is? Has the whole ground been earmarked for Sports Direct advertising or is an impending giveaway and leaseback of the stadium making long term trackside advertising impossible at the moment?
  2. Hildy
    Ideally, we'd buy up the club as a group, the way the RST's BuyRangers operates, but we're in an emergency situation just now and a single owner, if there is one, may need to step in just to keep the club afloat. If the club eventually stabilises, we'll need the RST to engage with whoever the new owner is to make the case for the club moving towards fan ownership. If an owner sees merit in such a move, it could be very helpful. Having a minority stake in the club is not enough. The club needs to be owned by the support. There are times when I share your cynicism about the support, but I believe it will become a better, more engaged support when it has full responsibility for the club. Rangers could be a great club again, but it is unlikely to ever be so when it can be bought by people who are happy to sign over the sponsorship of Ibrox Stadium for a pound. If a fan-owned club tried that, there would be hell to pay. Business types who are interested in a fast buck, though - they'll do whatever it takes to make the fast buck regardless of the longer term consequences. The idea that Rangers can flourish and survive indefinitely with random and largely faceless ownership is wholly unrealistic.
  3. Hildy
    There are times when we should look at the bigger picture as well as coping with the here and now. Rangers folding would be bad enough, but think how history will remember the club and try to do it from a non-staunch viewpoint. History will regard Rangers as a regrettable manifestation of the worst excesses of religious sectarianism, and not only will it not be mourned by this country if it disappears, its passing will be greeted with relief and even celebration. In fifty years, will academics, teachers, lecturers and historians look back and assess Rangers kindly, or will they put the boot in and dismiss the club as a dark shadow in Scotland's social and sporting past? You already know the answer. We are attempting to keep Rangers breathing - not just for the present - but also to prevent history damning us forever in the future, which it most certainly will do if the worst happens. It is only by continuing in existence - and having ownership of the club - that we will stand a chance of saving Rangers from the kind of scandalous history revision that we have come to expect from across the city.
  4. Hildy
    It's definitely a risk, but it's a calculated one. This decision won't have been taken lightly.
  5. Hildy
    Do you remember when we knew what Celtic players looked like? Do you remember how we would listen in nervously when they played, hoping that they'd falter? The football landscape has changed so much in Glasgow that the city is no longer an Old Firm goldfish bowl. Instead, the two sides function in separate atmospheres. With no Old Firm interaction, each has become a stranger to the other. The current Celtic team could walk past me in the street and I probably wouldn't know who they were. For Celtic fans, due to Rangers being run as a retirement home for elderly footballers, they have no difficulty in recognising Rangers' established guys, but many of our players are unfamiliar faces to them too. There was a time when fans of each side knew the other lot almost as well. They didn't need to learn the enemy team, they just knew it. Not so long ago, a Rangers-supporting friend of mine used to chat fairly regularly to a fellow dog walker. It turned out that he was talking to a leading Celtic player, and yet he had no idea. This surely couldn't have happened in the past. We knew them and they knew us. Now, Celtic's profile has dipped as a consequence of Rangers being in the football wilderness. Ours has dipped too, of course, although Rangers is such a dysfunctional entity that it retains a profile of sorts by providing a daily source of amusement to the nation. Apart from the obsessed element in the Celtic support though, which keeps Rangers under intense scrutiny at all times, there is a realisation within the Celtic fraternity that the game is up for Rangers. The laughter has abated and they even feel a degree of sympathy for us. They are looking at a future now that might not be seriously challenged by Rangers, and as they come to terms with it, there is a grudging realisation that they are poorer for it. Now that the big two has been reduced to the big one, the intensity has disappeared, the temperature has cooled and the colour has faded. Celtic fans are living in a monochrome world where the competition is either walkover material or too good for them. It is a bore. It's not boring being a Rangers fan, though. The football may be rotten but when was clinging to a life raft ever boring? Rangers fans are living out an outrageous soap opera where each twist is more absurd than the last one. This Rangers saga could not have been made up or engineered even by a bitter and hateful enemy. It is a tale of woe beyond imagination and comprehension, and with every day that passes, the realisation dawns that bouncing back is hard to do when the ball is burst. The leading figures at Rangers have become cartoon characters. There is nothing that they do which shocks or surprises. Talk of the stadium being sponsored for the grand total of £1 is eminently believable. This is the calibre of people Rangers FC is run by in the 21st century. Every statement, announcement or comment from the club is greeted with ridicule and dismissed as being symptomatic of a failed and toxic regime. Rangers has ceased to be a credible entity. It is crumbling and falling apart. We are often reminded when we complain about politicians that we get the governments we deserve. If the same can be said of the governance of football clubs, the Rangers support must have been guilty of something dreadful, or maybe we're just not that bright. Either way, Rangers fans have an allegiance to a club that is an asylum for the clueless, the calamitous, the absurd and the avaricious, and it is conspicuously rotten from the front gates of Auchenhowie to the top of the Ibrox Stadium flagpole. I have long believed that Rangers had a sell-by date. I always suspected that it was going to become an unwelcome institution in a changing world. I was concerned too that it would fail under 'private' ownership. The only solution was to become a fan-owned club that embraced a new enlightenment, but our failure in this area has been as embarrassing as it is shameful. As we remind ourselves, almost hourly, what a mess it is at the top of the house, we really have to take account of our own inability to properly attempt some kind of rescue. We may have been turned over, but we have been passive, mostly inactive and even apathetic during this crisis. As per usual, we wait on a saviour, and if there isn't one, we just keep waiting anyway. When the lights go out at Ibrox, or when they become so dim that they can barely be observed, ask yourself - how will Scotland remember Rangers? Fifty years after Rangers' passing, how will our children and grandchildren remember the football club that is so much part of our lives? I suggest that Rangers will be remembered with the same kind of affection that BBC Radio Scotland and Radio Clyde currently have for our club. We will not be fondly remembered or missed. The country will be glad to see the back of Rangers and it will speak of us in a highly derogatory tone when enough time has elapsed to make us a distant memory. Bearing in mind our current predicament - and we are all aware that another collapse could be close - not only would we lose a club that is dear to us, as people, we would be marked down by history for having an association with a club that will almost certainly be remembered as a monument to bigotry. And with this double whammy in mind, what do we do? We wait, and wait, and then wait some more. History won't be kind to us for this either.
  6. Hildy
    The club saw fit to come out with a statement on the ongoing court case last night. It had every chance to deny the £1 story and didn't do it. I think we are on reasonably safe ground if we believe it to be true.
  7. Hildy
    You remember David Murray? He was a Rangers deity to the massed ranks of blue and white. As someone once said in a radio phone-in, David Murray IS Rangers. Mr Murray, for quite some time, held the Rangers support in the palm of his hand. He was Lord and Master of all he surveyed at Rangers, and the Rangers support couldn't get enough of him. We love leaders, but we bow down to them all too easily and see it as disloyalty when they are criticised. When previously worshipped leaders are found to be mortal after all, it is those who did the criticising that get despised. Once we put someone on a pedestal, we don't want him knocked off, even if he deserves to be. For some, loyalty is the defining Rangers characteristic, but when it turns to adoration and devotion, it becomes unhealthy and disturbing. For unscrupulous business types chasing a fast buck, the Rangers support is almost perfect. Win them over, and the opportunity to fleece the club is huge. They will defend the uninvited officer class as though they weren't just their elders and betters, but their kith and kin too. Never shout down the officer class. At Rangers, even when they are wrong, they are still widely perceived to be right.
  8. Hildy
    Forgive this sarcastic response but it's not that far from the reality: The Rangers support is an army of privates. It responds to and admires leadership from the officer class - business types. When an ordinary fan tries to speak on behalf of others, he is perceived to have ideas above his station. What gives him the right? Who does he think he is? He doesn't speak for me etc. A Rangers fan should know his place. Leave the important matters to the board of directors - they are so much wiser than us. They know what they are doing. We don't.
  9. Hildy
    Good news. Thanks for the confirmation.
  10. Hildy
    It's probably easier to become an MP. I can understand people wanting candidates to bring something exceptional to organisations, but in doing so, they begin to sound elitist and aloof. They want the ordinary punter's money, but the ordinary or regular punter is never likely to be entertained as an office-bearer. I'm reminded of Communist Parties across the world where people are required to become cogs in unsympathetic political machines: 'The Party must come first'. It all sounds a bit centrally controlled, and while I'm sure the Trust has its flaws too, and while personal animosities will always exist, I'd be disappointed if it was as strict-sounding as this. The House of Commons was a far more able and wise place when it attracted people from all walks of life. When political researchers started to multiply and miners and factory workers started to disappear, it became a much poorer place. Football fan groups, even when they have serious business to do, should remember that they represent lads more than they do lords.
  11. Hildy
    You need a professional qualification to stand for election to the RF board?
  12. Hildy
    I hope the future is going to be a better place. It is more hope than expectation, though. Every single problem we have is rooted in the club not belonging to us. Long before anyone else, the RST recognised this and it is trying to do something about it. Only fan ownership can save Rangers over the long term. Without it, the club will perish. I don't want that to happen. I therefore support the RST in its intent to make Rangers a fan-owned club.
  13. Hildy
    You are still here because of what the club was, and what you hope it will be. If we were to look at what the club is - in isolation - no discerning person would waste a cent of their money and a minute of their time on it.
  14. Hildy
    What are the chances of Rangers competing in the Champions League proper in the next ten years? Could a poorly-managed Rangers negotiate three qualifiers? Could it win the league to even get that far? We could slip into the Europa Cup perhaps, but the CL looks like becoming a much rarer event for Rangers - and maybe Celtic too - than was perhaps imagined a year or two ago.
  15. Hildy
    I thought you wanted a sole owner, Rab? Is the sole owner going to end up being - you?
  16. Hildy
    It is a problem. RF wants people to get behind it but it's a splinter group that has added to the confusion. Maybe it will splinter at some point. Fan ownership is a worthy enough goal for those who believe in it to be representing one and only one body, but instead we have this inexcusable mess. Most now recognise that we have a board not up to the task, but when the agents of change are sending out mixed messages, they themselves become a part of the dysfunctionality of the Rangers family - and so people steer clear. I want fan ownership. I think it's vital to the future wellbeing of the club, but those advocating it have monumentally - and this is the polite way of putting it - messed up.
  17. Hildy
    We'll need to see how the future pans out but I wouldn't rule this out. The only certainty at Rangers these days is uncertainty. Nothing can be taken for granted any more.
  18. Hildy
    The club is a shambles from top to bottom. The only way to rectify this is to own it. That's what the RST intends to do. That's why I am a part of it.
  19. Hildy
    It must have been a difficult decision for the RST, but although there is a higher degree of risk attached than one would have wanted, I think they are right to proceed. People keep saying that we have to buy this regime out - well the RST is putting its money where its mouth is. The RST wants a fan-owned Rangers and so do I. I expect a few twists and turns on the road to winning what will be a very worthwhile prize.
  20. Hildy
    I wonder if the day will ever come when we see the launch of an FC Rangers of Glasgow?
  21. Hildy
    If you really want the club to be ours - fan-owned - join BuyRangers and help to make it happen.
  22. Hildy
    None of the above.
  23. Hildy
    It's a risk but the RST is remaining true to itself and fully participating. I have no quibble with this.
  24. Hildy
    No, I'm not. I have confidence that the organisation is in tune with my thoughts. If it deviates a little from time to time, though, I can live with that. As long as it believes in fan ownership, it'll do for me. If it didn't, I'd have nowhere to go.
  25. Hildy
    I have no idea, however, I'm pleased that you concede that the new leadership of the Trust is enlightened.
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