Frankie

Ah, good old Roddy Forsyth. Another shameless hypocrite. He'll be just as gutted as Spiers.

PS: I'm just about to go offline so it won't be until tonight before I answer...

Anyone who would like information on suitable contact address, please pm me.

johnny: I contacted Iain Blair about Mr Dick over a year ago about his cosiness with the media. Blair refuted any claims of bias or that his employee would use the press. I'd definitely urge all bears to contact the SPL and ask if this is still his position.

Like I say, not being a RSC member, I'm not completely sure. I do believe the Association are examining their own organisation in order to make improvements and modernise. Hopefully that may attract more RSCs back to that umbrella while increase the say they have at the Assembly table. It is the Assembly that needs to be overhauled like you say. I'm trying extremely hard to get someone from there to contribute to this project.

This is something I thought about doing but generally I think it's a waste of time. The club are more than aware of the non-level playing field and, other than a few whimpers of self-defence around AGM time, they prefer to ignore the obvious disparity in media coverage and authority attention. I'd actually prefer more direct action but am unsure at this stage of how best to approach that: - Protest at Ibrox front door - Refusal of away tickets - Protest at SPL offices There are options.

Thanks for that TB...

Speaking from someone who has never been a member of a RSC, I'm glad TB has taken the time to detail part of it's operations. Certainly the problems above once again show the club's marked retreat from working meaningfully with supporters. Not just gloryhunters who'll disappear as soon as we lose a title or three but fans with decades of matches and investment behind them. That is an absolute disgrace. As such it is vital a new organisation (or at least a full and open Assembly revamp) is undertaken to represent supporters. I'd prefer RSC operations were contained within that (as opposed to further - or maintaining - group splintering) but I can understand why it's imperative the history of the Association is preserved. The club must redevelop links with the supporters. RSCs should be the first port of call given their experience and wide-ranging influence.

You can put me down as a reference mate...

Murray and Bain have already dipped their toes into the debate via some comments suggesting the situation is unfair. Obviously these comments have not been strong enough so they should do more. As should the fans.

Another splendid article in the STS series - this time from Tannochside Bear who discusses the existing flawed links between the club and RSCs and how these can be improved. http://www.gersnetonline.co.uk/newsite/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=752&Itemid=2 As part of the 'Setting the Standard' series of articles, I would like to discuss the role of Rangers Supporters Clubs (RSCs) in todayââ?¬â?¢s game, the links between them and the club, and how we can get the best working relationship between them. At the moment, all official RSCs are registered at Ibrox through the Worldwide Alliance (WWA), with claims of over 600 registered clubs and a membership of 30,000 supporters. From within this comes the Rangers Supporters Assembly, with 10 elected representatives taken from the Worldwide Alliance. There is also the Rangers Supporters Association, the much longer-standing organisation which used to distribute tickets to RSCs for matches both at Ibrox and away from home. Sadly, this has diminished much in recent years, forcing it to sell their headquarters within the Wee Rangers Club to pay off itââ?¬â?¢s debts and now has only around 20 member clubs. RSCs take many shapes and forms throughout the world. From the many Glasgow based clubs with decades of history behind them and a million stories of follow following, to the many overseas RSCââ?¬â?¢s that show games in clubs and pubs for exiled Bears all over the world. I personally have been a member of a Glasgow based RSC for 20 years, 10 of which as part of their committee, so I really believe in the value of the RSC and have some experience of how they are run. RSCs in this country are mainly run with one primary function: to arrange travel and tickets for Rangers supporters to follow the team. The clubââ?¬â?¢s contact with RSCs throughout the course of the season almost entirely consists of ticketing issues. Most RSCs will know very little about the WWA, when it has meetings in its area, who are the area representatives, and what it is there to do for them. Outside the UK, they are mostly social, a gathering of supporters to watch the game together at all hours of the day and night. We all know that the current situation does very little for either party. It gives virtually nothing to the RSCs and the club gets virtually nothing back from them. The club certainly undervalues the power of the RSCs to influence fan thinking. Not only does the club have to do more for RSCs, but the reverse is also true. The best example of this was when the club was under fire in the Spring of 2007 for ââ?¬Å?The Billy Boysââ?¬Â. The club desperately wanted the fans to stop singing it after UEFA effectively outlawed the song. The club tried everything it could to get the fans to stop. Finally they appealed to a couple of the well known RSC chairmen to see if they could do anything. After a hastily arranged meeting of representatives of over 60 RSCs held in April 2007 in the Wee Rangers Club, an agreement was reached to get members of RSCs to ââ?¬Å?self-policeââ?¬Â in this area. A policy that was worked extremely well and continues to work to this day. So what changes can we make in order to set the standard in this area? There are 3 questions that I want to look at in this topic. 1. What can the club do for the RSCs? Issue a membership card for all members of an RSC. The card gives them a small discount in the club shop, (online for overseas members) stadium tours, etc. Not too much that it costs a fortune, more a token gesture to make them feel part of the family. Use the clubââ?¬â?¢s buying power to have deals in place with certain companies to give RSCs some good deals. Perhaps with a clothing manufacturer to give the best prices on RSC polo shirts and flags. Individual RSCs all go off and get their own polo shirts done. Let the club be part of it. The club will make a small commission, and the RSCs all get a good deal. Give RSCs the option to seat their members together at Ibrox. This will of course help the atmosphere at Ibrox as well as binding the RSCs more together as a group. Negotiate strongly with other SPL clubs for a larger allocation for matches. It appears we do not actually want more tickets for games as it is too much bother for us to deal with them for not much reward. This is not the standard we should be setting. We must put the interests of our fans first. Without them there is nothing. I am quite sure Kilmarnock and Motherwell for example would love to give us more tickets, even share a stand in order to get more fans to the game. For shared stands, the Rangers section would be all family tickets. 2. What can the RSCs do for the club in return? If the RSCs knew that they were getting a fair deal on tickets and that the club were right behind them, they would be far more interested in putting something back. RSCs are well trained in running successful fundraisers. From race nights to sportsmanââ?¬â?¢s dinners to sponsored football matches to just selling scratchcards and much more. The truth is they have to just to survive. I am quite sure that most RSCs would happily run a fundraiser every season with the proceeds being split between their own club funds and the Rangers Youth Development programme, or the museum fund. The club would provide a signed shirt and ball for a raffle at the event, and where possible a player, former player or coach in attendance, this could be a real source of income throughout the year. RSCs are already the clubââ?¬â?¢s best selling tools. Already, many RSCs are agents in the club lotto, raising large sums of money every week. This could easily be expanded upon if the RSCs thought the club were really looking after them and making them feel part of the club. 3. Who is going to do all the work? We need a new organisation who will look after the interests of the RSCs. It would be self-funding from membership dues collected from the RSCs. I would split them into two categories. Ticketing RSCs and non-ticketing RSCs. This means that the RSCs who take tickets every week are treated separately from the RSCs from abroad. The ticketing RSCs would then pay more than the other RSCs. I would suggest ~Ã?£4 per member per year for ticketing RSCs and ~Ã?£2 for non-ticketing RSCs. The RSCs would be easily able to pass this on to their members with their dues if they knew what they were getting back for it as outlined above. I would also reintroduce the Rangers Rally, which would be supported by the club and a large turnout of players, past and present, would be guaranteed. The funds raised would pay for the salaries of the staff whose job it would be to run the organisation. It would take quite some organising to make all of the above work, but with the right Rangers-minded people employed, it would become a professional office that would be the contact for any RSC enquiries and would have its separate ticket office for the distribution of RSC tickets. It would have a committee of elected Rangers fans that would be elected by the RSCs themselves in a postal ballot to all RSCs on a one-member one-vote basis. The staff would be answerable to the committee, and the committee answerable to the RSCs at monthly meetings, and all up for re-election annually. A full record of the minutes would be sent to every club every month to keep them involved, and RSCs would be allowed to send in questions in advance of meetings without having to attend personally. A website with all the up to date information, including a private section for RSC organisers to learn of more sensitive information (financials etc) would also form an important part of this. To summarise, the RSCs are such an important part of our club, our history, our heritage. Most Rangers supporters have used one at one time or another. Most have probably been to a function run by one of them. Most will have seen the banners with the RSC club names on them in various places all over the world. Personally, there is nothing better than seeing the convoy of RSCs thundering out of Dundee or Aberdeen after an important victory. The club should be embracing this collective of (in my biased opinion) the most passionate supporters anywhere in world football, and by working together making things the best they possibly can be for the ultimate benefit of Rangers Football Club.

Well, surely we should look to highlight that influence and counter it.

Again, can we please leave the expletives out of these debates? We can surely have different opinions and express/debate them with a semblance of respect for each other.

Rangers allay Broadfoot fears... http://www.teamtalk.com/football/story/0,16368,1873_4934500,00.html

An excellent article from GeneralCartmanLee of which I'm sure most of us will agree with the concerns raised... http://www.gersnetonline.co.uk/newsite/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=751&Itemid=2 If reports in this mornings rags are to be believed then we will be reported again for sectarian singing after Sunday's match. Possibly it will be songs directed at Scott Brown while the imaginatively titled famine song seem to have upset the attending match delegate Mr Alan Dick. For anyone who isn’t aware what an SPL delegate is; this was a scheme introduced in 2005-2006 where a range of people who have been involved at one level or another in Scottish football will attend the match on behalf of the SPL to oversee the game. The match delegates liaise with the match commander, inspect the pitch and act as an eyes and ears in the crowd to watch what is happening on the pitch and in the stands. They produce a report on this which they then submit to the SPL with observations and recommendations. We seem to have made an enemy of one of these delegates and it now seems a one man crusade against our fans is underway from a former Motherwell and Partick thistle director called Alan Dick. Mr Dick has now reported Rangers to the SPL for sectarian singing on three separate occasions. Once for a game at Ibrox against Aberdeen at the end of the season in 2006, then at the beginning of the new season in 2007 at Inverness and finally on Sunday. Now, let's make it clear that just now it’s only speculation as the SPL have not confirmed what is in Mr Dick's report but I will say that on the previous two occasions he reported us, the information was leaked to the media before the report was submitted (now who could have done that, Mr Dick?) so we can safely assume this will happen again. Let’s examine this a little more closely. Mr Dick attends a game of football every week and we are being asked to believe that since 2005, when this scheme was introduced and an observer was placed in the stand at every SPL game, that he (or any other SPL delegate) has only heard offensive chanting three times and they all involved Rangers. The latest one was an Old Firm match for goodness sake. I have attended these games for many years and to pretend what is now termed as unacceptable chanting comes from one end if beyond a joke. During the Celtic fans every visit to Ibrox they will frequently chant about the IRA, use derogatory terms for protestants, make vile references to the Queen and Davie Cooper but these seem to be ignored. Dick reported us at Inverness for sectarian singing on the first game of last season but just two weeks ago various Celtic fans were arrested in the stadium for sectarian and racist chanting but the SPL delegate for reasons best known to himself, heard nothing. Finally our first report was concerning an Aberdeen game at Ibrox. I am sure I don’t need to tell anyone who has regularly attended these games over the years what we hear from the away fans - references to the Ibrox Stadium disaster being a particular favourite of these 'supporters'. Are we to believe that this chanting is acceptable to the SPL? Why were the reports in these games only about us? Where is the parity in all this? I shall digress, slightly, and ask one to cast their mind back to Love Street on November 13th, 2006; Armistice day, a day when all British citizens quietly reflect the sacrifices their fathers and grandfathers made in the two great wars. Celtic were playing there that day and because of that a minutes silence was cancelled; too risky no doubt given the Celtic fans appalling record on these occasions. This riled the home support, as coupled with this, they were to be subjected to 45 minutes of vile anti-protestant and anti-British singing. The stadium announcer so upset by all he had seen decided to make an announcement at half time asking the home fans not to react to the filth being spewed from the stands and to keep their heads. For the singing to be this bad you would have thought the SPL delegate would have mentioned all of this in his report and Celtic would have been at least warned by the SPL about their future conduct? Sadly this did not happen. Now a quick check would reveal who the SPL delegate was that day, can you see where this is going……yes it was Mr Alan Dick. No media exclusives either that Monday, eh? I am not trying to paint us as the innocents in all this, some of us will need to accept that part of our repertoire is now seen as unacceptable and will only bring us bad publicity and the quicker we drop these tunes the better. I more wanted to draw a comparison between the treatment we receive and the treatment that every other club in Scotland receive. I could go through each club in the SPL and find offence at something they chant whether it be homophobic, sectarian, racist or sheepist(!) - you will find this happening in every ground in Scotland. Surely people must see that we as a group of fans will be more willing to co-operate if these rules are applied to everyone. If there are rules written in stone somewhere saying what we can and can’t sing then enforce them across the board. After all, if fen!an is offensive then so is hun or if we are to believe that songs mocking the faux Irishness of our friends in the east end are so upsetting that they are causing their children to burst into tears then songs about people who murdered indiscriminately on this island are at least equally as offensive to us and any other normal member of society. At the beginning of last season Mr Dick said “If there is any flak for the delegate after the game because his name has been in the media then we've just got to put up with it. I am big enough, ugly enough and old enough to suffer the consequences but I don't feel intimidated at all.” This only seems to apply when Rangers are playing though Mr Dick and when you only apply these rules to one team then your motives will rightly be questioned and only one conclusion will be drawn...

I agree that far too often our negative approach means we give other teams confidence instead of ensuring they worry more about us than we do them. However, even if we did win yesterday, we were far from guaranteed that we'd walk tall for the rest of the season. After all we've won many important games over the last couple of years under Smith and still played poorly afterwards. See the end of last season when we won 1-0 at Ibrox and even this season after we won 4-2 at Parkhead. As such, one of the biggest questions that remains about our team (and manager) is that of bottle.

Bad news as Whittaker has hardly shown himself to be an able deputy in that position...

I don't read every thread on this forum and generally don't need to as all our users can express their opinion without fear of childish comments like yours. I'm going to ask you once not to refer to any of my users as **** lovers. If you can't do that, then I suggest you find another forum.

What '**** loving posters' are on here, bigbear? Don't appreciate that comment one bit.

The SPL are cowards and their Unacceptable Conduct rules a sham to pacify their political critics. I welcome an 'investigation' to get the whole red herring exposed for what it is.

...He returned to Emmerdale in decent health today albeit with a sore head still...

He did OK mate but sometimes that isn't enough. In saying that I'm sure he'd have been told to site back as usually he's quite happy to push forward in games. It wasn't until he did push on that Davis started to look a bit more dangerous. Our defence often sits too deep and it's amazing the difference when they don't allow Weir's lack of pace to worry us. We're much more dangerous when the whole defence pushes up.

It was actually bizarre. But then we do know who the 4th official was as well...

He's one Rangers player I actually enjoy watching. Committed, passionate and confident even if he lacks the quality we'd prefer to have. Some other players in the team could learn from his attitude. PS: The turn he did was superb and I think he got a foul as he was brought down IIRC.

I wouldn't be so sure but, one thing is for certain, two wrongs don't make a right. We're not asking for double-standards; just the correct decision to be made. The correct decision was a penalty.