In 2012, Rangers got little help from the rest of the clubs in Scotland, we didn’t expect any but how easily the goalposts were moved to see us kicked out of the SPL and forced to apply for membership to the lower leagues will forever stick in the throat of every fan.
And it would seem that little has changed in that our relationships with other clubs appears to be as frosty as ever. When Stewart Robertson led a campaign for change at the top of the game in the country, there was some, but not enough support to force a motion through – remember Peter Lawwell’s rousing speech to save his buddies?
Speaking to This is Ibrox, our third largest shareholder, Stuart Gibson, when asked if there is much interaction between clubs, has given a fascinating insight into life in the director’s box on Ibrox matchdays and I wouldn’t expect the situation to improve any time soon, after all, a lot of the individuals who make the most of our hospitality tried to bury us:
“Not really, I’m in the director’s box whenever I’m through for games and you are around the corner from other teams.
“You don’t really socialise with them, there’s a kind of strained friendliness. There’s not even any chit-chat. We’re in our corner, they are in theirs. We’ll all smile at each other with these kind of cheesy grins but you don’t really get into it. At least I don’t.
“Maybe Stewart Robertson has these kind of relationships because he’s there every day. I never sensed that there’s any great camaraderie or affiliation or even just good will with the rest of the clubs, I just don’t sense that at all to be quite honest.”
You can see on the rare occasion that Rangers try to buy players from other Scottish clubs how difficult it is for us to get deals done, whereas, they seem to bend over backwards for Celtic whenever they have cherrypicked the best players from around the league.
It’s hugely hypocritical from some of the individuals that take up the option of being wined and dined at Ibrox when they have such an ingrained hatred of everything that we stand for, if anything, you would think that we would be entitled to harbour feelings of animosity and yet, it would appear, that it is the rest of the country that has a problem – jealousy can be an ugly thing, can’t it?