As winter prepared to give way to spring, the progress of Rangers into the last four of the FA Cup was being recognised by observers beyond the potential for a Scottish side to lift the greatest prize in the British game for the first time. A move from Kinning Park to their new ground at Ibrox in the coming August was agreed by Rangers at a special meeting of members on 16 February. A seven-year lease, with a break available after three years, was signed for a site of ‘five or six acres’ at the Copeland (sic) Road end of Paisley Road, with £750 being committed to building a pavilion, stand and enclosure, with further terracing taking the capacity of the new ground to around 15,000. The respect Rangers were winning as they progressed to the latter stages of the FA Cup was also being viewed as a vital marketing aid to enhance the club’s finances, as well as its reputation. Not only were they looking to attract glamour sides north for showpiece friendlies to boost gate receipts at their new home, but such matches would also attract a new generation of fans to support the now-established Light Blues at their showpiece ground. As it reflected on Rangers’ march to the semi-final, the Scottish Athletic Journal noted: ‘They will require several big attractions for the first two or three weeks of their tenancy of the new ground to allow the people to become acquainted with the new order of things. If they make a good appearance now, such English matches as they may desire will be all the more easily arranged. It will thus be seen that the club is looking to its financial standing as well as its reputation. It will be a proud moment for the Rangers if they succeed in getting so far as the Final for the English Cup. Stranger things have happened.’18
Aston Villa, like Rangers, had reached the semi-final of the competition for the first time that season and were under the management of a Scot, Glaswegian George Ramsay (he is credited with helping establish the lion rampant on the Villa badge, where it still roars to this day, and he also dedicated a staggering 59 years of his life to the club, leading them to six championships and six FA Cup Final successes). Villa were given an immediate advantage by the FA’s decision to play the game at Nantwich Road in Crewe, meaning Rangers had to travel 200 miles – four times the distance of their rivals – to fulfil the fixture. For their part, the FA believed playing the game at a ground no more than a stone’s throw from a railway station that served Scotland and the Midlands was an appropriate compromise. Ramsay took his players to Droitwich to prepare for the game, a ploy which was virtually unheard of in those days, and they went through a vigorous regime of training and salt baths to ensure they were in the pink for the biggest game in their history. Their star man was skipper and forward Archie Hunter, another Scot who started his career with Third Lanark and Ayr Thistle before moving south. Tragically, he suffered a heart attack in a League game against Everton only three years later and died in 1894, aged just 35. Rangers arrived in Crewe at 9.30pm the night before the game in the company of former player Hugh McIntyre, who had met them earlier at Preston. Rangers had previously doled out Villa’s record defeat, 7–1 back in April 1882, but history was not to favour a repeat.
The clubs shared the same hotel across the street from the ground, the Royal, and a crowd of 10,000 turned out to watch the tie, the majority of them from the Midlands and bearing cards in the Birmingham club’s colours of chocolate and light blue, reading ‘Play up Villa!’ The sides, who changed at the hotel, took to the field and Hunter opened the scoring after only 13 minutes, maintaining a record he would continue throughout the competition of scoring in every round. However, Lafferty equalised on 34 minutes and Rangers twice went close to adding to their tally, although Villa were always dangerous on the break against a Rangers defence that was, according to the Scottish Umpire, ‘not being of the best.’19 The Umpire’s reporter, writing under the name ‘Forward’, had previously tipped Rangers to win through to the Final, but his faith proved unfounded and his fearless punditry was reduced in the second half to barely concealed disgust over the performance of ’keeper Willie Chalmers, who had lunched heartily with McIntyre before the match and was beginning to feel the effects.
‘Forward’ wrote: ‘The Rangers defence was much better than it had been in the first half, so far as the backs were concerned, but Chalmers was in very poor trim. A shot was sent across by Hodgetts and though Chalmers had plenty of time to get it away he just touched it along the ground, and Albert Brown dashed it through.’ Hunter added his second near the end to secure his side’s 3–1 victory and ‘Forward’ concluded: ‘They [Villa] played a much better game than the Rangers, who were not so good as I expected. Chalmers was the worst of the lot and seemed very nervous on the three occasions, besides the one that ended so fatally…The weak points of the Rangers were in deficient combination and dash of the forwards, rather weak defence and downright poor goalkeeping.’20 It was scant consolation that Rangers, on paper at least, were the only amateur representatives in the last four.
Villa’s victory, added to a shock 3–1 semi-final win for their near-neighbours West Brom over the mighty Preston North End, sent the Midlands into meltdown. The Scottish Umpire revealed that: ‘when the results were made known, the Midlands went about delirious, and many got fou. Poetry cobblers were commissioned to write peans in praise of the respective champions. The Villa almost went off their heads on Saturday night, especially when they heard of the Albion victory. They think they can now win, but did not favour their chances against North End.’21 Villa’s confidence was not misplaced, as they defeated West Brom 2–0 in the Final at the Kennington Oval on 2 April in front of more than 15,000 fans.
For Rangers, the recriminations continued for several weeks after the semi-final defeat and the Scottish Umpire noted: ‘From all accounts, Chalmers cracked his reputation by his Crewe performance. Was it that lunch that did it?’ It added: ‘The Rangers…can’t get over their dismissal and the number of “ifs” they have uttered would fill our columns from end to end. Let them forget the past and prepare for the future.’22 It was easier said than done for Chalmers, who was ditched by the club before March even came to an end, much to the disgust of the Scottish Athletic Journal, who finger-wagged: ‘The Rangers have lost the services of Chalmers, who has certainly not been very well treated by the club. It is most unfair to blame him for the loss of the Aston Villa tie…Chalmers has done good service during three years.’23 A fortnight earlier the Journal’s English football writer, who penned his articles under the byline ‘Rab’, was less forgiving as he mischievously suggested a more sinister motive behind Chalmers’ poor form. He wrote: ‘I have it on the authority of a brother scribe, who was at Crewe seeing the semi-final, that the Rangers would have drawn with the Aston Villa but for the wretched goalkeeping of Chalmers. He says it was vicious such, in fact, as might have been expected from a novice. Chalmers got badly chaffed by the spectators, some even hinting that he had sold the match. Altogether his lot was not a happy one. The Villa were exceedingly lucky in their scores and, but for Chalmers, there was not much difference between them and the Rangers.’24 John Allan, in his jubilee history of the club, cut straight to it: ‘William was an excellent trencherman and Hugh McIntyre confessed, with some self-reproach, that it was he who, in a playful spirit, acted as agent to the goalkeeper’s little debauch.’25
Rangers and Chalmers did eventually kiss and make up – he had returned to the club by the start of the following season, though could have been forgiven for wishing he had stayed away as Preston North End rattled eight goals past him to mark the opening of the new Ibrox Park. However, even that was not as bad as the 10–2 defeat Rangers suffered at snow-covered Kinning Park in February 1886 against Airdrie. That scoreline still stands as the Light Blues’ heaviest defeat and Chalmers was also pilloried after that one for refusing to dive around his icy goalmouth. Rangers’ relationship with the FA Cup ended for good at the end of the 1886–87 season as the SFA finally forbade its clubs from competing in the Cup south of the border. Their reasons were straightforward and justified: not only did their members’ appearances in the FA
Cup undermine their own Scottish Cup competition, they also ran the risk of losing control of football in their own backyard. It was inconceivable to the SFA that if two Scottish clubs met in the FA Cup and came to loggerheads, the association in London could argue for the right to resolve the dispute.
The Scottish Athletic Journal had argued as much in a stern editorial when it said: ‘It does rile us to see England thus claiming a jurisdiction over Scotland…How can the SFA prevent this assumption of a British jurisdiction by the English association? Easily enough. It only has to pass a rule at the coming annual meeting that no club under its control can take part in any Cup competition, save that of the Scottish Association or one of its affiliated associations. At the same time, the Scottish clubs are to blame. What has the Queen’s Park gained by competing for three consecutive seasons for the English Cup? Nothing, save disappointment and humiliation…The Rangers, with more than ordinary luck in the ballot, are now in the semi-final and were they even twice as good as they are they could not win the Cup. If they do, they deserve a public banquet.’26
They never were so fêted. However, Chalmers appears to have eaten on behalf of the whole team anyway.
Tom Vallance
Former Rangers manager Graeme Souness surely never had Tom Vallance in mind when he memorably opined that one of the biggest problems in Scottish football was the presence of too many hammer throwers. Vallance, dubbed ‘Honest Tom’ throughout his glorious, one-club career with the Light Blues, could lob 16 pounds of solid steel with as much aplomb as he could run, jump, row or play football. Of all the gallant pioneers, he clearly boasted the richest and most varied talents. This lad o’ pairts from the Vale of Leven was a champion athlete and skilled oarsman, international footballer, successful entrepreneur and such an adept artist that his work was exhibited in the Royal Glasgow Institute and Scottish Academy. He would have needed a wide canvas indeed to reflect in oils on all he had achieved. Sport, especially football, coursed through his blood and that of his offspring – his son was first-team coach at Stoke City and his grandson played for Arsenal and even his granddaughter married one of the greatest of them all, Sir Stanley Matthews.
Tom Vallance was not present at the conception of Rangers in West End Park, nor its birth shortly afterwards against Callander, but he quickly developed a bond with the infant club that would remain virtually unbroken until his death from a stroke in February 1935, aged 78. He nurtured its development to such an extent that he was club captain for nine seasons from 1873 and president for six years from 1883. He represented Scotland seven times, with four caps won against England in 1877, 1878, 1879 and 1881. Not once did he finish on the losing side against the ‘Auld Enemy’. Four men are correctly identified with the formation of Rangers but a fifth, Vallance, was also a towering influence – and not just because the powerful full-back stood 6ft 2in tall, a veritable giant of the age on and off the park.
Vallance was born at a small farmhouse known as Succoth, near Renton in the parish of Cardross, in 1856. His father, also Thomas, was an agricultural labourer from Lesmahagow and his mother, Janet, came from Loudon in Ayrshire. They were married in Glasgow in December 1842 and by the time Tom was born there was already a large Vallance family, including Ann aged 12, James 9, Robert 8, and Margaret 2. The family unit would increase still further in later years with the birth of another two boys, Alexander (who also gave sterling service to Rangers) and Andrew (who went on to become head gardener in Helensburgh for Neil Munro, the novelist best known for his ‘Para Handy’ tales). When Tom was still young the family moved to the Old Toll House at Shandon, north of Rhu on the Gareloch, and in all likelihood crossed paths with the McNeil brothers for the first time. After all, the new Vallance residence was only a short distance south of Belmore House, where John McNeil, the father of Moses and Peter, was employed as head gardener. Tom Vallance senior is listed in the Helensburgh Directory of 1864 as a ‘road man’ – in effect, a toll collector for a stretch of highway that once hugged the shore of the Gare Loch between Shandon and Garelochhead, but which has long since been swallowed by the naval base at Faslane.
On the athletics field in his youth, Vallance was a regular prizewinner at the annual Garelochhead Sports, while his love of rowing was nurtured and developed initially on the local regatta circuit. Newspaper reports from the 1870s and 1880s confirm his domination of the local sports scene. For example, on Ne’erday 1878 he competed in the annual Garelochhead Amateur Athletics sports meeting and promptly won the champion mile race for the parishes of Rhu and Rosneath, the 150 yards and 200 yards sprints, as well as the hurdle, ‘hop step and leap’, and the hammer throw. Three years later, at the same Ne’erday meet, he won the 160 yards and 200 yards races, the steeplechase, the triple jump, another hammer event and the long jump. To rub salt into the wounds of the defeated and dispirited, his team even won the tug-o-war.
By that stage in 1881 Vallance, then aged 25, was at his athletic peak, underlined when he jumped an astonishing 21ft 11in (6.68 metres) at the Queen’s Park FC sports. The leap pre-dated the formation of the Scottish Amateur Athletic Association (it would not be established for another two years) but was still passed as the initial Scottish record. It was no fluke either, as Vallance also leapt 21ft 6in and 21ft exactly at two other sports meetings that year. Amazingly, Vallance’s Scottish record stood until 1896 when Glaswegian Hugh Barr, another athletic all-rounder, beat it by two inches.
Keeping pace with Vallance was younger brother Alick who, like Tom, was also a Rangers stalwart and an athlete of some renown. In addition to their membership of Rangers, the siblings were also long-standing members of the Clydesdale Harriers from its formation in 1885. Golf was another passion and Alick was one of the founder members and the first captain of Garelochhead Golf Club in 1895. He was also Scottish 120 yards hurdles champion in 1888 and he played over 100 times for the Light Blues in a career spanning 12 seasons from 1877–88. Like Tom, he was a defender and, although he had a lighter physique than his older brother, he was every bit as gutsy. They played together in the Glasgow Charity Cup Final in 1879 when Rangers beat Vale of Leven 2–1 to win their first piece of silverware as a club.
The land of the founding fathers…the Gareloch, from above the village of Clynder.
By 1871 the Vallance family had moved to Hillhouse in Rhu, where 14-year-old Tom was listed in the census as a ‘civil engineer’s apprentice’. If the work was not directly with his father at that time, it was almost certainly a position gained through his influence. However, with a restricted economy based on farming, fishing and the infant industry of tourism, the Gareloch proved inadequate to satisfy the career interests of Vallance and, like the McNeil and Campbell boys before him, he headed to Glasgow where he quickly found work as a mechanical engineer in the shipyards.
Schoolboy friendships formed would be cherished in the new, alien environment, so it was no surprise when Vallance teamed up with his Gareloch chums soon after his arrival in Glasgow to boost their fledgling football enterprise, nor would it have come as a shock to see the teenager seek out a rowing club at which to continue the pastime that had so captured his interest. According to the Scottish Athletic Journal1 he chose Clyde Amateur Rowing Club – and therein lies a story. For decades the Clydesdale Rowing Club, neighbours and friendly rivals of Clyde, believed Rangers were formed as an offshoot of their club, but there is no evidence to support their claims beyond anecdotes passed on by members through the generations. Clydesdale generously opened up their minutes and membership lists dating from soon after their formation in 1857 for the research purposes of this book. Unfortunately, none of the names on the membership lists (which are extensive) from the period 1865–1900 match the gallant pioneers, other players or committee members from the earliest years of Rangers. Of course, that is not to say Tom Vallance, the McNeils or the Campbells never splashed a ripple in the colours of Clydesdale but, more likely, it was Clyde, who were formed in 1865. The reported evidence of the time in relation
to Vallance apart, there is another strong clue – the blue star on the shirt of the 1877 Scottish Cup Final team, the earliest known picture of a Rangers squad. It has baffled the unknowing for years, but the puzzle is surely solved moments after stepping through the front door of the Clyde HQ at the boathouse on Glasgow Green when visitors are confronted by the club’s motif on the wall – a light blue, six-pointed star, identical to the one on the shirts worn by the Rangers team over 130 years previously, which suggests a close relationship between the two clubs. (In the 1877 picture, however, Tom Vallance is pictured with a lion rampant on his shirt, symbolising his status as a Scottish international that season.) Unfortunately, absolute verification of the Clyde link is impossible, not least because their earliest records, unlike those of Clydesdale, were lost long ago.
John Allan’s first great history of Rangers paints a somewhat romantic picture of ‘lusty, laughing lads, mere boys some of them, flushed and happy from the exhilaration of a finishing dash with the oars…seen hauling their craft ashore on the upper reaches of the River Clyde at Glasgow Green.’ The truth of the rowing exploits of Vallance and Co. was likely to have been somewhat more prosaic. Firstly, opportunities to row would not have been so plentiful, not least because boats would have to be hired from specialist agents on the south of the river at Glasgow Green or loaned from the Clyde or Clydesdale clubs themselves. As recently as the 1960s, as many as six crews would share the use of one four-man boat. Members of each ‘four’ would be under strict instruction to return to the boathouse within half an hour and only if there were no crews waiting on the bank for their slot could the time on the water be extended. Furthermore, rowing on the Clyde for much of the latter half of the 19th century often involved a lengthy game of patience. Until 1887 there was a weir on the Clyde at Glasgow Green and, while it helped to hold a high tide longer that usual, it was impossible to take to the water at low tide as the river resembled little more than a narrow stream between two substantial mud flats.2
The Gallant Pioneers: Rangers 1872 Page 17