The Gallant Pioneers: Rangers 1872
Page 23
3. Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches by D.D. Bone (1890).
4. Scottish Athletic Journal 25 March 1885–86.
5. Many thanks to Paul Rowland, editor of the Indiaman Magazine, the only genealogical and history magazine dedicated to the lives of the British in India between the 16th–20th centuries. He kindly put me in touch with Derek Perry in Australia, a former tea planter and Assam historian who agreed with marvellous alacrity to write a sketch based on his research of the conditions Tom Vallance would have faced in the region in the 1880s.
6. Scottish Football Journal, 25 March 1885.
Chapter 12 – Happily We Walk Along the Copland Road
1. Scottish Athletic Journal, 22 February 1887.
2. ibid, 21 March 1884.
3. ibid, 12 October 1886.
4. ibid, 23 August 1887.
5. Scottish Umpire, 10 July 1888.
6. Liverpool Echo, 1 November 1886.
7. Scottish News, 22 August 1887.
8. Scottish Umpire, 9 August 1887.
9. Scottish News, 22 August 1887.
10. ibid.
11. Scottish Athletic Journal, 23 August 1887.
Chapter 13 – A New Era
1. Scottish Sport, 29 January 1892.
2. Scottish Umpire, 10 June 1885.
3. Scottish Athletic Journal, 19 June 1885.
4. ibid, 8 December 1885.
5. Scottish Sport, 22 March 1890.
6. Scottish Football League – The First 100 Years by Bob Crampsey, page 40.
Bibliography
The Story of the Rangers, 50 Years Football 1873–1923 by John Allan (Desert Island Books)
Rangers: The Complete Record by Bob Ferrier and Robert McElroy (Breedon Books)
Rangers: The Managers by David Mason (Mainstream Publishing)
Stanley Matthews: My Autobigraphy, The Way It Was Sir Stanley Matthews (Headline)
Stanley Matthews: The Authorised Biography by David Miller (Pavilion)
Neil Munro: The Biography by Lesley Lendrum (House of Lochar)
Celtic: A Century With Honour by Brian Wilson (Collins Willow)
The Glory and the Dream: The History of Celtic FC 1887–1987 by Tom Campbell and Pat Woods (Grafton Publishing)
The Scottish Footballer by Bob Crampsey (William Blackwood)
As Centuries Blend: 106 Years of Clydesdale Cricket Club by S. Courtney (John Miller Ltd)
One Hundred Years of Scottish Football by John Rafferty (Pan Books)
The Only Game: Scots and World Football by Roddy Forsyth (Mainstream)
Scottish Football: A Pictoral History by Kevin McCarra (Third Eye Centre/Polygon)
Pay Up and Play The Game by Wray Vamplew (Cambridge)
Victoria’s Daughters by Jerrold M. Packard (St Martin’s Griffin)
Rosneath and the Gareloch by Keith Hall (Tempus Publishing)
Around Gareloch and Rosneath Peninsula by Keith Hall (Tempus Publishing)
Among Friends: an Autobiography by Alastair Dunnett (Century Publishing)
The Official History of the FA Cup by Geoffrey Green (Sportsman’s Book Club)
Scotland: The Team by Andrew Ward (Breedon Books)
The Second City by C.A. Oakley (Blackie)
Scottish Football: A Sourcebook by John Weir (Stewart Davidson Publishing)
25 Years of Football by Old International
The Campbells of Kilmun by Iain Hope (Aggregate Publications)
Clyde Passenger Steamers from 1812–1901 by Captain James Williamson (James MacLehose and Sons)
An Anthology of Early Rangers’ Writing
In the 21st century the demand for newsprint to chronicle the highlights and low points, heroes and villains of Scottish football, from Wick Academy to Wigtown FC and all points in between (particularly Ibrox and Parkhead) is enormous. In the early 1870s Scottish editors, if they even covered the new sport of association football, would order reports in the size of crossword clues rather than column inches. There were exceptions, in particular the North British Daily Mail and Glasgow News, but for the most part newspapers such as the Glasgow Herald and The Scotsman carried little more than scores and occasional titbits of information, preview and analysis. Newspapers such as the Glasgow Evening Citizen, Evening Times and Evening News did not come into being until 1877.
Therefore, anyone seeking in-depth reportage of the rise of Rangers in the early years, especially from their time at Glasgow Green and Burnbank, is in for a serious disappointment. Valuable information still exists however, although, like Peter McNeil guarding his precious acre at Flesher’s Haugh every Saturday morning, it takes a stubbornness to uncover, mark out and preserve the words committed to print by the likes of William Dunlop, Moses McNeil and 19th-century sportswriters – the latter of whom were a group who could fawn, flatter and fulminate like any of their present-day operators in the tabloid and broadsheet press. This index to an anthology of Rangers writing is by no means exhaustive, but it offers a taste of the background in which the club developed and sets out key articles and episodes in the club’s early years that future historians and fans with a passion for the club will hopefully find informative and entertaining.
In the early years the Scottish Football Annuals, produced by the SFA for the first time in season 1876–77, were a valuable resource in logging the details of every club that played the association game in Scotland. Outfits with names such as Whitefield, Oxford, Pollokshields Athletic, Pilgrims and First Lanark burned brightly for a few seasons before fizzing out on the Catherine wheel of fate. The annual faithfully recorded the biggest games played in the seasons that had just past, including Cup Finals and internationals, and there were lengthy pieces dedicated to the development of individual clubs (including The Rangers FC by ‘True Blue’ (William Dunlop) in 1881–82 and The Rangers Club by ‘Obo’ in 1894–95).
The situation improved in the early 1880s as publishers acknowledged the commercial sense in producing newspapers dedicated solely to Scottish sport (in particular football, rugby, athletics, cricket, cycling and rowing). The Scottish Athletic Journal entered the fray in September 1882 and became a weekly godsend of football match reports, previews, squabbling, scandal and occasional sycophancy. It had a rival from August 1884 when the Scottish Umpire was set up in direct competition, also produced weekly. It was published by former Rangers secretary John Wallace Mackay, in part as a reaction to the criticism he had endlessly received in the pages of the Journal. The Umpire was a more sober read, but the sports market was not mature enough at that time to sustain two titles and they merged to form the Scottish Sport from November 1888. It was produced twice weekly and managed to mix the best of both papers before it was finally incorporated into the pages of the Scottish Cyclist in November 1900. The marriage of the Journal and the Umpire had been forced by the imminent arrival on the scene of the Scottish Referee, which was published twice weekly from November 1988 until 1914 and, while it lacked the depth of coverage of the Sport, it became a crucial reference for the early years of the 20th century.
Unsurprisingly, books on Scottish football were few and far between in the latter half of the 19th century. In 1886, the Scottish Athletic Journal also compiled its Celebrities Album Volume One, which was a compilation of the dizzyingly positive portraits of the leading lights of Scottish sport who featured in the weekly publication; Tom Vallance and Harry McNeil were among those profiled. Former Rangers and Scotland star Archibald Steel, writing as Old International, produced 25 Years Football in 1896 and it is something of the Holy Grail of Scottish football publications – it is so rare that even the Scottish Football Museum at Hampden, which houses one of the most authoritative collections of writing on the Scottish game, only acquired a copy in early 2008. Football writer D.D. Bone published his Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches in 1890, which included his recollections of the great Rangers players from the late 1870s. There follows a list of the key articles covering Rangers in their first two decades of existence:
From The Scottish Football Annual, 1881–82 edition, The Rangers FC by ‘True Blue’
It says much for the quality of a Scottish education in the 19th century that such an essay should flow so eloquently from the pen of former Rangers forward and club president William Dunlop, writing as ‘True Blue’. He kicks off with a quick quotation from Burns, slips in some French and Latin, dribbles past a couple of philosophical and literary references, including the Edinburgh Review and Sir Walter Scott, then fires in a reminder of Roman history, recalling the Battle of Pharsalus in 48bc when Julius Caesar defeated Pompey the Great. It all takes place within the first 1,000 words, during which he also begins to paint the most complete and vivid picture of the birth of Rangers in 1872.
Dunlop died from influenza complications brought on by meningitis in 1895, aged just 41. He was an iron merchant from Glasgow. His father, James, owned a dairy business and his sister Marion, named after their mother, married Tom Vallance. Dunlop wrote his article below for the Scottish Football Annual in 1881 and had been president of Rangers in 1879–80, overlapping with a stellar career as a player between seasons 1876–1880. Dunlop, who had the nickname ‘Daddy’, previously played for the Sandyford club before being lured to Kinning Park and left Rangers in 1880 to play for Queen’s Park. He was an all-round sportsman who excelled at football, athletics, bowling, shooting and fishing (he regularly indulged his passion for the latter pastime during summer holidays in the wilds of western Ireland). The Scottish Referee mourned his passing in its edition of 27 May 1895 and said, ‘He fair revelled in the fight and feared no foe in football armour. Mr Dunlop was of stern and powerful build. Yet within an iron-like frame there lodged a warm and large heart of the right sort.’
Dunlop’s article, viewed through 21st-century eyes, is not an easy read, nor is it error free. He claims, for example, that Rangers were founded in the early months of 1872 after being inspired by, among others, Vale of Leven and Third Lanark. However, neither of those clubs was formed until the latter half of that year. Callander was spelt as Callendar and William McBeath’s surname was noted as McBeith in one passage. He also claimed that the club took its name from rhyming slang from the fact so many of its players were ‘strangers’ in Glasgow, contradicting Moses McNeil’s much more plausible explanation that it came from the pages of C.W. Alcock’s Football Annual. Overall, however, his words carry weight and authority, especially written so close to the birth of the club. No one has ever called the central thrust of his recollections to account, not least because he knew so many of the gallant pioneers and the background to the formation of the club intimately. Indeed, the article was republished in full in the Scottish Athletic Journal in August 1887 to mark the opening of the first Ibrox Park, which shows the high regard in which his opinions were held.
Daily Record and Mail, Monday 22 April 1935 ‘When Rangers First Reached Final’ by Moses McNeil
For over half a century Scottish footballers were seen but rarely heard or, more appropriately, read. Club administrators and later managers and trainers occasionally had their words cloaked with quotation marks, but even as the game entered the 20th century this was far from normal. Therefore, to find words from Moses McNeil in an article from 1935, three years before his death at the age of 82, is somewhat surprising. Unfortunately, the article that appeared in the Daily Record (clearly ghostwritten, most probably by Record editor and Rangers historian John Allan) lacks depth, but these are the only words recorded on the formation of the club by one of its guiding lights. McNeil repeats the claim for the formation as 1873 and insists again, just as Allan claimed on his behalf in his jubilee history, that it was his decision to name the club Rangers.
Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches (1890) by D.D. Bone
In its first two decades of its existence, Rangers lifted only one piece of silverware – the Glasgow Charity Cup of 1879. The renowned 19th-century football writer David Drummond Bone recalled many of the highlights he had witnessed in the game’s earliest years in Football Reminiscences and Sketches. His pen pictures of the 1879 Charity Cup-winning team give an insight into some of the earliest personalities who helped put the club on the road to fame and fortune.
‘The Rangers Club’ by ‘Obo’, from the Scottish Football Annual 1894–95
The origins of the pen name ‘Obo’ have, unfortunately, been lost in time. However, his look back on the early years of the club includes a valuable recollection of the 1880s and is a more accessible read than ‘True Blue’. It is authoritative and gives an excellent overview of the position of the club as the 20th century approached.
‘Thomas Vallance and Mr Harry McNeil, Modern Athletic Celebrities.’ Scottish Athletic Journal 25 March 1885 and 27 October 1885 respectively
The Journal’s portraits of the major sports personalities were overwhelmingly positive and flattering. Nonetheless, they contain much valuable information, although some of it is contentious. Information on Vallance’s background, particularly his association with Clyde Amateur Rowing Club, is revealing. McNeil’s profile claims that it was he and not younger brother Moses who named Rangers (the only time that was ever suggested).
‘The Opening of the new Ibrox Park’ from the Scottish Athletic Journal, 23 August 1887
Thousands of Rangers fans walk along the Copland Road every matchday from the Ibrox underground, but when they turn right into Mafeking Street and head towards the stadium few realise they are walking on land that used to be the club’s most cherished acres. The first Ibrox Park was opened in 1887 and sat to the east of the current ground. Fans flocked to see the first game to be played at the new ground, which rivalled Hampden Park for comfort and amenities. In total, a capacity crowd of 20,000 saw Rangers lose the first match to Preston North End 8–1. Record gate receipts of around £340 helped soften the blow. The opening of the new ground was given widespread coverage at the time, nowhere more than in the pages of the Scottish Athletic Journal. Even that arch critic of the club was impressed with all the new ground had to offer…
‘The Rangers’ 50th year. Celebrating the jubilee, a milestone.’ Daily Record, Tuesday 10 April 1923
On the evening of Monday 9 April 1923 Ferguson and Forester’s Restaurant in Glasgow’s Buchanan Street hosted jubilee celebrations for Rangers that were a far cry from the humble beginnings of the club on Glasgow Green 51(!) years earlier. The Glasgow Evening News the following day recorded: ‘Footballers young and tongue-tackit, footballers old and garrulous, lovers of football, critics of football, administrators of football, all were gathered round the festive board, which had at its head Sir John Ure Primrose, Glasgow’s most distinguished follower of the game.’ Guests tucked into a lavish feast that included saumon bouilli, sorbet au mandarin, panier Parisien, cour de filet de boeuf and talmouse Milanaise. Each speaker was given four minutes to address the audience and, inevitably, many overran as the night moved on past midnight. The anniversary was widely covered in all Scottish newspapers, with the reporting by papers such as the Evening News and Daily Record typical of the goodwill afforded the event.
‘The Rangers’ Late President’, Scottish Athletic Journal, 17 November 1882
Archibald Harkness joined Rangers in 1874 and was a friend of the McNeil brothers, but was not a playing member of Rangers. He was one of the earliest presidents of Rangers but died tragically from typhoid fever in November 1882 at the age of 26, only months into his second term of office (he had also served at least two years previously as vice-president). He passed away at his home in Hillhead and had been ill for some time – his condition was not helped by his insistence on taking Rangers’ training sessions at Kinning Park during the summer months when he should have been in bed. Rangers cancelled their game against St Bernard’s, which was due to take place on the Saturday morning of his funeral, to allow players and officials to attend the service, held at the churchyard at Kilmun on the banks of the Holy Loch. Archibald Harkness is little more than a historical footnote in the history o
f the club, but the report on his funeral was a beautiful piece of writing by ‘Jonathan Oldbuck’ (a pseudonym that would later pass to John Allan) and formed a fitting tribute to his too short life.
Table of Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgements
The Gallant Pioneers
The Birth of the Blues
Moses McNeil
Valiant, Virtuous – and Vale of Leven
Peter McNeil
Sweet Charity
Peter Campbell
The End of the Innocence
William McBeath
The FA Cup – From First to Last
Tom Vallance
Happily We Walk Along the Copland Road
A New Era
Our Light Blues’ Legacy
References
Bibliography
An Anthology of Early Rangers’ Writing