Tangled Up in Blue

by Stephen O'Donnell

  Struth’s background in athletics had taught him the value of hard work, strict discipline and fierce determination, as well as a ‘win at all costs’ mentality, and he would emphasise the pride in playing for Rangers as the foremost club in the land. Under the new manager, players were expected to be properly turned out. The dress code for training was a collar and tie and, when the weather decreed, an overcoat of pure wool accompanied by, on matchdays or when representing the club in public, the pièce de resistance, a bowler hat. Everything had to be tip-top at the club; players would be pulled up or called into the manager’s office if their hair was too long, their cravats weren’t tied properly or if their collars were turned up, a working-class fashion statement of the day.

  On one occasion, Struth offered to double youngster Willie Thornton’s wages, after the striker arrived for training wearing immaculately shining, good-as-new boots, although young Thornton didn’t have the gumption to admit that it was his mother who had polished them. A hierarchy existed within the changing room and the training staff would always seek out the senior players first to give them a rub down or towelling off when they stepped out of the huge bath in the home dressing room; less experienced players and youngsters would have to wait their turn or fend for themselves.

  Perhaps more admirably, given the present day problem of ‘simulation’ in the game, Struth insisted that players who were injured during a match should play through their knock, rather than show their opponents a weakness by admitting that they were hurt. It was a mentality which the manager would often take to extremes, as reported injuries in general were treated with scepticism and stories abounded of players who were thought to be unfit being sent out on to the field and scoring the winning goal in games. Wing-half Tommy Muirhead, who captained the club for most of the 1920s, was only half-joking when he observed that Struth ‘could persuade you to play with a broken ankle’. On one occasion the manager took matters into his own hands when, relying on skills he had picked up at Bellahouston Hospital during the war, but without any formal medical training, he carried out an operation on a player’s troublesome soft corn using a sterilised penknife.

  In return for their loyalty, the senior players at Ibrox in particular were treated like gods, and Struth’s men could expect first-class travel on away trips and tours, as well as other privileges such as the best cinema seats in local theatres. In addition, at a time when footballers were generally seen as still belonging to the working-class communities from which they had emerged, Rangers players in the 1920s and ’30s were among the best-paid sportsmen in Britain, with the senior pros earning a generous £8 per week, plus a £2 bonus for a win or £1 for a draw. In season 1929/30, that would have meant a total take-home pay of £442 for a Rangers regular, an unimaginable sum for the ordinary fan, as the Great Depression and the problems associated with poverty and deprivation in Glasgow blighted the outside, real world.

  Struth made it his business to know everything that was going on in his players’ lives and the manager would often surprise his charges by revealing that he was aware, through his network of spies and informants, of what pubs they were drinking in and even whether they had been to church on Sunday. He was unquestionably a shrewd operator and later admitted that he learnt the role of management, initially at least, by ‘keeping his ears open and his mouth shut’.

  The job, however, was almost unrecognisably different from the manager’s, or head coach’s, role today and at times it may seem difficult for the modern fan to comprehend the extent of Struth’s responsibilities at Ibrox. There was no remit within his range of duties for coaching or improving players, and even the task of working with the squad on a daily basis and preparing the team for matches was left to the fitness trainer. The manager could have an influence over team selection, but the final say was always in the hands of the board, who rarely deviated from their preferred 11 every week, and the identification of potential signings was left to Struth’s network of scouts, although the manager would always make the final decision on recruiting new players. There wasn’t even much of an active role for Struth while a match was taking place, as tactical advice was non-existent and substitutions were not permitted, so the Rangers manager would often travel with his driver around the various grounds in Glasgow to look at players who had been brought to his attention while the game at Ibrox was still going on. He would then assess the ability of a potential signing on the basis of half an hour’s viewing, claiming that he didn’t require any more time to make up his mind. Once a target had been identified, as a necessary part of the vetting process, Struth would then enquire into the player’s background and character, as these were considered at least as important as his technical ability, which he understood little about.

  More usually during a match, when he wasn’t gallivanting around Glasgow, the manager remained in the directors’ box, and without the need for coaches lurking around dugouts, instructions and team talks were largely dispensed with or left to the captain and other senior players, who acted as the manager’s on-field lieutenants, encouraging and instructing younger players in the style of play and what was expected of them. Former captain George Young told the club’s centenary book Growing with Glory, ‘The nearest he ever came to talking tactics was when he pointed out before an away game that it was a narrow pitch we would be playing on. Then he would suggest that instead of trying to squeeze five forwards across a narrow pitch, one should drop back and help create a bit more space. Then he left it to us to decide who that would be.’

  From a modern perspective, it may seem difficult to imagine football players showing respect towards and taking instruction from someone who neither understood nor actively took part in the game, but this was an altogether more deferential age, when a man’s position in society counted for more. Despite his humble background, Struth looked the part and acted the part, and that was considered more important at the time. The manager’s vanity even extended to his fondness for the Ibrox UV tubes, meant for the treatment of injured players, but which Struth would regularly use to maintain his swarthy complexion over the winter, while the Rangers fanzine Follow Follow recorded an ex-player reminiscing about how Struth, when opening the Ibrox summer games, ‘would take to the microphone in the centre circle… like a peacock strutting it’s (sic) feathers’.

  In addition, he kept a rack of suits inside Ibrox and would change at least once a day, while Struth also seemed to fancy himself as a bit of a singer, and he would often croon away over the Ibrox PA system on the day before a match. Another eccentricity was a fondness for his pet canary, which he kept in his office and which he would occasionally ply with whisky to encourage it to sing.

  We might consider him something of a sociopath, but what Struth, this stonemason’s son from Edinburgh, was carefully cultivating at the club was a superiority complex at a time when Rangers were becoming as much a part of the Protestant establishment as the Kirk itself. One of Struth’s successors, Walter Smith, later referred to a ‘Protestant superiority syndrome’ at the club, which was still very much in evidence during Smith’s first spell as manager at Ibrox in the 1990s. The requirement for players to wear a collar and tie to training persisted too, until the arrival of foreign mercenaries at Ibrox rendered the idea of a dress code obsolete, an inexplicable anachronism. Back in the day, however, Struth wasn’t just satisfied with training and matchday smartness, he also wanted his players to look sharp on the field, and to this end in the dressing room before a game Rangers players were obliged to sit around in their underwear until moments before kick-off, for fear of creasing their immaculately pressed kit. At half-time, the entire team would customarily change their shorts and jerseys and have the mud scraped from their knees and boots, while the opposition took to the field for the second half with their outfits still smeared with the dirt and grime of their first-half toils. Disobedience or indiscipline was punishable by instant removal from the club. Anyone with a grudge or a grievance wouldn’t last long either, while an
y player who was looking a bit ‘peeky’, unfit or not quite up to coping with Struth’s rigorous training regime was dropped.

  The grandness of Rangers was also reflected in the architecture of the stadium, as Struth commissioned a reconstruction of the Main Stand at Ibrox with an impressive exterior façade, modelled on Aston Villa, which was officially opened on New Year’s Day 1929 by Glasgow’s Lord Provost Sir David Mason before the traditional game against Celtic. The match was notable because the result, a convincing 3-0 win for the home team, meant that for the first time Rangers had edged ahead of the Parkhead side in the head-to-head tally of league encounters between the clubs, with the Ibrox men having now recorded 26 victories in the fixture compared to their rivals’ 25, with 27 games drawn, an advantage which, in the decades to come, Rangers would only extend over their floundering neighbours.

  The whole attitude at Struth’s Rangers meant that the club expected to get their way, on the field and off it, and for the most part they did. There was very little, if any, criticism in the press of the club’s antediluvian policies or of their rugged style of play, and players and officials at Ibrox were considered untouchable. All in all, it was a successful formula; Rangers romped to the title in Struth’s first season in charge, losing only one game and finishing ten points clear of second-placed Celtic. The tone had been set for the years to come, as the Ibrox club went on to accumulate a remarkable 14 titles between 1921 and 1939, adding the Scottish Cup on a further six occasions, including a noted double in 1928, which culminated in the famous 4-0 cup final win over Celtic at Hampden, blasting away the club’s 25-year hoodoo in the competition. As biographer David Leggat remarks, after Struth’s appointment, ‘For the following 34 years he ruled Rangers with a rod of iron, while Rangers, in turn, ruled Scottish football.’

  Celtic were generous in their praise after that 4-0 Scottish Cup Final defeat of 1928, the first such occasion to feature the two teams since the infamous replayed final of 1909, which was abandoned due to rioting. The record crowd of over 118,000 saw Celtic enjoy the better of the first half but fail to take the lead, and the Parkhead men were subsequently punished when Rangers won a penalty shortly after the interval, which was fired home by stand-in skipper Davie Meiklejohn after regular taker Bob McPhail, aware of the significance of the moment, declined the responsibility. The release of tension subsequently precipitated a rout, as McPhail soon added a second, before a brace from Archibald confirmed the result. Celtic could only offer their congratulations and on the whole, despite the depressing religious polarisation and increased antipathy between supporters in the wider community, relations between the two clubs, at an official level at least, remained cordial.

  Inside-forward McPhail later recalled that after the game, ‘Celtic couldn’t have been more gracious in defeat. There were ready handshakes and smiles for all of us. I recall the Celtic chairman, Tom White, [saying] to our chairman, Bailie Joseph Buchanan, “I was very glad to have lived long enough to see you lift the Scottish Cup. We at Parkhead are delighted that Rangers have won. It is their turn.”’

  Buchanan himself observed, ‘The cup is fuller because we have beaten the Celtic. It was a grand game and a determined struggle between giants… These Rangers/Celtic encounters do much to popularise the game – long may the friendly rivalry continue.’

  Relations deteriorated, however, after a tragic incident at Ibrox on 5 September 1931. Celtic goalkeeper John Thomson was fatally injured when he collided with on-rushing forward Sam English, his head striking the left, standing knee of the Rangers player as he dived forward, resulting in a depressed fracture of the skull. Thomson was treated at the scene by Celtic club doctor Willie Kivlichan, before being transferred to the Victoria Infirmary, where he died around 9pm, minutes after his parents, summoned from the family home in Fife, had arrived at his bedside.

  Even after so many years, the briefly glimpsed footage of the incident on YouTube still has the capacity to shock, English hobbling back to check his prone and unconscious opponent, while Rangers captain Meiklejohn, aware of the seriousness of the situation, tries to calm the baying Ibrox crowd.

  In the wake of Thomson’s death, at the age of just 22, Rangers sent Celtic a terse note of sympathy, abrupt even by the deferential standards of the day, which can still be seen in a cabinet at Celtic Park today. English was exonerated of all blame at a subsequent inquiry, but controversy later surrounded the remarks of Celtic manager Willie Maley, who told the inquiry, ‘I hope it was an accident, but I did not see enough to enable me to form an opinion.’

  Maley, when questioned under oath, had provided a forensic, dispassionate reply; the incident happened in the blink of an eye and the judge, Sheriff George Wilton KC, was trying to ascertain exactly what occurred, with Maley clearly unable to definitively enlighten him. His response provoked anger in some quarters however, and subsequently a tragic incident, both for Thomson and indeed for English, who felt the need to leave Scotland and whose career never fully recovered, became a situation in which, in the eyes of Rangers, it was Celtic who were culpable.

  Celtic, meanwhile, whose previous approach to Rangers’ gathering dominance seems to have been to try and smother them with kindness, brooded on their anger at their rivals’ response, at the general course that the Ibrox club seemed to be adopting and at their own increasingly marginalised status within Scottish football and society.

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  Struth’s early Rangers teams were built around a number of key players, including eventual club captain Davie Meiklejohn, winger Alan Morton, pacy inside-left Bob McPhail and strikers such as Jimmy Smith, whom the club’s fans dubbed ‘the biggest centre-forward in the world’.

  Meiklejohn was the leader, Struth’s first lieutenant on the field and an inspirational skipper once he had taken over the role on a permanent basis from Tommy Muirhead. He played centre-half when centre-half was still a midfield position, protecting the defence and instigating attacks with his range of passing. Later, after the change in the offside law from ‘fewer than three’ attacking players between the ball and the goal line, to ‘fewer than two’, and the subsequent universal adoption of the WM formation to replace the old 2-3-5, Meiklejohn became the nominated right-half to allow out-and-out defender Jimmy Simpson, father of Celtic’s European Cup-winning goalkeeper Ronnie, to step up from the reserves and play as the third back.

  Meiklejohn captained Rangers for eight seasons and his leadership qualities were all the more remarkable because, as part of the role, he had to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of the club’s opponents. The manager himself was incapable of thinking tactically, so Meiklejohn was effectively the footballing brains behind the whole on-field operation, and it became part of his routine to meet with Struth on a Sunday to debrief the manager and take him through everything that had happened at the game the previous day.

  Struth made Alan Morton his first signing when he took the winger from Queen’s Park in June 1920. Queen’s had retained their status as an amateur team and Morton was a qualified mining engineer, a trade which he continued to practise when he moved to Ibrox. A professional man, he was known as ‘Pinkie’ because of his short stature among the land of giants that was the Rangers team at the time, who were all rugged, strong, tall and fast. He is best remembered for his role in the match between Scotland and England at Wembley in 1928, the Scots winning 5-1 and giving rise to the legend of the ‘Wembley Wizards’, although in reality the fixture that season was effectively a play-off for the wooden spoon in the Home International Championships. Morton played for Rangers until 1933 by which time he was almost 40 years old, and immediately on retirement, he became a director of the club, a position he held until his death in 1971.

  Sandy Archibald was another quick winger who, according to Bob McPhail, once challenged Eric Liddell to a race and won. Liddell had earned a gold medal at the 1924 Olympics, memorably recounted in the film Chariots of Fire, and although he was an athlete and a rugby player, Struth liked to associa
te Rangers with the most high-profile and successful Presbyterian people of the day, and Liddell would occasionally be seen at Ibrox. It was during a training session that Archibald reportedly issued his challenge to an apparently reluctant Liddell, who didn’t even bother to change into his shorts, and lost. When Archibald retired in 1934, after serving the club for 17 years, Celtic manager Willie Maley acknowledged his contribution to the club by declaring that he never felt confident of beating any Rangers team which had Sandy Archibald in the line-up.

  Bob McPhail, the source of the Archibald/Liddell story, completes his anecdote by claiming that he himself then challenged Archibald to a race and emerged the victor. McPhail certainly injected a bit of pace and dynamism into the Rangers team when he joined them from Airdrie for the considerable sum of £5,000 in the summer of 1927. An attacking inside-left, he scored 230 goals for the club, a record which stood until 1997, when it was surpassed by Ally McCoist. These stalwarts of Struth’s side in the 1920s were supplemented by inside-forwards like Andy Cunningham and Tommy Cairns, William Wilton’s last captain and a hardman among hardmen, and tough-tackling half-backs such as Jock Buchanan and former Celtic man Thomas ‘Tully’ Craig.

  The inter-war period saw Rangers achieve unparalleled levels of success on the field; after finally lifting the Scottish Cup in 1928, the club banished the hoodoo once and for all by winning the trophy again, after replayed finals in 1930 and 1932, with victories over Partick Thistle and Kilmarnock respectively, the latter avenging the 1929 final between the same two teams which Kilmarnock had won 2-0. Rangers then went on to capture the trophy for three years in a row from 1934, beating St Mirren, Hamilton and Third Lanark at Hampden, meaning that, after a 25-year stretch without winning the cup, notwithstanding a five-year period when the competition wasn’t contested during World War One, Rangers had taken the old trophy six times in nine seasons.