Tangled Up in Blue

by Stephen O'Donnell

  The Ibrox club looked to put a traumatic 12 months behind them as the 1967/68 season opened with the sectional rounds of the League Cup. In a group that included Celtic, Aberdeen and Dundee United, qualification came down to the second Old Firm meeting at Parkhead. Rangers were winning 1-0 after an early goal from Willie Henderson and, with less than 15 minutes remaining, the Ibrox men were awarded a penalty. Kai Johansen’s spot kick rebounded down off the crossbar, however, and with new signing Alex Ferguson stretching to head in the rebound, the Danish defender stupidly charged in and put the ball into the empty net himself. The effort was correctly disallowed under the rule that prevents the same player from striking the ball twice, and to make matters worse, Celtic then scored three late goals to run away with the game and secure their progress to the quarter-final. Jock Stein later described the win as Celtic’s greatest ever Old Firm victory.

  In the league, the season progressed with the two clubs matching each other blow for blow until, in late October, Dunfermline Athletic came to Ibrox and inflicted a crucial setback to Rangers’ title credentials. The ambitious Fifers, who had beaten the Ibrox men home and away the previous season, left Glasgow with a point after a goalless draw, a result which immediately provoked a chorus of boos from unhappy Rangers fans as their team left the field at the final whistle. The ill-feeling, however, wasn’t restricted to the players as, sitting in the directors’ box, the manager and members of the board also found themselves the target of the fans’ venom.

  It proved to be a definitive moment as a few days later, on 1 November, chairman John Lawrence dispatched an accountant, a man with no formal connection to Rangers, to negotiate the terms of the manager’s release from his contract. A bemused Symon subsequently told the press, ‘I was informed by a Glasgow businessman at his home that at a meeting of the directors of Rangers Football Club it was decided to terminate my appointment as manager forthwith. I am awaiting confirmation of this.’

  Arguably it wasn’t the best way to relieve a man of 13 years’ service to the club from his position as team manager. Alex Ferguson, Symon’s last major signing, was so enraged by the decision that he had to be talked out of demanding a transfer by coach Bobby Seith, who promptly resigned in disgust himself. ‘I no longer want to be part of an organisation which can treat a loyal servant so badly,’ the manager’s assistant harrumphed. Lawrence explained the decision in a statement to the press, ‘We spent considerable sums of money buying players, at Mr Symon’s request, but the results were not forthcoming and it could not go on indefinitely. The board were not satisfied with the results, which can be seen in the league tables.’ Rangers at the time were undefeated and sitting top of the First Division.

  Lawrence and his fellow directors at Ibrox were, however, correct to point out the amount of money which had been spent on player transfers. Rangers had always been a buying club, and the strategy was accelerated as Celtic continued their rise, with each expensive new signing trumpeted as the man who was going to restore the club’s fortunes. Unfortunately, most of the best Scottish players were either doing quite nicely in England or were already in Stein’s Celtic squad, which, especially after the European Cup win, continued to be augmented by an exceptionally talented batch of youngsters. Rangers therefore found themselves in the impossibly frustrating position of not being able either to buy or to nurture the players they required. The limitations of the spending strategy had been cruelly exposed, but of course the responsibility for its implementation lay principally with the men who held the purse strings, namely the directors, rather than the manager, who in the end was made to pay as much for Celtic’s extraordinary renaissance as for his own team’s failures.

  If the chief role of Rangers in the early decades of the 20th century was to stop Celtic at all costs, then by the late 1960s it was clear that they had been utterly unsuccessful in their aim. Symon, in the end, found himself caught up in something of a time warp, his methods outdated and increasingly discredited, while the Rangers board, as can be seen by some of their more panicky reactions to adversity, appeared overtaken by events. Chairman John Lawrence, who had helped to usher Bill Struth into eventual retirement the previous decade, was himself well into his dotage by this stage and he had trouble remembering people’s names in public, including the club’s players, and in vice-chairman Matt Taylor, and loathsome PR man Willie Allison, nephew of the false Rangers historian John Allan, he had deputies who were not exactly up to speed with the 1960s zeitgeist.

  Symon himself continues to divide opinion; he seems to have been an upstanding, respectable man, a far more sympathetic figure certainly than his predecessor Struth, and there have been recent attempts to try and rehabilitate him in the eyes of the Rangers public, who have on the whole in the intervening years paid scant regard to his achievements at the club. Rangers’ hegemony within the domestic game was lost on his watch and to many that has seemed unforgivable. To this day Alex Ferguson reportedly remains an admirer, praising him in particular for his strength of character and for never criticising his players in public, which, given that he very rarely spoke in public, seems a slightly odd tribute. But he was also cold and inflexible, and his treatment of George McLean and in particular Jim Forrest after the debacle of Berwick, a result which he himself, as manager, carried the ultimate responsibility for, was inexcusable. Eric Caldow, who lost the captaincy of the club under Symon, is another former player who describes the manager as ‘rude and unapproachable’, and in many ways he might be considered a fairly unimpressive figure; taciturn, diffident, unable to socialise freely with his peers, including of course the ‘gentlemen’ of the press, whom he preferred to keep at arm’s length. It was another era of course, and football had a very different relationship with the mass media in the 1950s and early ’60s compared to the access-all-areas world of today, but it says a great deal about his reticence that by the time he left his post as Rangers manager, very few people, including most Rangers fans, knew what Scot Symon’s voice sounded like.

  In a more deferential age of course none of this mattered, but by the mid-to-late ’60s, Symon, like Struth before him, was a man who was out of his time. He had remained true to the Struth tradition in his appearance, in his disciplinarian tendencies and his presence, but as the nominated heir, Symon harked back to a Victorian methodology that was antiquated even in Struth’s day, never mind the changed world of the late 1960s. The training had not evolved since the days of athlete Struth’s reliance on track work and physical exercise, which Alex Ferguson describes as ‘uninspired’. There had on occasion been an improvement in the team’s style and overall play since the time of the ‘iron curtain’ bruisers, and Rangers had at times, despite the odd harsh lesson, learned to adapt reasonably well to the new challenge of European football; but they had been overtaken on both fronts, domestic and international, by the detested Celtic and nobody at the club seemed to know how to cope with this development.

  Perhaps most damningly of all to a modern observer, Symon had led the club into a more liberal age while utterly failing to deal with, or even address, the perennial Rangers issue of anti-Catholicism. The febrile and institutionalised bigotry which had been rife at the club since the heyday of his predecessor was allowed to fester unchecked during his time in charge, both within the club and among its supporters, and that left Symon guilty by association. It was of course ironic that the man who would ultimately prove to be his nemesis, Stein, was himself a Lanarkshire Protestant, who had played for and captained Celtic in the troubled era of the early ’50s, and taken the club to his heart. Stein seemed to be Symon’s antithesis; ebullient and outgoing, with a sophisticated understanding of the tactics of football, he was a track-suited manager with experience of coaching Celtic’s reserves as well as improving players at Dunfermline and Hibs.

  Scot Symon, suited and booted, with his ubiquitous waistcoat and soft hat, the symbols of his aloof authority, never improved a player in his life. Stein would eventually get the better of his publi
city-shy rival by outsmarting and defeating him on the field, and outmanoeuvring him off it in the important area of public relations, where the Celtic man actually engaged with, used and even manipulated the press, to their mutual advantage.

  The demise of Symon and the story of Rangers at this time serve as a salutary warning that in sport if you’re merely standing still, you’re in fact going backwards. Rangers had many fine players during the period in question and, even without the peerless Baxter, they had maintained their level; but Celtic had raised theirs, a sleeping giant had awoken and it would be a long time before the Ibrox club enjoyed such supremacy in the domestic game again.

  * * * *

  A few days after the controversial sacking of Scot Symon, the Rangers directors met with the former boss’s assistant, 34-year-old Davie White, who had been taken on at Ibrox only that summer as a training ground coach, and appointed him as the club’s new manager. The previous year, White had led Clyde to a creditable third-place finish in the league, behind their two Glasgow cousins, and his team had also reached the semi-final of the Scottish Cup, where they took all-conquering Celtic to a replay. The Shawfield side were unlucky not to qualify for the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, with UEFA rules stipulating that only one team from any given city in Europe could play in the tournament and Clyde, the third best team in Scotland that season, were also the third best team in Glasgow. Instead, White would get the chance to lead Rangers in the competition, while his former team’s European spot was taken by sixth-placed Dundee. Both Scottish sides would ultimately be eliminated from the tournament by the same opponent, with Don Revie’s Leeds United accounting first for White’s Rangers in the quarter-finals and then for Dundee in the semis, before going on to defeat Ferencvaros in the two-legged final.

  White was one of the first ex-players to go through the SFA’s new coaching courses and, in attempting to improve his knowledge of the game, he had attended both Rangers’ and Celtic’s European finals in Nuremberg and Lisbon respectively in May 1967. He had then been invited to join the Rangers backroom staff by a club hoping to add some youthful vitality and know-how to its set-up in response to the criticism of Symon’s old-fashioned approach, and after Bobby Seith resigned, following the manager’s dismissal, White was practically the last man standing. After meeting with the board in early November, he agreed to become the club’s new manager on the condition that he would be in sole control of team affairs. White was aware that this was a privilege not afforded to his predecessor, with Symon having to submit his provisional selections for the directors’ approval every Thursday night before a match. But given what was going on with Stein at Celtic and the fact that he was intended to be a tracksuited manager, working more closely with the players in training every day, the board accepted this provision and White’s promotion was confirmed.

  At the time of the new manager’s appointment, Rangers were sitting three points clear at the top of the league, although closest rivals Celtic still had a game in hand due to their involvement in the Intercontinental Cup in South America. With things going well on the field, White was understandably reluctant to implement wholesale changes at the club, but he was determined to morph Rangers into a more attacking unit, especially when it became clear that, with the two Glasgow sides dropping very few points, the title might well have to be decided on goal average. He instructed his players, in games where victory was already secured, to try to score as many goals as possible, and on various occasions Rangers put six past St Johnstone, netted five each against Partick Thistle and Stirling Albion, and hit hapless Raith Rovers for ten.

  The Ibrox men were in the middle of an extraordinary run of 19 wins from 20 games, a sequence interrupted only by a 2-2 Ne’erday draw at Celtic Park, a result which itself felt more like a victory after Kai Johansen scored a late equaliser in a match which Celtic had twice led, prompting Jock Stein to declare that the title was now Rangers’ to lose. This was mind games of course, perhaps calculated to unsettle the new manager, and with White’s side dropping points in the run-in, with drawn matches against Morton and Dundee United, Celtic eventually made up the ground.

  By late April, the two teams were level on points with only one fixture each remaining, but the Parkhead men held the advantage because, despite the goal splurge, Rangers had been unable to match their rivals’ average of over three goals per game. Just as in 1959, Rangers lost their final game of the season at home to Aberdeen, their only defeat of the entire campaign, meaning that Celtic, who had won every league game since the New Year draw, were confirmed as three-in-a-row champions when they beat Dunfermline 2-1 the following midweek at East End Park, in a match postponed by the Fifers’ involvement in the cup final. After the Aberdeen defeat, angry supporters protested outside Ibrox and smashed in the windows of the home dressing room, where the Rangers players were in lockdown, unable to venture out into the street. When striker Alex Ferguson finally made a dash for it two hours after the game, he was attacked by a fan who gave him a hefty kick in the calf as he tried to escape in a friend’s car. White’s Rangers had come close, but not close enough.

  In August 1968, at the start of what would prove to be White’s only full season in charge, Rangers lost home and away to Celtic in the sectional round of fixtures in the League Cup and were eliminated from the competition. The original intention on White’s appointment to the position of team manager was for Symon to stay on at Ibrox in an executive capacity and become the club’s general manager, but he had refused the post and it was now quickly becoming clear that, without an overseer, White, who Rangers were apparently still hoping would become their version of Jock Stein, was in need of some assistance. To this end, legendary centre-forward Willie Thornton, then managing Partick Thistle, was appointed White’s assistant in September 1968, while the managerial vacancy created in Maryhill was in turn filled by none other than Scot Symon.

  Sadly the changes didn’t work out for either Rangers or Thistle, as Celtic took another title, this time by an increased margin of five points, despite losing home and away to White’s Rangers in the league. The Parkhead side then went on to secure a second Treble in three years following a 6-2 defeat of Hibs in the League Cup Final and an equally emphatic 4-0 win over the Ibrox men in the Scottish Cup Final in front of almost 133,000 at Hampden, as Rangers suffered their first defeat in the final of the old competition since the 1920s and completed their third full season without a trophy.

  Symon, meanwhile, fared little better at Thistle, as his team finished bottom of the league in 1970 and were relegated, having won only five games all year. He seemed to have lost his confidence and his modus operandi was no less antiquated in Maryhill than it had been at Ibrox. After he was replaced as manager following his club’s relegation, Thistle bounced straight back up as champions of the Second Division, but it says a great deal about the regard in which he was held at his new club that, despite relegation and his dismissal as team manager, Symon was now operating in the role of general manager at Firhill, a post to which he seemed much more suited, and where he remained until 1984, a few months before his death.

  Meanwhile, shortly after the loss of the league and the cup final embarrassment against Celtic, Davie White’s Rangers travelled to Newcastle for the second leg of the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup semi-final. It was perhaps no surprise that the fixture attracted a great amount of publicity, given the relative proximity of the two cities, the Anglo-Scottish rivalry and the presence of exiled Scottish players in the Newcastle team. In addition, somewhat unusually, there was a considerable amount of verbal jousting prior to the tie from both sides, but Rangers remained confident of progress against a Newcastle team which they considered vastly inferior to the Leeds United side which had eliminated them from the same competition the previous year. After the first leg at Ibrox, which ended in a goalless draw thanks to Andy Penman’s missed penalty for the home team, a large contingent of Rangers fans made the short journey across the border for the return, where goals from ‘Anglo-Sc
ots’ Jim Scott, brother of former Rangers winger Alex, and Jackie Sinclair gave the Tynesiders a second-half lead.

  At this point, empty bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale began to rain down on the pitch from the Gallowgate End, as Rangers fans, not used to being goaded by an opponent and then beaten, and apparently angered by refereeing decisions, invaded the field in an attempt to get the game called off. This was just the start of the disorder, which escalated after the game in Newcastle city centre and continued late into the night, causing a great deal of vexation in the Scottish press. Ex-Rangers player and future manager Willie Waddell, then working as a journalist covering the game for the Scottish Daily Express, described the Rangers supporters as ‘uncontrollable savages’ who had disgraced the name of the club. ‘I felt like crawling stealthily back over the border under cover of darkness, stunned and shocked that I had been connected with this club and its fans for more than 30 years,’ Waddell admitted. Newcastle United, who had finished tenth in the First Division the previous year and only qualified for the Fairs Cup because of the ‘one team per city’ rule, went on to beat Ujpest Dozsa of Hungary in the final to collect their, to date, last major trophy.

  It seemed that by now the writing was on the wall for Rangers’ young manager. At the start of the new campaign, White’s team were once again eliminated from the League Cup in the early season group stages by Celtic, and their patchy form in the race for the title included defeats to Ayr United as well as the Parkhead men, who secured their first league win at Ibrox for 12 years in what turned out to be Jock Stein’s only league victory over White. In Europe, despite that crushing cup final defeat, Rangers had entered the new season as Scotland’s representative in the Cup Winners’ Cup, where they overcame Steaua Bucharest in the first round. But when they then lost home and away to Polish outfit Górnik Zabrze, White was relieved of his duties the following morning, on 27 November 1969, a little over two years after his appointment. The sacking was made considerably easier for the Rangers board given that, during initial negotiations, White had refused the offer of a five-year contract, insisting instead that full control of team affairs was his only prerequisite for accepting the post.