Tangled Up in Blue

by Stephen O'Donnell

  The second round provided the Ibrox club with a more demanding fixture against Sporting Lisbon, one of the favourites for the competition. Rangers edged ahead of the Portuguese with a 3-2 win at Ibrox in the first leg, but two weeks later the scoreline was mirrored in Lisbon, when the match initially finished 3-2 in the home team’s favour. Both sides then scored again in the subsequent period of extra time to produce a 4-3 result, 6-6 on aggregate, but the Dutch referee, seemingly unaware that the recently introduced away goals rule also applied to goals scored in extra time, a ruling which would have put the Scots through, insisted that the tie should be settled on penalties. Sporting won the shoot-out with ease, Rangers missing from the spot with every one of their kicks, and the players trooped off amid the commotion of 60,000 celebrating Portuguese fans, who left the stadium believing their team had advanced to the next round.

  It was only after the game that reporter John Fairgrieve, an old mate of Waddell’s from his days as a journalist and the author of The Rangers: Scotland’s greatest football club, banged on the dressing room door waving a copy of the UEFA rulebook. Winger Willie Henderson, who scored in both legs of the tie, explains what happened next, ‘The manager opened it and one of the Scottish pressmen was standing there. He and the manager went away and were in some kind of conversation. We didn’t know what was going on but after what seemed like an eternity the manager came back in and said we were through. We just went wild.’

  Rangers had progressed to a quarter-final meeting with Torino the following spring, where they survived an onslaught in the away leg, after being gifted an early goal by a goalkeeping blunder, to draw 1-1. The meticulous Waddell used to provide his players with comprehensive dossiers on their European rivals, which included photographs and information outlining their opponents’ strengths and weaknesses. Prior to the match at the Stadio Comunale, the manager identified the Italians’ danger man as attacking midfielder Claudio Sala and instructed his captain, John Greig, to nullify the threat from the playmaker, as Greig reveals in his autobiography: ‘The boss held up a photograph of one of the Torino players and said to me, “John, this is their number one player, Claudio Sala. He is just 19 and he is the new Italian wonder boy. I want you to put him out of the game.”’ Greig, naturally, warmed to the task, but what the Rangers captain failed to realise was that Waddell had deceived him; Sala was no teenager. He was 24 years old and had already been around for some seven years in Italian football by the time of the tie with Rangers.

  But Greig took the bait, as his account of the game reveals, ‘When I received the ball [straight from the kick-off] I deliberately knocked it a yard in front of me, knowing that Sala’s inexperience would almost certainly result in him making an immediate challenge. I was correct, but when Sala committed himself to the challenge I hit him with all my force and knocked him six feet in the air. I immediately bent over Sala with my back to the referee, making out as if I was apologising for the tackle, but instead I grabbed the startled youngster by the throat and said, “Figlio di puttana”, which translated means, ”Son of a whore!” I also drew my forefinger across my throat and growled “Glasgow”.’

  Waddell’s neat trick had clearly worked; his misinformed skipper had scared the shit out of Sala, regardless of his age, and it was no surprise when the Italians’ most creative player was so ineffective against Greig in Turin that he didn’t even make the team for the second leg. Afterwards, Torino coach Gustavo Giagnoni admitted that Rangers had beaten the Italians at their own game, ‘Rangers came here and played the Italian game. It was too defensive but it is the kind of game that Italian teams have used often when they are away from home in a European tie and we can have no complaints.’

  Just as against Rennes, the away draw in Italy was followed by a 1-0 victory at home, meaning that in the semi-final Rangers would face Bayern Munich for the third time in five years. Bayern had won the previous two encounters, including the 1967 Cup Winners’ Cup Final, and if anything, by 1972 they were an even stronger side, who would go on to dominate European football in the middle years of the decade, as well as providing the bulk of the West Germany squad who won the European Championship in 1972 and the World Cup on home soil in 1974.

  In the first leg, played at Bayern’s Grünwalder Stadium, in the last European tie to be staged at the old ground before the club moved into the Olympic Stadium, Rangers were subjected to an all-out attack as Bayern threw everything at them in the opening stages. Full-back Sandy Jardine describes the Germans’ relentless assault as the biggest hammering he had been on the end of in his entire career, while John Greig admits that the opening 20 minutes were ‘the most sustained onslaught I have ever experienced’.

  By half-time, every Bayern outfield player had managed an effort on the Rangers goal, but only Paul Breitner’s strike divided the teams. Rangers’ good fortune continued when, early in the second half, home defender Rainer Zobel headed a cross from Colin Stein into his own net and the match finished in a 1-1 draw. Two weeks later, for the second leg in Glasgow, 80,000 fans packed inside Ibrox to witness Sandy Jardine give Rangers the lead after just two minutes. The tone was set for the game, during which such luminaries as Franz Beckenbauer and Sepp Maier were seen arguing among themselves in frustration, as the Germans’ game totally fell apart on an Ibrox pitch that was so uneven as to be almost unplayable. In the 24th minute, Derek Parlane scored from a corner and Rangers never looked back; they had arrived in the final and would be heading to Barcelona.

  Rangers’ opponents in the final would be old friends Dynamo Moscow, who, in November 1945, had graced Ibrox with their presence for a glamorous friendly to mark the Allies’ victory over Nazi Germany and the end of World War Two. In the Nou Camp, Rangers rushed into a three-goal lead with goals from Stein and a double from Johnston, but the Russians hit back through substitute Eschtrekov, and when Makivikov made it 3-2 with only minutes remaining, captain John Greig was pleading with the Spanish referee to end the match. Greig had played the final with an undiagnosed stress fracture of his foot and, by his own admission, he was wilting badly and would not have lasted through extra time. He had even declared himself unfit before the biggest match of his career, but Waddell had insisted that he play.

  After each of the three goals for their team, the travelling Rangers fans invaded the field and had to be cleared from the pitch. Then, with a minute of the match remaining, the Spanish referee blew his whistle for an offside decision, which prompted yet another pitch invasion by supporters who believed that they had heard the final whistle. Franco’s authoritarian Spanish state police were not impressed, and when Rangers held out for the remaining minutes, and took the trophy, a full-scale riot broke out. Amid the ensuing mayhem, Greig had to be called out into a corridor by a Barcelona official and ushered into a Nou Camp committee room, where he received the trophy from the UEFA dignitaries.

  It has been debated ever since, whether Spain being a largely Catholic population had any influence on the trouble, as outside Rangers fans, who were celebrating arguably their club’s greatest ever achievement, indulged in a running battle with the police. Perpetrated in victory rather than defeat, with no opposing fans in the stadium due to Soviet travel restrictions, the disturbances in Barcelona were illustrative of why Rangers fans had acquired such a poor reputation by this time, unable to enjoy themselves without spreading mayhem. They had been determined to match, or perhaps even outdo, the celebrations in Lisbon five years earlier, but instead the fans had disgraced the name of their club with their drunken, riotous behaviour.

  However, the role played by the militaristic local law enforcement cannot be underestimated either and the mixture of Franco’s authoritarian state police, combined with the Catholic-hating drunkards within the Rangers support, was always going to produce a particularly strange brew, with witnesses subsequently blaming both sides for what happened. Jim Blair of the Evening Times reported, ‘It was a night to remember – but, sadly, for all the wrong reasons. Rangers’ 3-2 win…
was virtually overshadowed by a running riot at the end of the game.’ Describing the worst scenes of unrest at a football match that he had ever seen, Blair also blamed the police, ‘To put the matter in its proper perspective, however, the Spanish police were far from blameless. Their actions to “charge” the fans and wield batons came, quite significantly, when television coverage stopped.’

  Barcelona’s Reuters correspondent, attending the match, pointed out the political dimension, telling match commentator Archie Macpherson, ‘[This] is the fascist police in action. That is the only way they can handle any disturbance. They are experts in ruthless suppression. They are not even local police. They are not Catalans. That is why they are so hated in this city. They are Franco’s men. They are recruited from Castile or Murcia. Anywhere but Catalonia. They are in this area to maintain a dictatorship… These supporters simply do not understand their lives could now be at risk.’

  But ultimately the Rangers supporters could not escape blame for their role in the night’s events. Alex Cameron in the Daily Record observed, ‘I can honestly say I have never seen anything as unruly or stupid anywhere’, while Allan Herron, given a few days to reflect before his piece was published in the Sunday Mail, noted that the hooliganism had not merely been restricted to the stadium on the night, but that the fans had left their mark elsewhere on the Catalan capital, ‘Let there be no excuse: the fans were to blame for what happened in Barcelona… What provoked the fans into wrecking hotels, throwing bottles from hotel balconies, smashing cars, tearing restaurants and floral displays apart?’

  As a result of the crowd trouble, Greig was prevented from raising the trophy aloft against the Nou Camp backdrop in the traditional manner, and the iconic image from the night is of the captain and his team-mates celebrating their success with the trophy in the bath instead. Nevertheless, the triumph was a notable boost in morale for everyone associated with the club; the whole campaign had been a welcome diversion from their domestic woes and Rangers had beaten some great sides along the way. Waddell had successfully developed a new, ultra-cagey strategy for European football which allowed Rangers to play a more defensive game, even at home, against arguably superior sides, in contrast of course to the Scottish league where they were expected to take the game to their opponents.

  Following the crowd trouble, Dynamo refused to accept the result, arguing that the game had been interrupted by the numerous pitch invasions, particularly the last, and their demand for a replay was supported by UEFA president Gustav Wiederkehr, who described the behaviour of the Rangers fans as ‘shocking and ugly’. For a while there were genuine fears within Ibrox that the cup could be taken away from the club, but the Russian protest was ultimately in vain. Instead of a void result, Rangers were banned from European competition for two years, later reduced on appeal to one. Despite his condemnation of the fans’ behaviour three years earlier in Newcastle, when he was working as a tabloid journalist, Waddell threatened to resign if the club’s directors refused to appeal the two-year ban handed down to the club. The reduction in the length of the suspension was a success for Waddell, but it meant that Rangers would be unable to defend the trophy the following season.

  However, the club magazine, Rangers News, set up at the start of the season, had boasted after the final that Rangers were now ‘Kings of Europe’, and, at Waddell’s instigation, a challenge match was arranged with the European Cup winners Ajax to decide who could unofficially lay claim to this title. A Dutch newspaper suggested that the contest should be played over two legs and called the European Super Cup, and, in January 1973, the classy Dutchmen, led by Johan Cruyff, eased to a 6-3 aggregate success over Rangers, after victories in both Glasgow and Amsterdam.

  The games were a great sporting and financial success and the following season, this time under the official auspices of UEFA, the European Super Cup was formally inaugurated, with Ajax again, this time without Cruyff, who had left Holland to join Barcelona, romping to a 6-1 win over AC Milan.

  * * * *

  6

  THE OTHER ‘BIG JOCK’

  IN June 1972, just two weeks on from the triumph of Barcelona, Willie Waddell surprised everyone, outside of his Ibrox clique at least, by announcing that he was stepping down as Rangers manager. Or, more precisely, what Waddell had engineered for himself was a step up, away from team affairs, effectively promoting himself into the newly created position of general manager at the club.

  With no inkling of his intentions, the unsuspecting press were summoned to Ibrox, where he informed them, ‘I have never made any secret of the fact that in my opinion team management is a young man’s game and it becomes more and more difficult these days for one man… to handle all the details involved in league and European football. That is the reason behind the change… I become general manager and more or less still in the number one position.’

  Too crafty, too worldly-wise to spend his entire non-playing career slaving away on the training field, Waddell was leaving football management on his own terms, just as he had done seven years earlier after winning the title with Kilmarnock. Still very much the boss, and with such a feckless and ineffectual group of directors in the boardroom, Waddell would now take charge of almost every aspect of the club’s administrative affairs. As well as the matter of the new stadium, which initially consumed much of his time and energy, he looked after the club’s finances with a miserly diligence, becoming notoriously difficult to deal with over the issue of players’ contracts and bonuses. He retained control over the buying and selling of players, and he continued to represent and stand up for the club’s interests off the field in a difficult era for Rangers.

  Waddell’s association with the club stretched back to 1938 when he made his debut as a 17-year-old, scoring the only goal of the game in a friendly against Arsenal. By the time of his resignation as a director and consultant in 1984, when he effectively severed his last remaining ties with the club, on top of his 17 years as a player, he had spent a further 15 years in a variety of roles, including team manager, general manager, and subsequently vice-chairman and managing director, leaving Waddell as one of the most celebrated and influential figures in the club’s modern history.

  He was not without his critics however, including those who maintained that, having secured his status among the club’s pantheon of legends with victory in the Cup Winners’ Cup Final, Waddell was now simply stepping out of the firing line. With no obvious strategy available to halt the Celtic juggernaut, he left his assistant in charge while he absconded to the relative safety of the boardroom, still very much the boss. But it was his increasingly cantankerous personality which left him largely unloved, even within the walls of Ibrox, and once he was elevated to the boardroom, Waddell tended to behave like a king among his ministers.

  At board meetings, the other directors were afraid to even open their mouths until Waddell permitted them to speak, while his treatment of his successor in the manager’s office was often that of a subservient underling. Even close confidant Tommy Craig, nominally the club’s physiotherapist, but in effect Waddell’s henchman, describes his boss as ‘an out-and-out bully’. On one occasion, the general manager threw the BBC’s Martyn Lewis down the marble staircase at Ibrox after he tried to sneak into a press conference from which television journalists had been explicitly excluded at Waddell’s instruction. Broadcaster Archie Macpherson summed it up neatly, ‘While I pay due credit to Waddell as the only leader who could have guided Rangers through their horrendous crises, I pay much less to him for generally spurning the milk of human kindness.’

  Waddell’s replacement as team manager was his unheralded assistant, Jock Wallace Junior. A former soldier with the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, Wallace had seen action during the Malay Emergency as a teenager in the 1950s, earning him the nickname the ‘Jungle Fighter’, but as a goalkeeper with West Brom and Airdrie his career had been less celebrated. The undoubted highlight came when, as player/manager of Berwick Rangers, he oversaw the borde
rers’ famous ‘giant-killing’ cup victory over their more renowned Glasgow namesakes in January 1967, after which he reportedly flattened one of his players with a punch, or ‘tanned him in the jaw’ to use the local vernacular, for having the temerity to address him as ‘Jock’.

  A larger-than-life character and an imposing physical presence, Wallace had made a positive impression at Berwick and as John Harvey’s assistant at Hearts, before he joined the Rangers backroom team in April 1970, at a time when Waddell was looking to step back from involvement in training with the players on a daily basis. The manager’s attempt to become a tracksuited coach at Rangers had turned out to be a short-lived experiment, and Waddell quickly realised that he needed to add an additional coach to his staff. Now, just over two years later, after his resignation as team manager and subsequent self-promotion, the departing manager was keen to stress from the start that Wallace would be in sole charge of team affairs.

  ‘The partnership between myself and Jock is terrific and I am sure he will do a good job… Jock is in complete charge of training, tactics and team selection and though we will be working closely I know that he will never be a puppet on a string. He is his own man and I respect him for that,’ Waddell announced as he handed over the reins to his successor. Despite these reassurances, however, the working relationship between the pair would come under increasing strain over the years ahead, until it finally reached breaking point at the very height of their success.