Tangled Up in Blue

by Stephen O'Donnell

  Wallace’s subsequent replacement as team manager was the former Liverpool and Sampdoria player, Graeme Souness, who arrived at Rangers just as the old guard in the boardroom were being swept aside by Lawrence Marlborough’s Ibrox coup d’état. Immediately on his appointment, Souness was quizzed about the signing policy. ‘I was asked the question the very first day I went to Rangers, would you sign a Catholic?’ he later recalled. ‘And my answer then was quite simple. I said, look, my wife is a Catholic, I’ve got two kids who’ve been christened Catholic, so you’re saying to me I can’t come to work with a Catholic, but I can go home to a Catholic? I said of course I would sign a Catholic.’

  Once again, hope sprang eternal that this more genuine sounding claim would lead to the longed-for breakthrough. Souness seemed determined to end the policy and privately, behind the scenes, he was making enquiries about the potential impact of such a signing, almost from the moment he arrived. The sheer iconoclasm of the idea appealed to Souness’s maverick personality and, as well as the backing of the new Rangers board, Souness also found that there was tentative support from the wider community for the potentially seminal change, with one young Rangers-supporting journalist telling the new manager that he thought such a signing would be accepted, ‘As long as it wasn’t Peter Grant or Maurice Johnston!’ Publicly however, as time went on, the old issue kept reappearing, with the situation not helped by the fact that Souness was a provocatively confrontational figure who seemed to be always looking for an enemy, and who now found himself at the centre of one of the most heated and intense rivalries anywhere in world football.

  Initially, rather than Catholics, it was the strange sight of Englishmen turning out at Ibrox, many of them internationals, which attracted widespread attention during the early years of Souness’s tenure. A number of the manager’s new recruits had moved north to play their football in Scotland, in the process reversing the trend, which stretched back to the Victorian era, of Scottish players heading the other way for mainly financial reasons.

  Ever since the Heysel Stadium disaster in Brussels in 1985, when 39 Italian fans lost their lives following clashes before the European Cup Final between Liverpool and Juventus, English clubs had been banned indefinitely from UEFA competitions. The players were attracted to Rangers by the prospect of high wages, European football and competing for trophies as well as the challenge of working under a charismatic and respected figure such as Souness, a man who had experience of mixed English and Scottish dressing rooms from his time at Liverpool. Terry Butcher, much like Souness himself, freely admits that he didn’t know what he was letting himself in for when he signed for Rangers, but it was the Scottish triumvirate of Cooper, Durrant and McCoist who quickly schooled the England captain and his fellow countrymen in the Rangers ‘traditions’.

  Butcher explains how, when the players came in for training, in the required dress code, Davie Cooper would inspect every inch of their outfits ‘with a magnifying glass to ensure there was no fleck of green’. If any was present, Cooper and his team-mates would rip the clothes off their backs. According to Butcher, the banter was ‘fierce’, Cooper referred to the big defender as ‘Lurch’ and would announce ‘You rang, my lord’, whenever he entered his presence.

  Inevitably there were high-profile incidents, most notably on 17 October 1987, when Rangers met Celtic at Ibrox in the second Old Firm encounter of the season. The final scoreline of 2-2 suited the Parkhead side, who had a four-point lead in the title race at the time, after winning the first fixture between the teams in August, a match in which Souness had been ordered off and defender Graham Roberts had caused controversy by refusing to shake hands with his opponents at the end of the game. But the result of the October rematch felt more like a victory for Rangers, who recovered from two goals down while playing with nine men to Celtic’s ten. It was, however, in the words of the Sunday Mail’s Allan Herron, ‘a game destroyed by nastiness’.

  Rangers, the champions, were determined to send out a message that they would not surrender the title lightly and Souness, suspended for this match after his red card in the August encounter, had heightened tensions before kick-off by refusing to allow his players to take the field side by side with their opposite numbers. As early as the 17th minute, Celtic’s McAvennie and Rangers’ goalkeeper Woods were dismissed by referee Jim Duncan following a clash which also involved Butcher and Roberts, who appeared to flatten McAvennie with a punch. Butcher was booked for his part in the incident and his afternoon went from bad to worse when he later scored an own goal, Celtic’s second of the match following a strike from Walker, and the England captain was then sent off himself in the second half after a shove on Celtic’s prone goalkeeper Allen McKnight.

  Rangers subsequently scored through McCoist and, in the final minute, Gough, after which Roberts, who had taken over from Woods in goal, was seen to ‘conduct’ the jubilant singing of the Rangers fans in the Copland Road Stand behind his goal, as he prepared to take a goal kick with the clock winding down. Englishman Roberts later offered a defence of complete ignorance as to the nature of the sectarian singing, ‘The Billy Boys’ being a song about William of Orange and murdering Catholics. All four players involved in the original incident later appeared in court, charged by the procurator fiscal with ‘conduct likely to provoke a breach of the peace’. The four men all denied the charges at their trial the following April, when Woods and Butcher were found guilty and fined £500 and £250 respectively. The case against Roberts was found not proven, that uniquely Scottish verdict, while McAvennie was acquitted.

  An article in The Herald 25 years later in October 2012, recalling the game, fails to mention Roberts and the sectarian singing, but refers to the day when ‘the Old Firm clashes almost died of shame’. Assistant Chief Constable of Strathclyde Police, John Dickson, describing the atmosphere at the match, considered it to be ‘as bad as anything I have experienced in 33 years with the police’.

  The English players in the Rangers team in particular seemed to have been caught up in the rivalry, and The Herald reporter of the day was moved to consider, ‘I wonder if these players, especially those who have come from England, fully understand the powder-keg situation they are in every time they take part in an Old Firm game. If not, then it is time for someone with a sense of responsibility to spell it out in full.’

  It is perhaps ironic then that in their autobiographies and elsewhere, Butcher and another English recruit, Ray Wilkins, later condemned the sectarianism at Ibrox, Wilkins admitting that he found it ‘ridiculous’, while Butcher, the first Rangers captain to admit publicly that he wasn’t a Mason, acknowledged that he allowed himself to become too caught up in the religious issues at the club, going too far in order to try and ingratiate himself with the Ibrox crowd, until his wife gave him a private dressing down about his behaviour. ‘I remember when I moved to Coventry it was as if a huge weight had been taken off my shoulders,’ he confessed. ‘I swore I would leave it all behind and not bother with religion in football again.’ Neither man said anything against it at the time, however, and no such febrile bigotry was noted by players joining Celtic or any other club in Scotland during this period.

  Incredibly, this wasn’t even the first contentious Old Firm encounter since Souness arrived at Ibrox. As early as November 1986, Celtic’s Maurice Johnston was involved in a particularly notorious incident at the end of the Skol (League) Cup Final against Rangers at Hampden, which would turn out to be Souness’s first trophy as Ibrox manager. After being ordered off late in the game, in the face of gleeful abuse from the Rangers supporters, Johnston blessed himself as he left the field. This was considered provocative firstly because, although he was brought up in the faith, Johnston was not, unlike some of his Celtic team-mates, a practising Catholic and it was later pointed out by an indignant press that the striker was the only member of Celtic’s Catholic contingent who had not attended Mass on the morning of the game. In addition, the custom of making the sign of the cross, common
among football players around the globe, was unofficially outlawed in Scotland at this time and Johnston’s actions became the precursor to a series of controversial incidents in Scottish football involving the sign of the cross, or blessing oneself. In December 1994, Rangers chairman David Murray warned his newest signing, the French defender Basile Boli, not to make the sign of the cross publicly in case it ‘infuriated Rangers fans’.

  Such fury was in evidence in February 1996, when Partick Thistle’s Rod MacDonald blessed himself after scoring an equalising goal against Rangers, which provoked a number of the Ibrox club’s fans to complain to the police. Match referee Jim McGilvray subsequently called the player into his office at half-time and issued him with a yellow card, but the Maryhill club resolved to stand by their man, after McDonald was later ordered off in the second half following a second, in Scotland at least, bookable offence. Thistle chairman Jim Oliver hinted at the reason behind the apparent taboo, ‘because we have the Rangers situation here, it seems a different set of rules are invoked’, while manager Murdo MacLeod reflected, ‘As far as Rod is concerned it is normal practice for him. It’s at times like this you know which city you are in.’

  Some time later, when it became apparent to the Scottish football authorities that players being cautioned for blessing themselves was not something which was likely to go unnoticed in the global village of world football, particularly in an era of mass communication and satellite television coverage, the indignation continued nevertheless. In 1999, after Celtic’s Mark Viduka was allegedly spotted blessing himself during a match against Rangers, an angry letter to the Daily Record in response suggested, ‘There is a time and a place for that kind of thing. It is in the Chapel on a Sunday and certainly not on the football pitch during an Old Firm match.’

  Between 2005 and 2010, Celtic’s Polish goalkeeper, Artur Boruc, incited numerous scornful headlines in the popular press for his habitual practice of blessing himself. The Sunday Mail, in June 2006, lamented the consequential damage to Scotland’s reputation: ‘Each time the story is retold, it is explained how sectarian hatred is a scar on Scottish society. The image of Scotland being beamed around the world is not one we can take any pride in.’ Curiously, however, the finger of blame seemed to be pointed more at Boruc himself, rather than those who were apparently upset by his gesture. The player’s actions were denounced as a provocative, ‘sectarian’ act, with The Scotsman reporting, ‘Last night a Rangers fan spokesman accused the Celtic goalkeeper of trying to incite the crowd by blessing himself during yesterday’s game.’

  The same paper, an otherwise respectable Edinburgh-based broadsheet, was later the subject of a complaint from the Catholic Church in Scotland after it featured an image of Boruc blessing himself on its front page, with a tagline which noted, ‘For the second time in a year during yesterday’s Old Firm match, the Celtic goalkeeper Artur Boruc provoked Rangers fans by making the sign of the cross.’ Unsurprisingly, although Boruc continued the practice, no such complaints were reported in Italy or England, where the goalkeeper played out his career.

  Back in 1986, Johnston’s actions sparked outrage. The idea that he might one day sign for Rangers seemed utterly unthinkable. Yet little over two and a half years later, in the summer of 1989, Rangers rocked the world of Scottish football when they signed the player from under the noses of his former club Celtic, as the national game in Scotland collectively fell of its chair in astonishment. Johnston had spent the previous two seasons in France with Nantes, scoring a respectable 22 goals, but he had apparently grown restless with the slow pace of life and the relatively low profile of football in France.

  After initially vowing that he would never go back to Scottish football as a result of the sectarian abuse and press scrutiny which he was subjected to following the Skol Cup Final incident, Johnston announced publicly, in May 1989, that he was indeed on the verge of returning to his boyhood heroes Celtic. The Parkhead side were then managed by club legend Billy McNeill, who had been made aware of the striker’s willingness to return home by his captain Roy Aitken, whom Johnston had been entreating while the players were together on international duty with Scotland. Johnston was subsequently paraded at a press conference wearing a Celtic shirt, where he professed, amid a lengthy roll call of footballing platitudes and truisms, his undying love for the club.

  With the benefit of hindsight, some of Johnston’s quotes from this period expose just how meaningless and trite the kind of carefully contrived soundbites we’re typically used to hearing from sportsmen on these set-piece occasions really are. It’s difficult to think of a better example of a footballer talking in carefully coached media-speak and telling people what he thinks they want to hear, which in this instance was particularly egregious, given the complete volte-face that Johnston was about to perform. ‘When I joined Celtic in 1984 it was like an answer to prayers, and I don’t say that lightly,’ the striker assured readers of the Celtic View. ‘At that time I fully intended to see out my career at Celtic, if the club would have me,’ he continued. ‘I never fell out of love with Celtic… when I joined Nantes it had always been my intention to return to Celtic one day. No one can accuse me of being two-faced… I didn’t intend to leave Celtic then and I don’t intend to now’, Johnston maintained, while rumours of a desire to join Manchester United were fabricated, chiefly because, ‘there is no other British club I could play for apart from Celtic’.

  The son of a Protestant father and Catholic mother, Johnston attended St Roch’s secondary school in the Royston area of Glasgow and supported Celtic as a boy. He played for Partick Thistle, then Watford, before Parkhead manager Davie Hay signed him as an intended replacement for Charlie Nicholas, who had left Celtic for Arsenal the previous year. He went on to form a prolific partnership with the intelligent Brian McClair, scoring 52 goals in 100 appearances for the Parkhead side, and even at this time Johnston already had something of a history of hyperbolic statement when it came to his feelings for Celtic. Back in 1984, he told Radio Clyde that he would walk from Watford to Glasgow in order to play for the club he loved, while earlier in the same year, after he had appeared for Graham Taylor’s team in the FA Cup Final and suffered the disappointment of a 2-0 defeat to Everton, Johnston later declared that he was equally upset over Celtic’s loss to Aberdeen on the same day, 2-1 after extra time, in the Scottish Cup Final. ‘I suppose it was round about then that I was reminded of where my heart really lay,’ he later wrote.

  After handing in a transfer request, as rumours of Celtic’s interest grew, he finally signed for the Parkhead side in October 1984, with the club spending £400,000 on the player, a record Scottish fee at the time. Manager Davie Hay’s previous six signings had cost a combined total of £375,000, so this was a considerable outlay from a parsimonious Celtic board and evidence of their commitment and belief in the striker, who was still only 21 years old at the time. A few years later in his autobiography, Johnston spoke of the reception he received from the fans on his debut against Hibs, ‘I’ll never forget that ovation until I breathe my last. It was so emotional I just couldn’t speak… Put it this way, by comparison making love is like watching paint dry.’

  After Johnston’s infamous Celtic press conference in May 1989, the player travelled with his proposed new colleagues on the team bus to the club’s final league fixture of the season against St Mirren in Paisley, where Joe Miller scored the only goal of the match to give Celtic a 1-0 win. The following week, Miller repeated the feat, lighting up the showpiece Scottish Cup Final with the game’s solitary strike against Rangers, leaving Ibrox manager Graeme Souness furious at being denied a potential Treble.

  Souness was reported to have told his players in the dressing room after the defeat that he had something up his sleeve which would rock Celtic, and that the Parkhead club had a shock coming. Something had evidently changed during the week between Miller’s two winning goals and over the summer rumours continued to circulate that the proposed deal on Johnston’s return to Celtic
might not be as cut and dried as everyone assumed. The fly in the ointment seemed to be the player’s agent Bill McMurdo, Agent Orange himself, the same man who had represented Jock Wallace and whose Rangers allegiances and political views were a matter of public record. McNeill had informed Johnston that he would not deal with McMurdo and the striker appeared to accept this condition when he signed a ‘letter of agreement’ to join Celtic, which, although not a contract, was later ratified by FIFA as being legally binding, the equivalent of a modern-day pre-contract agreement. It was on this basis that Celtic decided to go ahead with the May press briefing and photo shoot, but the jilted McMurdo sent a letter to the club informing them that it was his company, rather than Nantes, who owned the player’s registration and that the agent could not therefore be bypassed in any transaction. While Celtic were pondering the implications of all this, McMurdo was offering the player to Souness on the other side of the city.

  The Rangers manager soon became aware of the contractual difficulties over Johnston’s proposed move to Celtic, and he immediately expressed an interest in the striker. Souness admired the player and he persuaded owner David Murray that with one swoop they could secure the services of a talented forward who had apparently been destined for Celtic, gazumping their old rivals in the process as an added bonus, and at the same time end the exclusionary signing policy, which with every passing year was becoming more of a black mark on the club’s reputation, with potentially serious implications in the increasingly important world of business and finance in football.

  At the time FIFA were investigating racist and religious prejudice in the game and Rangers’ arcane practices were sure to come under the microscope at some point, with the world governing body holding the power to impose the ultimate sanction of withdrawing licences and shutting errant football clubs down.

  Johnston and McMurdo subsequently met Souness at the manager’s Edinburgh home, where a deal to bring the player to Rangers was agreed in principle.