The Gallant Pioneers: Rangers 1872 (24 page)

The Clydesdale Harriers’ membership list 1887–88 highlights the common love of athletics the Maley brothers of Celtic shared with their Rangers rivals – John Mellish, J.W. Mackay, Peter McNeil and A.B. McKenzie were all influential members of the football club during its time at Kinning Park and Ibrox.

The organisation that had helped bring Rangers to the fore in the decade or so preceding the establishment of the Harriers was also evident in the development of the athletics club. In some cases, future Rangers office holders cut their teeth in the athletics division – for example James Henderson, president of the football club in 1898–99 when they went through the season without dropping a point in the League, was a Clydesdale Harriers committee man in 1887, as was John C. Lawson, Rangers’ honorary secretary between 1891 and 1892. In 1887–88 the Harriers’ membership list also included T.C.B. Miller and J.F. Ness, who had each held honorary treasurer positions at Kinning Park. The Clydesdale Harriers even had a short-lived football division in the late 1880s as Celt Maley joined forces with Rangers men John C. Lawson and A.B. McKenzie (a director at Ibrox between 1899 and 1911) to oversee a new enterprise. The Harriers attracted players from most senior clubs, although Rangers were in the majority. Athletic members also played for clubs including Queen’s Park, Third Lanark, Cowlairs, St Mirren, Morton, Hamilton Accies and Celtic. When arranged, football matches were mostly of the challenge variety and clubs such as Third Lanark and even the mighty Preston North End were put to the sword. Clydesdale Harriers also entered a team in the 1889 Scottish Cup and knocked out Celtic from the competition, but football was soon dropped to allow members to focus more fully on the track and countryside run.
  Certainly, Tom and Willie Maley were likely to have had more pressing sporting concerns on their minds in 1887, when Celtic were officially formed following a meeting at St Mary’s Hall on 6 November. Within a month the founders of the new club, including Brother Walfrid, made the capture of Tom a priority, banking on his sympathies with the charitable Catholic principles of Celtic, initially at least, and relying on his talents as a player with clubs such as Hibs, Partick Thistle and Third Lanark. On a visit to the family home in Cathcart, Brother Walfrid was also impressed by the maturity and physical strength of younger brother Willie, whose stature had grown, in part, as a result of his endeavours on the track as a sprinter with Clydesdale Harriers. A trainee accountant, he also worked at the time for Andrew Dick, then secretary of the Harriers. Willie was thus invited to join his brother at the new club and he accepted the invitation with alacrity. He kept his membership at Clydesdale long after he joined Celtic and also became a promoter of athletics at Parkhead. His career in the sport culminated with him being elected president of the SAAA in 1921.
  Rangers had also become members of the SAAA in 1886, in part to facilitate the hosting of their own sports, which remained an integral part of the British athletics calendar until the early 1960s. In the early years at least, the annual athletics meeting was organised with the Harriers. The handbook of the athletics club in 1889 states, for example: ‘It is hoped that the same arrangements regarding the joint sports with our good friends The Rangers Football Club [will be in place] at which some of the English cracks will be invited to show their paces.’ The links between Rangers and the Clydesdale Harriers remained strong until the 1920s. Admittedly, it is still a source of frustration to some club members in the present day as they search for a permanent and suitable home around the Clydebank area that they never took the opportunity to act earlier in their history. For sure, the club handbook in 1889 discussed sourcing their own ground with a cinder track ‘but so long as the present friendly relations are maintained with the Rangers FC, the committee consider there are no grounds for moving in this matter.’ That is only one of many glowing references made to Rangers over the years in the Harriers handbooks, still lovingly treasured by their club historian, Brian McAusland. For the most part, Clydesdale Harriers trained at the first and second Ibrox Parks and their annual meetings were held on the Rangers’ grounds bar a couple of years at the turn of the 20th century when they switched to Parkhead and also Meadowside, then home to Partick Thistle.
  The last reference to Rangers hosting the Clydesdale Harriers came in 1921 and the sports day ended on a financial high, but the balance in the bank could not be maintained by the athletics club and they cancelled the meeting the following year as a result of the industrial depression and uncertainty surrounding the response from the paying public. Attempts were made by Clydesdale to resurrect the annual sports in 1923 and 1924, but they were in vain and nothing came of the efforts. Rangers had only recently celebrated its jubilee season, but the Harriers were already on their way to being relegated to a footnote in the history of the football club.
  The relationship with Celtic, of course, was to become enduring. The new club had quickly established itself as a major player in the Scottish game and brought new enthusiasm to the scene at an exciting and turbulent time for the development of the sport. Celtic were formed to provide assistance where needed among the Catholic population of the east end of Glasgow, most of whom were first or second generation Irish and many of whom, like local Protestants, suffered appalling living conditions. The main objective of the club was to provide the St Vincent de Paul Society with funds to maintain dinner tables for needy children in the local St Mary’s, Sacred Heart and St Michael’s diocese, and the Catholic community in the city quickly rallied around their club. Brother Walfrid was also motivated by the fear that his congregation would also be moved to abandon their faith, particularly with a number of Protestant soup kitchens also established in that part of the city.
  As latecomers to the scene and with strong political and business acumen to guide them, Celtic decided to go for revolutionary growth rather than organic progress and players were quickly lured from the country’s most prominent Catholic club, Hibs. Undoubtedly, financial inducements were offered and the Edinburgh side lost six players to an act of footballing larceny those at Easter Road with long memories and a keen knowledge of their club’s history still recall bitterly today. Celtic were admitted to the SFA in August 1888, alongside long-forgotten sides such as Temperance Athletic from Glasgow, Britannia from Auchinleck, Whifflett Shamrock from Lanarkshire and Balaclava Rangers from Oban, and their on-field strength was highlighted in the first season when they reached the Scottish Cup Final, only to lose out to Third Lanark.
  Inevitably, perhaps, the cash cow potential of the Parkhead outfit became a source of friction between those labelled by Celtic historians as idealists or opportunists. Celtic had quickly become one of the best-supported clubs in Britain, and in only its second season was attracting attendances of up to 25,000, such as witnessed a Scottish Cup tie against Queen’s Park. By December 1897 the club had managed to buy Celtic Park outright from their landlord, even though the lease still had four years to run. Brother Walfrid, the strongest supporter of the club’s charitable ethos at its foundation, had been transferred to London by 1892 and the idealists lost their strongest ally. Celtic became a public limited company in March 1897 and within a year they boasted a British record turnover of £16,267 (approximately £3,000 more than Rangers in the same season) and paid a dividend of 20 per cent, but no donations were made to charitable causes.
  If Rangers had been blessed with such a privileged existence, their move to the first Ibrox Park in the summer of 1887 would have heralded the beginning of a happy ending to the 19th century for the Light Blues visionaries. However, this was a club to whom nothing had ever come easy. In a short period of time the rise of Celtic undoubtedly focused the minds of the Ibrox hierarchy – between 1889 and 1894 the income of Rangers quadrupled from £1,240 to £5,227, for example. Initially at least, things would have to get worse for the Light Blues before they got better, and their silverware collection would extend to some of the game’s other major prizes. As it was, the memory of their sole success in the Charity Cup Final of 1879 was fading fast in the minds of many club members as the 1890s approached.
  That 8–1 trouncing against Preston North End in August 1887 apart, the season immediately following the move to Ibrox was not without its merits, financially at least. The club reported an annual income of £2,232 – an impressive sum – almost half of which was allocated to offset the cost of building the new ground. The turnover was boosted by gate receipts of £400 from a demanding five games played at various venues across the city from November 1887 to January 1888 against Springburn side Cowlairs in the inaugural Glasgow Cup. Rangers eventually prevailed, winning the fifth match 3–1, but the tie was not without the element of protest pantomime that was so widespread in the Scottish game in the period. This time, Rangers were chided by Cowlairs after the fourth game, which they won 2–1, for playing a professional striker, Bob Brand. Cowlairs brought evidence to the SFA claiming Brand had received £1 from his former club Queen of the South Wanderers to buy a suit in 1885. Their allegation was as threadbare as the cloth would have been after almost three years of wear and was dismissed, but Brand was suspended for two months anyway after the officials discovered he had been paid £1 to play for Hearts earlier in the season. Almost inevitably, a replay was ordered. Rangers lost the very first Final played in January 1888 to Cambuslang, going down 3–1.
  Rangers finally ran out of steam in a season that was also memorable for the first floodlit match staged at Ibrox, with the Scottish Corinthians (in effect, the Scottish national team) turning up for an exhibition under electric light in March. The gate receipts went to Govan charities as the Scots triumphed in the ‘sunlight fixture’, but the darkest season in the history of the Light Blues lay just around the corner. The statistics for season 1888–89 were, quite frankly, woeful: 39 games played, 19 lost and seven drawn, with 108 goals conceded as annual turnover dropped by £1,000. Rangers were knocked out of the Scottish Cup in a second-round replay after a 3–0 defeat against Clyde and in the third round of the Glasgow Cup Celtic came to Ibrox and won 6–1. At the start of the season Rangers had taken the innovative step of appointing the club’s first trainer, John Taylor, but he was struggling to make an impact.
  The club were toiling as much off the field as on it, as the committee structure was in chaos and even the omnipresent Tom Vallance was struggling to make his influence felt as one embarrassment followed another. On New Year’s Day 1889 Rangers were losing at Blackburn at the same time as Aston Villa arrived in Glasgow expecting to play their old FA Cup foes in a match they believed had been previously arranged. Nine men turned up for a game against Morton, the team lost 8–0 to Vale of Leven and even the much-heralded Ibrox Park was being criticised for a pitch that resembled a potato patch. Meanwhile, the concept of a capacity crowd similar to that which witnessed the opening of the ground against Preston was a dim and distant memory – only 500 fans could be bothered turning up for a match against Partick Thistle. One newspaper noted: ‘Such apathy and the name and fame of grand old Rangers will soon be but a distant memory.’ These were desperate times and temperatures were running so high that the club’s half-yearly meeting in November 1888 was adjourned for a week. Seven days later resentment was still simmering and after nine hours of debate it was finally agreed to extend the numbers on the committee from five to seven in a bid to widen the circle of experience and expertise. It also marked the end for the direct, decision-making involvement in Rangers of the gallant pioneers, as Vallance stepped down at the end of the season after six years as president to be replaced by John Mellish. Rangers were moving on. Indeed, stagnation was not an option and William Wilton was the man to take them into the 20th century. More than anyone it was his vision, passion and commitment at a crucial watershed in the development of Scottish football that relegated to the annals of history the internecine squabbles that had so characterised much of the 1880s for the Light Blues.
  Wilton was born in Largs on 9 June 1865, a son to James and Janet Wilton. William’s father, a stonemason, died aged 52 in Millport in March 1873 and soon after the family moved to Govan, where Janet set up home in Crookston Street with William and his brother Daniel, seven years his senior (they had at least one other brother, Charles). By the age of 15, William was working as an office boy at a sugar broker and he would later earn promotion to the position of mercantile clerk, thus setting out on a career path that suggested diligence and discipline, the very traits for which he would soon become so respected and cherished at Rangers.
  In his spare time, William was a member of the Glasgow Select Choir, a fine tenor by all accounts, and it is to the eternal benefit of Rangers fans that he could hold a tune better than he could his position on the football field. He became a member of Rangers on 24 September 1883 aged 18, but his skills as a player with the second team ‘Swifts’ were open to question. What could not be doubted, however, even at such a tender age, were his leadership abilities off the field and he was quickly promoted to match secretary for the second string. His responsibility stopped short of picking the Swifts’ team, but he organised fixtures and travel details and soon became an integral and influential figure behind the scenes at Kinning Park and Ibrox. In 1887 he argued successfully at a members’ meeting for an increase in the numbers making up the selection committee after that poor run of results at first-team level. In May 1889, at the age of 23, he was put forward for the key position of match secretary of Rangers and saw off the challenge of James Gossland, an experienced committee man who had been honorary secretary of the club as early as 1883.
The promotion of Wilton was vital for several reasons, not least the drive and energy he brought to the club at a time in which the landscape of Scottish football was changing forever. The Football League had been established in England in the summer of 1888, the brainchild of a Scot, Aston Villa patriarch William McGregor, and a natural consequence of the move to professionalism south of the border in 1885. In total, 12 clubs started the first season in the Football League, all of them from north of Birmingham – Accrington Stanley, Aston Villa, Blackburn Rovers, Bolton Wanderers, Burnley, Derby County, Everton, Notts County, Preston North End, Stoke City, West Bromwich Albion and Wolverhampton Wanderers. A structured set-up of regular fixtures was crucial, not least for the club moneymen, who were charged with turning over sizeable sums to pay the weekly wage bill. The new division was a roaring success and in its first season the English clubs attracted 602,000 fans to their games, an average of 4,600 per game. By the outbreak of World War One the Football League, by then 20 clubs strong, was attracting almost nine million fans a year, an average of 23,100 at every game.