The Gallant Pioneers: Rangers 1872 (14 page)

The End of the Innocence

The Glasgow Charity Cup success of 1879, on the back of a controversial loss in the Scottish Cup Final, should have ushered in a new era of success for Rangers. At the annual members’ meeting in June that year, held at the Dewar’s Hotel in Bridge Street, it was reckoned ‘the club has never been in such a flourishing condition since its formation in 1872, also now possessing the title of being the premier club in Scotland.’1 There was a comforting stability around Kinning Park as the Light Blues approached their first decade of existence. William McBeath had since left, but at the annual meeting Tom Vallance had been returned as first-team captain and Peter McNeil as honorary secretary, while fellow founders Peter Campbell and Moses McNeil sat on the committee as well. There was order and consistency but, if there was a criticism to be made, little new blood to sustain the momentum built throughout the 1870s. In time, the subsequent five years would be recognised less as the start of the big push and more as the end of the innocence and a worrying decline towards financial crisis and an unpopularity that could never have been predicted in 1877 when so many thousands of Glasgow’s citizens first thronged to Hamilton Crescent and Hampden to embrace their new association football favourites.
  Success on the field, then as now, brought with it problems associated with their new-found popularity. Rapacious English football agents plundered the Light Blues in the aftermath of their two Scottish Cup Final appearances, not least because the game was growing at an increasing pace south of the border. Peter Campbell ultimately left for Blackburn Rovers, who had been formed in 1875, as did Hugh McIntyre, who became landlord at the Castle Inn in the town. McIntyre was an upholsterer by trade, but it was the Lancashire club who were undoubtedly feathering the nest of his future financial prosperity with the offer of a profitable pub. McIntyre, who also went on to gain notoriety as one of the earliest Mr Fixits, was widely criticised for accepting the move to the English club. Bolton added to Kinning Park woes in 1881 when they persuaded Archie Steel, William Struthers and John Christie to join. Not surprisingly, the following season, for the first time in their short history, a Rangers side shorn of its most talented stars lost more matches than they won.
  The departure of Campbell and McBeath left only the McNeil brothers and Tom Vallance as the original pioneers, but changes were afoot that, in the short term at least, would loosen the bonds between the club and the band of teenagers who had brought it into existence. Firstly, Tom Vallance accepted a position on the tea plantations at Assam and left Glasgow in February 1882. Such was the affection in which he was held that he was presented with 50 sovereigns by the club at his farewell reception at the Bridge Street Hotel and as he boarded the train for London the platform was thronged with well-wishers.
  Moses McNeil had been a committee member from the beginning of the club’s existence until as late as 1879, but the nature of his relationship with the team he helped to form had begun to change as Rangers entered the 1880s. He remained a regular in the side until February 1881, when he played his last game of the season in an 8–2 defeat of Partick Thistle. It would be over 13 months before he would pull on the Rangers shirt again, for a 3–2 defeat at Aston Villa on 25 March 1882. Moses played his last first-team game for Rangers a fortnight later, on 5 April, in a goalless draw with South Western. In subsequent years he would feature for the ‘ancients’, an old boys’ XI who frequently played charity and exhibition matches around the country, but his days at the sharp end were over. It is entirely likely that Moses was sidelined or usurped by others keener to grab the club’s key executive positions. Apart from a 12-month stint as honorary treasurer in 1876, he became a bit-part player in the running of the club. Few would argue against the fact that in helping to create Rangers in the first place he had made more than a sizeable contribution.
  The club was also thrown into a state of flux in the early 1880s by events outwith its making. Firstly, in November 1882 club president Archie Harkness tragically died from typhoid fever at the age of just 26, leaving a widow whom he had wed less than five months previously. He had been suffering ill health for several months, but still insisted on taking training at Kinning Park on summer evenings and was acknowledged as an influential member of the club he had first joined in 1874 as a friend of the McNeils.
Secondly, the club lost one of its longest serving officials when Peter McNeil was forced to step down from the post of honorary match secretary as a result of business pressures at the end of the 1882–83 season. The sports outfitting store owned by Peter and his brother Harry had moved from its original premises to a new building at No. 91 Union Street and the switch necessitated a focus on their business enterprise at the expense of the club the McNeils had helped to form. Peter also stood down from his post as treasurer of the SFA at the same time.
  At this stage Rangers were rudderless and this was reflected in the end of season stats, which showed only eight matches won and 16 lost from 29 games played. The club played the season in white and blue hoops. Their faces were almost permanently red. It came as no great surprise when they ditched the shirts at the end of that solitary campaign. In its end-of-season review the Scottish Athletic Journal was moved to warn: ‘One has always to be particularly cautious in forecasting the form of such a shifty, uncertain set of players as the Rangers. Today they do something extraordinary and tomorrow they exhibit such a falling off that one is perforce compelled to write them down a very ordinary lot indeed.’2 Sarcasm dripped from the pages of the Journal like the self-confidence from the very soul of the club. A few weeks earlier, a reader had written to the newspaper asking for details of the club’s defeats over the previous months. They replied mischievously: ‘It is impossible to give the exact number of defeats as these have been so numerous. In fact, it is only an average of once a month they get what is popularly called “a look in” and when that happens it is generally against second rate clubs.’3
  Financially, the club was in a precarious position. By the summer of 1883 the praise of four years earlier, when the club was described as ‘flourishing’ and lauded as the biggest and strongest in the country, rang hollow. The club were £100 in debt, despite a £30 bail out from new president George Goudie, who had replaced Harkness. Membership numbers had stalled as little attention was paid to the recruitment of those who could have brought fresh ideas and impetus to the Kinning Park set-up. Throughout the second half of the 1870s membership numbers had remained stable at between 70 and 80 per season, but there was a fine line between close knit and clique. Admittedly, it would have troubled few on the back of two appearances in the Scottish Cup Final in the space of three years and a Charity Cup success, but it would prove problematic to those who wisely took a more long-sighted view of the club’s sustainability. In 1880, for example, Queen’s Park attracted 97 new members and their numbers exceeded 300. Indeed, the Hampden club were so popular that they were forced to restrict membership numbers to 350, while season-ticket holders were limited to 600. The financial crisis of 1883 brought to a head the need to widen the sphere of influence around Kinning Park and a recruitment drive proved so successful that by the start of the 1884–85 season Rangers boasted 180 members, a record number.
  It had become clear that there was a void at the heart of Rangers and that the club needed a radical restructure, which duly took place at the annual general meeting in May 1883 at the Athole Arms. Tom Vallance was back from India and, although he had suffered poor health which had forced his return so quickly and his playing career had been compromised as a result, he was too valuable an ally not to be welcomed again to Kinning Park with open arms. He was quickly named president, with the club’s delicate finances placed in the hands of treasurer Robert White. The post of captain was deleted from the list of office bearers and instead a 10-man committee was appointed to oversee team selection. It was a break with tradition for the Light Blues, but acknowledged at the time as a wise move and one that had proved successful for other clubs in Scotland and England.
  The situation had improved markedly by the time of the six-monthly meeting in November 1883. The new treasurer had stemmed the losses and his report to members was greeted with enthusiastic applause. All debt had been paid off bar some ‘trifling sums’4 and it was promised that the club would soon be in credit after forthcoming matches against Queen’s Park and Dumbarton at Kinning Park. Nevertheless, this period of transition had also left the club open to opportunists keen to use the good name Rangers had built over the previous decade to their own advantage. John Wallace Mackay shares his first two names with one of Rangers’ best known bosses, but jungle fighter Jock would surely have given short shrift to the match secretary from the 19th century, who manoeuvred himself into such a position of dominance that it quickly threatened to destroy the very reputation the club had worked so hard to forge among its contemporaries. Single-handedly, he almost emptied the reservoir of goodwill and respect Rangers had built in their first years of existence.
  Mackay first came to prominence at the club in 1882 when he was named honorary secretary and by the following summer he had stepped up to fill the role of honorary match secretary, replacing Peter McNeil. The Scottish Athletic Journal welcomed his appointment at the time, claiming him to be an amenable figurehead with whom other clubs could do business, but within two years they had performed a complete volte-face.
  Not even three months had passed since his appointment as match secretary in May 1883 before Mackay was attracting scorn for his handling of the aftermath of the charity game played between Rangers and Dumbarton for the families of the victims of the Daphne Disaster, which still stands today as the greatest tragedy in Clyde shipyard history (memorials to the victims were erected in Elder and Victoria Parks in Glasgow as recently as 1996). There had seemed little amiss when a bottle was broken across the hull of the 449–ton Irish Sea ferry on the morning of 3 July 1883 and it slipped gently into the Clyde from its mooring at the Linthouse shipyard of Alexander Stephen and Co. However, within five minutes the Daphne capsized to port and 124 men and boys, who had been working inside its hull, died in the murky waters of the river, dragged to their deaths by the weight of the equipment they were wearing and by blind panic as they gasped for breath in the pitch darkness. One woman, a Jane Drysdale from Tranent, lost her husband and son and for almost a fortnight afterwards turned up at the shipyard gate in the vain hope that they had survived. One victim left a wife with eight children, including a mentally disabled son and a daughter paralysed from the waist down. His wife was forced to sell her own clothes to survive and the children were given two bowls of porridge a day to eat. The mother rushed home after hearing the news of the ship’s capsize to find her children screaming and the clock on the mantelpiece, which had been in perfect order until that point, stopped forever at the time of her husband’s death.5
  Then, as now, a Disaster Relief Fund was established which provided regular but modest payments to those who needed it most. It should have been bolstered by a sum of £73 11 shillings and ninepence from the football game, played in front of a crowd of 2,500 at Kinning Park and which Rangers won 4–2. However, to the astonishment of almost everyone involved, most especially those Dumbarton officials who provided their time and team for free, Mackay took game-day expenses for Rangers. The sorry state of affairs first came to light when a letter was sent to the Lennox Herald in Dumbarton, which was re-published in the Scottish Athletic Journal. Dumbarton officials denied sending the information to the press, although they confirmed the facts were substantially correct. The letter started: ‘A case of smartness combined with shabbiness on the part of a football club has just come to light which deserves publication.’6 The letter went on to explain the belief and expectation that both clubs would take care of their own expenses, as Dumbarton had demanded and which was an example, as intimated in the Glasgow press, Rangers were expected to follow. However, the Kinning Park committee deducted £10 three shillings and threepence for costs. Appalled, club officials at Dumbarton immediately forwarded half the sum, £5 one shilling and eightpence, to the Daphne Fund from its own coffers to add to the £68 eight shillings and sixpence sent by Rangers.

The stricken Daphne, which went down following its launch at Alexander Stephen’s Linthouse shipyard on the Clyde. In total, 124 lives were lost in the tragedy, in July 1883. (Picture courtesy of Mitchell Library.)

Angered by the bad press, Rangers immediately withdrew its advertising account from the Scottish Athletic Journal, which hit back by thundering: ‘The Rangers are wrong if they think our opinions are to be purchased in this way. All along we have been independent, which is the secret of our success. Perhaps there is no club that has benefitted so much by our free criticism as the Rangers.’7 For his part Mackay wrote an irate letter to the Journal and – changed days indeed – effectively complained that it was alright for big clubs such as Dumbarton to show such largesse, which was beyond the means of the cash-strapped Light Blues, still mindful of their delicate financial position. Mackay said: ‘From the very first I made it clear to Dumbarton that…we could not, as a matter of prudence, undertake to bear a part of the expenses involved in the arrangements for the match…While pleased to know that the Dumbarton intend sending in their share of the expense of the match I have, at the same time, to regret that they should insist by such action, generous though it be, in placing the Rangers in unfavourable contrast to them in this respect, but I am sure were the Rangers in the same enviable financial position as the Dumbarton are at present in, they would not soon be outstripped in generosity.’8
  In addition to the Daphne fund debacle, Mackay also attracted fierce criticism for the ‘Cooking the Books’ scandal that beset their Scottish Cup ties with Third Lanark throughout October 1884. The second-round tie finished at 2–2 but Thirds lodged a complaint over the involvement in the Rangers team of their former player Sam Thomson, who had been playing as a professional with Preston. Professionals were banned from playing for Scottish clubs and, furthermore, only registered players who had their names lodged with the SFA before the tie could play for their clubs. Mackay rode roughshod over the rules on both accounts and was fortunate the SFA demanded only a replay of the game. The second match, played a week later in front of 5,000 at Kinning Park, finished goalless and bad feeling was such that it ended in a brawl. To compound matters still further, Rangers fielded another professional, Bolton star Archie Steel, but Thirds threw in the towel on the idea of protesting again and under the rules of the time both sides progressed into the third round.
  As Sod’s Law would have it, the same sides were drawn from the hat to play again in the next round and this time Rangers won comfortably 3–0 at Cathkin, with goals from Lawrie, Morton and new signing Tommy Cook. However, the latter’s involvement aroused suspicion in the Thirds ranks, who suspected he belonged to another club. Closer examination of the books indicated, indeed, that a T. Cook had been registered with Rangers, but not in time to turn out in the game. Another player with the surname Cook, first initial J., was also associated with Rangers at the time and would have been eligible. A clumsy attempt had been made to cover the club’s path as the ‘J’ was doctored to make it look like the letter ‘T’. The Scottish Athletic Journal accused Mackay in all but name of sneaking into the office of SFA secretary John McDowall and making the change. As an SFA committee member, he would certainly have had access, literally, to the corridors of power.9
Astonishingly, Rangers dodged the bullet of Cup expulsion or, worse still, expulsion from the association, but their actions were succeeding only in making the club look increasingly tawdry. In the next round of the cup they lost 4–3 at Arbroath, but they dared not lose with dignity and as soon as the game had finished Kinning Park officials appeared with a tape measure and, after running it across the pitch, declared the playing surface a yard short of regulation width. The protest went in. After a discussion, the SFA agreed to a replay and Rangers won 8–1. They eventually tumbled out of the competition at the quarter-final stage following a 5–3 defeat at Renton. The Scottish Athletic Journal jibed four days after the defeat: ‘So far there has been no protest from Rangers.’10
  Mackay clearly felt himself to be untouchable, but he was occasionally called to task by club members, not least when he berated Third Lanark for their role in the Cook scandal and suggested Rangers never play them again for their insolence in protesting. His call, at the half-yearly meeting of the club in November 1884, was dismissed, as most members claimed Rangers would have done exactly the same. At the same meeting he was also pulled up for claiming Queen’s Park were in the financial grubber as a result of costs associated with the construction of the new Hampden Park (the second Hampden. The current national stadium, the third, was opened in 1903). The mighty amateurs had refused Rangers a game at Kinning Park the previous season, unless they were presented with half the gate and stand money. Generously, Rangers gave them the money from the terraces, which amounted to £60, while they banked the takings from the pavilion, a more modest £10. The prudent financial management of Queen’s Park meant they were on course to pay off the cost of construction of their new ground within 12 months of it opening. The Scottish Athletic Journal, ever alert, admonished Mackay: ‘Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones…Mr Mackay is not the Rangers club, nor the Rangers team.’11
  Mackay also had a nefarious influence over the players, which saw a revolt against Tom Vallance on the way to play a game at Dumbarton in October 1883. The players refused to sanction the popular president as their umpire (one in each half in those days, each chosen from the ranks of the competing teams to assist the referee) because he was too honest. Vallance resigned in disgust, only to be talked back the following week following a grovelling apology from his squad. However, Mackay continued to referee and his lack of balance and judgement soon forced other clubs into appointing their own partisan officials, with the result that games became increasingly bad-tempered. Rangers reached their nadir, according to the Scottish Athletic Journal at least, in September 1885 following a 3–2 defeat at Queen’s Park. Indiscipline on the field led to rowdy scenes off it and at one point it was feared the pitch itself would be invaded. There was more than a hint of sarcasm in the Journal’s coverage as it revealed: ‘The rowdy element from Kinning Park hooted and yelled in the style most approved in that aristocratic suburb and the usually serene air of Hampden Park was a perfect pandemonium.’12 The scenes so sickened the editor of the Scottish Athletic Journal that he condemned the Light Blues in print and, the following week, issued a public challenge to Rangers in general, and Mackay in particular, to clean up their act.
  He hit out, ‘My remarks last week on the match between the Rangers and Queen’s Park have created no little sensation and the “light blues” are smarting very sorely under the lash. I do not trim my remarks to suit any club or any individual and I am as indifferent to threats as I am to cajolery. I stated the Queen’s Park as a club are composed of gentlemen and the Rangers as a club are not. I stated the Rangers are not now socially the same set of fellows they were when Tom Vallance and Alick Vallance commanded them, and I stated they are no longer a first class club. I stated the game was the most unpleasant ever played between two clubs of standing. All this I repeat with emphasis. I take this opportunity of laying before the public the reason why I give the Rangers on every occasion their exact desserts. The social decadence of the Rangers may be dated from the day Mr Peter McNeil resigned the match secretaryship and J.W. Mackay took it up. Then began that system of trickery which has brought the club to its present low level.’13
  Players and officials were also criticised for their boorish behaviour at club smokers, where alcohol was more than prominent. Rangers were even chided by the Journal for their lack of concern for good causes following a Charity Cup tie against Queen’s Park. The Hampden club refused to turn up at a social in the Athole Arms afterwards, where food and drink had been arranged, because they felt it was an unnecessary expense and against the spirit of the tournament’s fundraising ethos. Rangers agreed to differ and ‘turned up to a man and, aided by some friends, disposed of the viands.’14
  The war of words between Mackay and the Scottish Athletic Journal had long since grown personal and severe criticisms became a feature of the newspaper’s coverage as it delved into the Rangers official’s background, including his church membership. It revealed Mackay had once been a part of the Christian Institute, but resigned after being caught using ‘unchristian language’. It added: ‘Coward-like, rather than face the indignant and grave seigniors, he sent in his resignation and beat an undignified retreat, thus saving himself from expulsion.’ Then came the twist of the mighty pen: ‘This, together with the fact Mackay failed to pass an examination which any fifth standard schoolboy could manage, has left him what he is – a working compositor – and ruined his aspirations forever. His conduct over the Daphne match proves charity is not in his composition.’ The article was delivered on the pages of the Journal on 5 January 1886. A Happy New Year indeed.
  Criticism of Mackay in the pages of the Scottish Athletic Journal must be seen in the context of the loss of advertising revenue from the Kinning Park club in the aftermath of the Daphne fiasco and also the involvement of the Rangers official with a rival publication, the Scottish Umpire, which was published for the first time in August 1884. It had been set up by those, including Mackay, who were disgruntled at the occasionally scurrilous tone of the Journal, which had been on the go since September 1882. Ultimately, by 1888 the two papers had merged to form the twice weekly Scottish Sport. However, the personal nature of the criticism aside (the Journal, in reference to its new rival on the news-stands, frequently referred to Mackay and his publication as the ‘Vampire’), many of Mackay’s actions were still worthy of being called to account.
  Mackay’s hypocrisy extended to the thorny issue of professionalism. He was moved to bring up the issue surrounding the plundering of Scottish teams by English outfits at an SFA meeting in April 1884. The report read: ‘Mr Mackay said…when in England the other day his team was besieged by professionals and every effort was made to induce them to join English clubs – not only that, but they were followed home to Scotland by certain players who had left Glasgow some time before and who made every effort to find out the address of some of the Rangers team. These fellows went about in Lancashire with their hands in their pockets, apparently doing nothing but living on the money they received from football. Mr Mackay spoke very warmly and the committee were entirely in sympathy with him.’15 However, little more than a week after his report on the evils of professionalism which had elicited nods of support and understanding, Rangers were welcoming an ex-pro, John Inglis, back into the fold. The move was, at the very least, against the spirit of the times in which Scottish clubs – outwardly anyway – railed fiercely against the payment of players. As the Scottish Athletic Journal wryly commented: ‘The Rangers are a strange lot. In a fit of virtue the other day they ejected Inglis from their club because he chose to assist the Blackburn Rovers in their Cup ties rather than play for his own club. Mr Mackay, too, delivered a virtuous speech on professionalism at the last meeting of the SFA committee. The virtuous fit did not last long and Inglis has been taken back into the fold again and played against Thistle for his old club last Saturday.’16
  Clearly, Rangers were no innocents on the issue of professionalism and, as early as October 1885, they were lobbying other Scottish clubs to follow the route of the English towards the paid ranks. With the aid of hindsight, the opposition to their plans to have professionalism even discussed appears quaintly romantic, but it was a burning issue of the football age and, typically, the Scottish Athletic Journal took no prisoners as it thundered against the Light Blues for earlier breaches of rules and etiquette. Its ‘Echoes’ columnist rapped: ‘The pseudo-opposition to the recent edict of the SFA which is being organised by the Rangers is sufficient to damn it in the eyes of the public. A member of the Rangers’ committee has sent out circulars to the clubs asking them to attend an anti-amateur meeting tonight. The Queen’s Park and other leading clubs will not be represented. No wonder the Rangers desire professionalism. The club has before now paid its players and one of its present office bearers has been dependent on the bounty of the club [no doubt they meant Mackay]; while Hugh McIntyre does not deny he and other members of the team received 10 shillings a week as training expenses. (Sam) Thomson of Lugar Boswell got 15 shillings a week for expenses from Lugar to Glasgow. He is now a Lancashire professional and so is McIntyre. The recent action of the Rangers in trying to induce players to join them has caused no little scandal. Tonight’s meeting will fall through, like its predecessors.’17
  In fairness to Rangers and Mackay, under-the-table payments were rife in Scottish football at the time, with Hearts the first club to feel the ire of the SFA following an 11–1 victory over Dunfermline in the Scottish Cup in October 1884. The Pars protested the result, claiming the Jambos had two paid professionals in their line up, Maxwell and McNee. Maxwell was employed at the Fountainbridge Rubber Works on a salary supplemented by the club’s fans, while McNee was paid 25 shillings a week from the man with whom he lodged, George Barbour, who received the cash in the first instance to pass on from a grocer friend of the club. It was difficult not to feel a pang of sympathy for Hearts, who had lost arguably their greatest-ever player, Nick Ross, to Preston North End at the age of just 20 only 12 months earlier. Ross was already skipper of the club – a role he went on to perform with the Invincibles – and had recently married an Edinburgh girl when the English outfit came calling. It was claimed he would have stayed at Hearts for 10 shillings a week and the estimation in which he was held at Tynecastle was symbolised by the expensive clock he was gifted by the club when he married. He vowed never to leave the Edinburgh side, but when he was offered 30 shillings a week under the guise of work as a slater in Preston, he moved south, much to the chagrin of the fans. Dunfermline’s original Scottish Cup protest was upheld and they were awarded the tie. Maxwell and McNee were banned for two years and Hearts were suspended from the SFA. Nevertheless, they continued to play while under suspension and when the erring committee was disbanded and other club members took their place they were quietly welcomed back into the fold.