Football: the Rangers Connection

A few weeks ago a chap who is writing an authorised history of the Rangers Football Club contacted me to see if I had any information about a connection between the two clubs. I think Aileen Scott had been his informant! He has just been along and had a look at what we have and also gave me some information to add to it.

The connection is fairly straightforward. When Clydesdale Harriers were founded in May 1885, there was clearly a need to find somewhere to train and since the Rangers were already in existence, and since several Rangers players and officials were among the founder members, it was natural enough to start training at the Rangers ground at Kinning Park. When the moved to Ibrox, we just went along with it. In addition to holding an annual sports meeting at Ibrox Park (for which there are many references in the minutes and for which we have some programmes plus a poster for the meeting in 1910) we held club championships there until 1922. One of their players was John R Gow who won the SAAA Championship 120 yards hurdles and on one occasion the atmosphere was built up for the confrontation in a series of letters in the local papers - then after the event it was found that JR Gow had written all the letters on both sides himself! He went on to be president of the Rangers as had Tom Vallance (Scottish long jump record holder and a CH member until the end of the century) and John Mellish. There was some jealousy of the club among the people who had been organising racing and handicaps (a betting ring known as the "Co-Partnery Ring" and they ran a campaign against CH with several scurrilous and usually untrue articles published in the local sports papers including one in which they mentioned the 'Rangers clique' inside Clydesdale Harriers! The main point of this is that there was at the start a real connection: two articles that I have say that both clubs were offshoots of the Clydesdale Amateur Rowing Club but the CARC have no knowledge of this although Gary (the man writing the history) says that the rowing club that gave birth to both clubs was in fact the Clyde Rowing Club whose crest was a Star worn on the left breast of the shirt - and sure enough the early pictures of the Rangers show the team with the same insignia.

In one way the link might have been detrimental: the club handbook of 1889 says:" Grounds with cinder track have been repeatedly spoken of but so long as the present friendly relations are maintained with the Rangers FC, the Committee consider that there are no grounds for moving in this matter." We could have had our own track!!! In Glasgow; on ground that would have been worth a fortune!

There was no sectarianism involved - the link was I think purely pragmatic. When Celtic were founded, we had many of their players on board and had Sports meetings at their ground for many years. In addition, Willie Maley and his brother Tom were CH members before Brother Walfrid came along in person to his front door to sign them up! Is there a legal argument that they were poached and are we entitled to compensation????