The Sevco generation

Bill Struth knew that he would not always be a winner.

He tried to prepare the Rangers support for the day when they would lose.

“Never fear, inevitably we shall have our years of failure, and when they arrive, we must reveal tolerance and sanity. No matter the days of anxiety that come our way, we shall emerge stronger because of the trials to be overcome.”

So it is probably just as well he is not around to see how The People are coping at the moment.

I’m afraid that their currency is smear and threat and the main emotion that is being displayed is anger.

In the online meeting points they have convinced each other that Rangers have been the victim of a massive external conspiracy.

Subsequently there are lists of people who must suffer because of this.

This is neither tolerant nor observably sane.

Rangers died in 2012 because of decisions taken by a succession of people in leadership positions at the club.

Death is, of course final, but many of The People cannot move on.

Indeed powerful vested interest would rather that they did not progress through their grief.

It was always going to be emotionally easier to pretend that the liquidation of Rangers was no biggy.

Millions have been made and exported off into the Sevco Triangle by exploiting that comforting falsehood.

As The People have writhed in pain their city rivals and indeed the supporters or other clubs have deployed humour which is Herrenvolk kryptonite.

The mainstream media, so complicit in the death of Rangers, have not assisted the followers of Sevco.

This week the hacks are all moist about the imminent OF game.

For the stenographers that stands for ‘Old Firm’.

However for most of Planet Fitba it means ‘Orwellian Fabrication’.

The Ibrox support did not do rad card protests in 2012 on minute 18 and minute 72 to save a ‘Holding Company Vehicle’ from liquidation.

They did not want their club to die and liquidation means death.

Struth was of his generation and because of that we must not judge him by the mores of today.

In Struth’s time it was socially and culturally acceptable in Scotland to openly discriminate against Irish people and Catholics.

It was the age of John Cormack and the Protestant Action Society so it would perhaps not have occurred to Mr Struth that the employment policy at Rangers was morally wrong.

The Struth of legend was something of a martinet.

However I like to think that he had a Bohemian side to him too.

There is an unconfirmed report about him and two young squaddies from Canada.

I think some grass was involved, but it is just a rumour.

Today it probably helps if you watch Sevco when you’re stoned.

Of course individuals do not change much, but generations do.

There is perhaps something generational in the current angst that is afflicting The People.

Perhaps the most deranged of them are the Nine In A Row generation.

If a lad was born, say, in 1977 and taken to his first game at the age of ten  by his dad then his Rangers supporting childhood and then into early manhood was one of domestic dominance.

It was period of Fitba unipolarity that the home crowd at Ibrox had never experienced before or since.

The best that Struth managed was five in a row.

So the 1990s were unprecedented time for The People.

Then Celtic, under Fergus McCann, rebuilt and suddenly Rangers were facing a rival who could go the distance with them.

The Knight of the Realm decided to save on tax and you all know how that worked out for them.

Well the new born Bear of 1977 is now two years off forty, a milestone birthday for any man.

Now the home of that once mighty sporting institution is merely an advertising hoarding for Sports Direct.

The same club myth demands a sort of debt forgiveness without the contrition.

Indeed pretending that Sevco is Rangers (1872) is the quintessence of the Herrenvolk exceptionalism that characterises the sub-culture that Ibrox has incubated since the days of Struth.

Of course everyone else on Planet Fitba can see it clearly and that is why they mercilessly taunt them about it.

Well that ribbing is not going to go away you know.

Through it all the best of them will tolerate it and soldier on for the sake of their sanity.

The smart ones though will get their marching order and do walking away.

What will remain in the rear-guard will be a collection of losers.

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