The Gallant Pioneers: Rangers 1872 Read Online Free PDF Page B

February 1935, two days after the death of the club’s former skipper and president from a stroke at the age of 78. Brigadier noted: ‘Tom was in the Rangers team that competed in the English Cup and got to the semi-final, only to be beaten by Aston Villa.’ In actual fact, by that time in 1887 Vallance had long since hung up his boots – his career was compromised by ill-health following a short spell working in the tea plantations of Assam in the early 1880s – and he was at that time focused on building his business career and behind-the-scenes duties at Kinning Park.
  It would be mean-spirited to pin the inaccuracy of 1873 solely on Moses McNeil or John Allan, and the club’s date of formation was a source of debate around Ibrox in the early 1920s as its jubilee loomed. A celebratory dinner hosted by chairman Sir John Ure Primrose and attended by the greats of the Scottish game took place at the restaurant Ferguson and Forrester’s on Buchanan Street on 9 April 1923 and received widespread coverage in all newspapers the following day. The Evening Times recorded: ‘There has been some difference of opinion as to the year in which the Rangers Football Club originated, but it has been settled to the satisfaction of the gentlemen who at present control the club that the foundation was laid in 1873.’7
  Nevertheless, a stronger body of evidence exists to suggest 1872 was much more probable. Firstly, the Scottish Football Association Annuals, published as early as season 1875–76, carried details of every club operating in the game at that time, with information provided by each club secretary. Rangers, with their background most likely recorded by Peter McNeil, were acknowledged from the very first edition as being instituted in 1872. Their entry in one of the earliest editions of the respected handbook even gives a brief, potted history of that period and states: ‘This club has been one of the most successful of our Scottish football clubs, having played on Glasgow Green as a junior club from 1872 to 1874. The rapid increase of members necessitated the committee to get private grounds and being successful in securing Clydesdale’s old cricket ground at Kinning Park, the club at once placed itself in the first rank of senior clubs.’8
  One of the earliest and most respected histories of the British game, published in 1905, also declared 1872 to be the year. Furthermore, the article on ‘The Game in Scotland’, part of a four-volume series Association Football And The Men Who Made It was penned by Robert Livingstone, the former president of the SFA. He wrote: ‘The seed sown by Queen’s Park did not all fall on stony ground, however, for in 1872 there sprang into life two clubs which today stand at the very forefront. These were Rangers and Third Lanark and they were accompanied before the footlights of the world by Vale of Leven, destined for a chequered existence, but a still plucky survival.’9
  The official Rangers handbook – known affectionately to generations of Ibrox followers as the Wee Blue Book – was published every year from the turn of the 20th century until the 1980s. From its first edition, Rangers were acknowledged as having been formed in 1872. As late as the edition for season 1920–21, under a page section listing historical data, the club’s birth was given as 1872. Significantly, the section of historical data did not appear in the following year’s edition, or in the handbook published for 1922–23. However, it returned for season 1923–24 when, lo and behold, the club’s birth was listed as 1873. Perhaps surprisingly, no explanation was ever offered by the handbook’s editor – John Allan. A theory has surfaced over the years that Allan was under such pressure to publish a jubilee history that he altered the year of formation to suit his own punishing deadline – and historical ends. Allan certainly appears in a literary rush as he gallops through the very early