Today was a great day on the south bank of the Tweed. It was the most exciting thing to happen in Berwick, England’s most northerly town, since the last most exciting thing to happen there. It was the day that Glasgow Rangers, one of Scotland’s biggest football clubs and former darlings of the Scottish Premier League came to play against local club Berwick Rangers. This wasn’t a cup match or a friendly but rather, due to some trick of fate brought about by the highest flying of club’s financial misdemeanours, a league match in the Scottish third division.
We made our way up the Great North Road some forty miles or so to witness this great event, the likes of which may never be seen again, at least not until next April and we arrived in a town that had been turned blue by the hundreds and thousands of Glasgow fans. The shirts were blue, the sky was blue and the air was blue with the enthusiastic singing of the travelling support. We parked the car just after eleven in the morning as it was a noon kick off to meet the demands of the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network television company who had already set up their cameras and lights and satellite dishes.
A few hundred metres from the Shielfield Park ground we found a pub that was packed with Rangers supporters and stepped inside to soak up the atmosphere with a pint or two of McEwan’s eighty shillings. Sandwiches were laid on, entertainment was laid on and in the drinking of the drinks the time had passed and we made our way into the ground through gate B and into the appropriately named home standing area.
Shielfield Park also doubles as a speedway track and the green football playing surface was bordered by the dun coloured race track. We stood by the corner flag on a shale embankment in amongst the scattered gold and black Berwick supporters that made up the over-capacity crowd of 4140. By the flag the ESPN punters were being interviewed and over on the far side of the ground the stands were packed with Rangers fans, chanting, singing, jumping up and down and letting off smoke bombs (where do you get them from?). They kept this up right throughout the game for which they deserve recognition.
The teams came out to raucous cheers, the galacticos of the former SPL club against the potential giant killers of the lowest division and the match was underway. Everyone expected a difficult match for Berwick and a convincing win for Rangers (I assume this but never actually asked them all) but for the majority of the first half it was a fairly even match with both sides seeming to run out of ideas in the box. A foul in the added on time at the end of the first half was an opportunity for Rangers to go ahead and the ball was duly slotted in by Andy Little. It was a bad time to go one down but a pork roll during half time helped us to feel better.
The second half was more of the same, exciting and entertaining end to end football with Berwick giving very little away and making it hard for the bigger Rangers to get the breakthrough. We saw the Rangers manager, Ally McCoist from time to time by the dugout barking orders at his troops; you could tell it was him as he was wearing a suit. But the fairy tale was made when paint sprayer and Glasgow Rangers fan Fraser McLaren stepped off the wee Rangers’ bench to fire a blistering shot past the outstretched arms of the keeper to level the score. The local crowd went wild. Taunting shouts of ‘who are you?’ rang round the home side fans and they were nearly rewarded again when Chris Townley found the net at the end of the second half only for the goal to be inexplicably disallowed (we was robbed!). And that is how it ended, a one all draw. The home side had given a good account of the themselves and were far from embarrassed. The flower of Scotland had been nipped in the bud by the lion hearted men from Shielfield Park.
It was truly a great day on the banks of the Tweed and at some time in the not too distant future my grandchildren will gather around me and say ‘ Granddad, tell us about the day that Berwick drew with the mighty Glasgow Rangers’ and I will pull them closer to me and say ‘Yes, I was there.’
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 