A hard loss

The gates are closed.

Glasgow Rangers Football Club is dead. This week the giants of Sottish football, who declared bankruptcy earlier this year, were formally told their new incarnation will not be allowed to play in the top flight of the game. We don't even know what they will be called, currently going by the glamorous name of Newco. And all thanks to the greed and criminality of a few bastards to whom this club was just a cash machine.

The fact that "my team" is gone and some new version of them will show up in the Scottish First or even Thrid Division is heartbreaking. I've been told innumerable times to "get over it," or "grow up," or been urged to just move on. The speakers do not understand how much being a Rangers fan is part of my identity, as it is for all the other "Bears" fans.

I have cheered them on for nearly four decades. I remember the day in April 1978 when my father took me to my first game - a 3-0 win against Dundee United, with goals by Jardine, Jackson and Cooper. It still ranks as one of the happiest days of my life. I remember walking out into the stands and seeing the radiant green of the pitch and getting goosebumps at the red, white and blue of the supporters and at the noise of their songs.

Rangers vs. Dynamo Zagreb

Thirty years later, and by then living in the States, I took my own kids to their first Rangers game. Being Americans, it didn't mean nearly as much to them as it did to me. In fact, Rangers lost the exhibition game in Toronto and Ewan cried. Still, to see them in their strips and cheering for the boys was a memorable day - even if Ewan asked, as the players ran out onto the field, which one of them had been my favorite when I was growing up. The truth was none of those players had been born when I was going to the games and my favorite player, Davie Cooper, had already died.

Rangers, and their hated rivals Celtic, are woven into the fabric of Glasgow and Scottish history. When Glaswegians abroad meet each other, it's one of the first questions asked: Green or Blue?

Two weeks ago I met a guy from Glasgow over here. The question was posed tentatively, but it turns out he was a civilian, a Morton fan - another dying breed.

The history of their rivalry - and its Sectarian violence - is not a salubrious one. I won't deny that the dangerous hatred and the ties to the Troubles of Northern Ireland were part of the attraction for me as a kid in Glasgow. I despise it now, but still can't see the green and white of a Celtic shirt without looking for a bottle to grab - and not for drinking purposes. I resist, of course, but it's that much in me.

Hallowed ground.

I know this has nothing to do with New Zealand, though there is a Rangers' Supporters Club here. It's just a sadness that was driven home forcibly this week. And you're lucky you only got this much; I could've written a book - and might yet!