Inside the Divide ... The Old Firm - Richard Wilson ( Rangers Celtic ).epub

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Inside the Divide: One City, Two Teams… The Old Firm by Richard Wilson – review

Kevin McKenna enjoys an insightful and wonderfully written account of the fierce rivalry between Glasgow's two football clubs

Rangers and Celtic fans at an Old Firm derby at Glasgow’s Celtic Park stadium, 5 December 2002.
Rangers and Celtic fans at an Old Firm derby at Glasgow’s Celtic Park stadium, 5 December 2002. Photograph: Ben Curtis/PA

I was 15 years old when, on 21 May 1979, I witnessed my first Celtic v Rangers match. My father, in common with other responsible parents in the west of Scotland, had previously imposed a ban on any of his children attending this fixture. He felt that the religious tribalism and the ever-present insinuation of violence that cloaked these occasions was a mix too toxic for impressionable youths.

In the event, he could hardly have chosen a worse "Old Firm" baptism. For, on that warm early summer evening, Celtic and Rangers faced each other in a winner-takes-all confrontation that would decide the destination of the Scottish league championship. Celtic, my team, eventually triumphed 4-2 in a match that has since secured its own chapter in the folklore of the club. Spectators and participants in these matches will tell you that their first one passes quickly and in a blur; details can never be recalled and there is simply a sense of relief when the game finishes and you have survived. Curiously though, I remember many small details from this first encounter. I recall feeling breathless in the moments before kick-off when the noise reaches an impossible crescendo and you sense that something terrible is about to happen. I remember, too, the sheer passion of the soberly attired, properly spoken middle-aged men beside me. In this, the Facebook age, which tells us that the world is our family, tribal disputes and religious fervour and territorial tension seem to diminish. And so it is difficult to convey just why a football match between two Glasgow clubs matters to millions of people across the planet. But this rather splendid new book sets out to explain the ancient and bitter rivalry between Celtic and Rangers, and it does so admirably.

Richard Wilson tells his story by visiting one game in January 2010 and speaking to some of the bit-players in the drama. Here we have the senior match policeman, the Sky commentator, the gnarled supporter, the nurse in a Glasgow A&E ward, the hapless referee. As the narrative of that otherwise unremarkable game unfolds, Wilson uses it to jump backwards in time to recall the stories of older battles and to speak to the veterans. For David Edgar, a Rangers supporter of many years standing, the pre-match tension is never diminished. "Nobody enjoys going to Old Firm games. It's a really strange, queasy sensation. You can't sleep, you try to force some food down, the heart's beating, your hands are shaking, you're twitchy, you're nervous, you're talking through your arse."

Wilson is a fine writer and he describes part of the symphony that accompanies this drama. "The first noise you hear is a distinct metal crack, which carries round the stadium. It is the sound of thousands of metal seats flipping back simultaneously as the supporters stand for their team, and it continues throughout the match, a clear, tinny punctuation to the game's dramas."

We Scots, in our constant struggle to tell the world that we actually invented everything, are not immune from exaggerating the importance of this rivalry. Yet here, some of the finest players in the world talk in hushed tones about what they have just witnessed or taken part in. Gary Lineker wrote about it once: "I can testify that there is nothing to compare with them in terms of their intensity and ferocity, not to mention the sheer noise. I found it quite disturbing."

So where does it all come from? Why is the intensity and the passion and the drama undiminished after nearly 125 years of this fixture? Why does Michael Laudrup, who played in Spain's El Clasico, Barcelona v Real Madrid, regret that he never participated in the Glasgow version?

There are football rivalries all over the world in which class, race, politics and mere city geography determine the path you will take when the division bell sounds. In Glasgow, they are all of these and more: Celtic, established to represent the aspiration of the poor and downtrodden Catholic Irish people in a foreign country; Rangers, the club chosen by the Protestant Scottish establishment to oppose them. The politics of rebellion and the politics of the state; a united Ireland against the British state; the deprived east end against the douce southern burghs.

But all of this doesn't explain the medieval religious fervour in a post-church society. What does is that these two clubs give many poor people a sense of belonging and self-worth. Those whom the Labour party and the Conservatives and – now – the SNP have marginalised and held in contempt, feel better about themselves by belonging to either of these clubs. When all of the "back to work" schemes and urban regeneration projects have failed, Celtic and Rangers will remain constant. Their existence has given generations of Glasgow's dispossessed joy, pride and identity. And this is why the tiny intellectual Edinburgh elite who think they hold sway in Scotland hate the Old Firm so.

Richard Wilson, more than anyone in recent years, has told us why Celtic and Rangers matter and why their adherents have little of which to be ashamed and much of which to be proud. I salute him.