The Gallant Pioneers

By Gary Ralston

The Gallant Pioneers, like Rangers, continues to prosper and endure.

This is the fourth edition of the critically acclaimed early years' history of the famous Ibrox club, first published in 2009. Our 150th anniversary edition brings together new images and insights, never before seen or widely discussed, for fans to enjoy and debate.

We have uncovered the only photograph of William McBeath to go with images of his fellow founders and youthful friends Peter Campbell, Moses McNeil and his brother Peter.

We have also uncovered the first match report to feature the name of 'Rangers' and reveal why we believe they were founded in 1872 but took their famous name in September 1873.

We also argue they were a side initially known as 'Western', who first earned their reputation on the public pitches of Glasgow Green and Queen's Park.

Author Gary Ralston has teamed up with Iain McColl and Gordon Bell, whose Founders' Trail tours have now attracted almost 10,000 fans to Follow Follow in the footsteps of the club's fabled sons.

Four lads had a shared dream in West End Park that quickly grew to become reality. Their achievement is still cherished and treasured today by Rangers fans all around the globe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WPPM Publishing
• Release date: Nov 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781739821432

Book preview

Title Page for The Gallant Pioneers

Copyright © 2021 by Gary Ralston

All rights reserved

eBook Formatting by FormattingExperts.com

Cover Design by Gordon Bell

Visit www.TheGallantPioneers.com to see the photographs uncovered for this edition of The Gallant Pioneers.

Dedications

Gary: To Lewis and Jennifer and my wee mum, Marion

Gordon: To Pam and Alfie – Pam, for her help and time with the tours, presentations and grave hunting

Iain: For my late parents Emma and Archie and my two grandsons, George and Lewis

In memory of Walter Smith, 1948-2021

I’ve had my share of pastime, and I’ve done my share of toil,

And life is short – the longest life a span;

I care not now to tarry for the corn or for the oil,

Or for wine that maketh glad the heart of man.

For good undone, and gifts misspent, and resolutions vain,

’Tis somewhat late to trouble. This I know –

I should live the same life over, if I had to live again;

And the chances are I go where most men go.

The Sick Stockrider

by Adam Lindsay Gordon, 1833–1870

The above verse by the Australian poet was read by Tom Vallance on the evening of Wednesday April 13 1898 at his restaurant, The Metropolitan, in Hutchison Street, Glasgow.

The occasion was the 21st anniversary of the 1877 Scottish Cup final between Rangers and Vale of Leven and 30 former players and friends of both clubs accepted the invite from the first great captain of the Light Blues to attend.

He told his guests: The same spirit that characterised football in the old days has gone. It has been reduced to a purely mercenary matter.

*****

Our very success, gained you will agree by skill, will draw more people than ever to see it. And that will benefit many more clubs than Rangers. Let the others come after us. We welcome the chase. It is healthy for us. We will never hide from it. 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. That has been the philosophy of the Rangers since the days of the gallant pioneers.

Bill Struth, Glasgow, May 1953

Four lads had a dream

To start a football team

They had no money, no kit, not even a ball

But they carried on

And the Rangers were born

55 titles

We’re still going strong

Forewords

John Brown

Rangers FC 1988-1997

Four teenage boys took a walk around Kelvingrove Park in 1872 and laid the foundations for the greatest football club in the world.

How could they have known, 140 years later, their beloved club would be struggling for its very survival?

I have loved Glasgow Rangers for as long as I can remember. It’s part of me. It’s in my blood.

It is a big enough honour to be a fan of the club, but to have actually played for the team? That really was the stuff of dreams.

I was part of a squad that won nine-in-a-row, as well as cups and silverware galore, including the Treble, and we even came within a whisker of reaching the first Champions League final in 1993.

But the biggest challenge I ever faced at Ibrox was on a warm summer’s night in the summer of 2012 when I stood on the steps of the stadium and voiced my concerns to worried fans about the direction I feared the club was heading.

I believed our club had been infiltrated by people who did not have its best interests at heart. The danger signs were there, but too many had chosen to ignore them.

I could not turn away. I owed it to Moses McNeil, Peter McNeil, Peter Campbell and William McBeath to stay and fight and tell the truth as I saw it.

My speech on the steps that night was not scripted or rehearsed. It came from the heart and was delivered in the moment.

As I stood there, memories of my childhood came flooding back – sitting glued to that little black and white telly in our house in Blackburn, West Lothian in 1972 with my parents, Andy and Irene, and my brother, David, watching Bud Johnston and Colin Stein score against Dynamo Moscow to win the Cup Winners’ Cup.

It was difficult to suppress my emotions when I thought of my dad taking me to the Centenary Scottish Cup final in 1973, the euphoria of Tam Forsyth’s winning goal at Hampden sealing one of the club’s finest ever victories over Celtic.

I thought of our great European nights at Ibrox too, special occasions such as the 2-0 win over Juventus in 1978 under John Greig. It still ranks as one of our greatest European performances of all time.

Watching those games as a kid was life changing, but to represent my club on so many big occasions was off the scale incredible. Walking out at Elland Road for the Battle of Britain against Leeds, or playing Marseille at Ibrox and the Stade Velodrome? Those moments will live with me forever.

Those who don’t have Rangers in their hearts would struggle to understand what it means to players, fans and custodians. It’s much more than a football club. It’s a way of life. It runs through our veins. It’s family. Those gallant pioneers created something matched by no other club or institution the world over – a sense of pride, honour and integrity.

I shudder when I think back less than a decade. We were so close to losing our club and I genuinely feared seeing it dismantled, red brick by red brick. The thought makes me sick even now. It was a very frightening time. The threat of our club going down and not coming back was real. I still maintain that opinion today – and no-one will ever convince me otherwise.

My phone didn’t stop ringing during that period with people asking: ‘Bomber, what are you going to do?’ I knew I had to do something, but what? There was an increasing feeling of helplessness among the fans, but I had been given information about what was going to happen to my club.

The Rangers fans had always supported me throughout my career and this was my opportunity to pay them back. It was time to speak out.

People I had previously respected advised me not to stand on the steps in front of those big, oak doors on Edmiston Drive. They told me to keep my head down, keep quiet. Thankfully, I listened to others.

They implored me to tell the fans what was going on. As absurd as some of the information I was given seemed, I was assured it was correct – and that I would be proved right in the end.

I had the full support of my wife, Sandra, and my daughters, Lauren and Megan, but I had embarked on a journey that was not without its difficulties for me, my reputation, my family – and my club.

It was particularly tough on my parents, who were in their mid-70s, as I had to put up with abuse on the streets and on social media. The girls were told their old man was a rocket and it’s probably best not to dwell on some of the personal threats I received. It’s a time I’d never wish to re-live.

However, no matter what was thrown at me, giving up was never an option. I had to focus on one thing only – the future of Rangers. I spoke out at every opportunity and to anyone who would listen, from fan groups to journalists, on the dangers I believed the club were facing.

Others you would have expected to want to save the club were elsewhere, cosying up to the very people I believed were in danger of destroying Rangers. I’ll leave that to them and their conscience.

It cost me, professionally and personally. Managerial jobs that followed at Clyde and Dundee were compromised because, to supporters there, I was the permanently angry man who only had Rangers at heart. I became persona non grata in some circles.

But they say time is a healer – and what a healing period Rangers have enjoyed under the guidance of our manager, Steven Gerrard.

We’ve celebrated our 55th title and it was momentous in many ways, not least because winning the championship prevented our fiercest rivals across the city from reaching their dream of 10-in-a-row.

What a great job Steven has done, transforming a group of players into a winning squad, all within a couple of years and only a handful of transfer windows.

People ask my proudest moment at Rangers and I have no hesitation in telling them. It was the day I stood shoulder to shoulder with the fans and shouted at the top of my voice until I was eventually heard.

I’d be thrilled to think Moses, the two Peters and William were up there cheering me on, all the way.

After all they have given us, battling to return to the club into the hands of people who truly have Rangers at heart was the very least their legacy deserved.

Rangers till I die.

John Brown

October 2021

Gary Ralston

We have cherished the scale of their ambitions for 150 years and for the first time in history we can finally picture them all together.

Four lads had a dream – mine, as a writer on the early years of Rangers, was to gather the images of the founding fathers and tell of the formation of a great football club.

As we celebrate a momentous milestone for the club, they have been brought together again for the first time since the 1870s, re-born here in the pages of The Gallant Pioneers. We finally have a picture of William McBeath to go with Moses McNeil, brother Peter and Peter Campbell.

The story behind that new-found image is in chapter nine, one small but very significant tale from a century and a half of amazing adventures.

Well Moses, here’s hoping you are looking down on Edmiston Drive with justified pride at all you have created.

As for our two Peters, McNeil and Campbell? Your achievements and names remain cherished still, 150 years after that quiet walk around West End Park, where an idea for a football team began to take root.

Poor William, you may have died penniless and alone in a corner of an English field, but you have been the richest benefactor and brought priceless joys to millions around the world.

As for Tom Vallance, dear Tom? Let the scale of your efforts to establish Rangers Football Club as the finest in the land never be forgotten or diminished.

You may have arrived on the scene a few months after your four friends, three of them boyhood chums from the Gare Loch, but you contributed immensely on and off the park. Thankfully, like boyhood pal Moses, you lived long enough to see the scale of what your beloved Light Blues would become.

The spirit of the founding fathers shines through today as much as it did in 1872 as Rangers celebrate a birthday only few clubs in the world game can claim – and of those, surely, none have been as successful.

In May 1953, a dinner was hosted by Glasgow Council to honour the achievements of Bill Struth. He was presented with a portrait that now hangs in the Ibrox Trophy Room and the legendary Rangers manager delivered a powerful oratory that many among the Light Blues legions have clung to in recent years.

There must be tolerance and sanity, urged Struth, for the years of failure that would inevitably occur. He insisted, however, that Rangers would emerge stronger for it all. After all, he maintained, that had been the philosophy of the club since the days of the gallant pioneers.

His words rang more true for the decade up to the invincible league title victory under Steven Gerrard in 2021 than at any point in the history of the club.

Those greedy, rapacious carpetbaggers who seized control of Rangers from 2011 brought the club to its knees. How cruel and haunting was the thought of Struth, buried high above Ibrox at Craigton Cemetery, so close to the financial carnage a mile away.

Their bloated salaries and bonus packages were as unedifying as the continuing zeal to deny Rangers their history, even if the decision to begin the process of liquidating the old holding company in June 2012 caused widespread confusion initially.

Thankfully, Rangers men of stature emerged, just as president George Goudie had done in 1883 when his loan of £30 saved the club from going under little more than a decade after it had been formed.

Dave King, Douglas and Graeme Park, John Bennett, George Letham and George Taylor invested significantly, followed by others who had come to see that Rangers had been returned to safe hands, bolstered by record season ticket sales of more than 47,500.

Front and centre at the worst of times were also Paul Murray, John Gilligan, Chris Graham, Craig Houston and John Brown. They played crucial roles in uniting fans and shareholders against those who had come to be despised.

‘Bomber’ has always been my favourite Rangers player, for many reasons. How typical of the man that he stood up to be counted, speaking out when others sat quietly and said nothing. It was a genuine honour when he agreed to write the foreword for this new edition.

In truth, the support never wavered, even as doubts about the integrity of those in the boardroom grew. Rangers played consistently to sell out crowds from the Third Division onwards, with season ticket sales never dropping below 38,500.

The authenticity of the men in the boardroom, slowly but surely, was matched by the players on the pitch as Gerrard gave the fans a team with whom they could once again identify and trust as he further underlined his own reputation as a football man of substance.

Three times they have emerged in recent years from the earliest Europa League preliminary rounds to reach the group stages and beyond before that stunning 55th title win in 2021, forever destined to be the pinnacle of Gerrard’s reign in the eyes of supporters.

In qualifying for the group stages of the Europa League again in August 2021, Gerrard took Rangers into the top 50 of co-efficient ranked clubs in Europe. In 2017, Rangers were a lowly 265 in UEFA’s ratings. Gerrard took them to 40th after their aggregate victory over Armenian champions FC Alashkert.

Remarkably, that was 10 places higher than Celtic, who had banked a shot at the Champions League for five years without a challenge from Rangers after their collapse into the financial wilderness in 2012. Little wonder billboards declared ‘Legend in Liverpool, God in Glasgow’ after winning 55.

Rangers, of course, went 38 league games unbeaten under Gerrard, arguably the most impressive championship – certainly the most important – in the long and fabled history of the club. That surely includes even the campaign of 1898/99 when a world record of 18 wins from 18 games was set – how that must have pleased Moses, his brother Peter and Tom as they looked on, their playing days long behind them.

Rangers have organised a festival of events to mark the 150th anniversary of the club and are constructing a museum where the story of its humble foundations will surely be recognised for future generations to celebrate and give thanks.

Nothing of the history of Rangers – absolutely nothing – would have been written without the determination and pride of four boys who had no money, no kit and even had to borrow a ball to play their first matches on Glasgow Green.

It’s hoped the publication of The Gallant Pioneers – this is now its fourth edition – has also helped inform supporters of the passion and principles behind the formation of the club. Those teenagers took a walk in West End Park and gave voice to an ambition that amounted to little more than the creation of a team to play the new craze of association football.

The early years’ research, particularly the fastidious efforts of Gordon Bell and Iain McColl, is ongoing still. In this edition we reach back through the mists of time and, we hope, offer further clarity on the beginnings of Rangers, not to mention that picture of William.

Some may find our conclusions controversial, including our belief the club played as a side known as Western before adopting the name of Rangers, most likely in September 1873. We’ll let our opinion, backed by our evidence, speak for itself.

There is a pride in the legacy left by the book. I received a phone call from a club executive, shortly after The Gallant Pioneers was first published in 2009, and they revealed Sandy Jardine had read it and proposed plans to change the date of the club’s formation from 1873 to 1872 atop the stand that now carries his name.

It was a towering gesture from Sandy, who was such a passionate advocate of the story of the club’s early years before his sad passing in 2014.

More than most, Sandy appreciated that planning for future meant honouring the past. Moses, the two Peters, William and Tom deserve every bit of recognition that comes their way in the 150th year for the fabulous club they helped build.

Gary Ralston

October 2021

The Gallant Pioneers 150th Anniversary logo

1

The Birth of The Blues

There are days, months and years that will remain woven like silk ribbons into the red, white and blue reflections of Rangers fans forevermore.

The memories of success are sewn from Barcelona in May 1972 with Willie Waddell at the helm, to Walter Smith’s Wednesday night in April 1997 when nine-in-a-row was won, all the way to the clinching of title number 55 under Steven Gerrard in March 2021.

Life is a constant casting off and there are still thousands of those among the Light Blues legions whose recollections are rooted deeper in the past, perhaps to Scot Symon’s Treble winners of 1964 with Slim Jim in his glorious pomp.

Maybe they can even go back to old man Struth himself, the legendary manager who led the club to a record 18 championships and the first grand slam in Scottish football history in 1949.

Understandably, for the tales of derring dos before the Second World War – and there were many – we have to increasingly rely on dusty memoirs and faded newspaper clippings to tell us of the wonders of David Meiklejohn, Bob McPhail, Sandy Archibald, Alan Morton et al, who arguably made Rangers the best team in the world for several seasons between the wars.

Reaching even further into the past, John ‘Kitey’ McPherson was the colossus who helped the Light Blues to their first Scottish Cup triumph in 1894 and then, with team-mates such as Nicol Smith, played a pivotal role in the unique title win of 1898/99.

Back then, 18 wins out of 18 were secured, an unprecedented achievement rightly and repeatedly referenced when Gerrard’s class of 2021 went unbeaten in the Premiership from first to last.

Journalist John Allan was around to witness and recount many of those earliest feats and the former Daily Record editor produced the three most authoritative works on the history of Rangers before his death in 1953.

Even today, ‘The Story of the Rangers’, ‘Eleven Great Years’ and ‘18 Eventful Years’, which recorded the story of the club to 1951, retain much credibility and authenticity.

Allan is owed an apology from these pages. It was noted in previous editions that he had the clasp of a loyal Ranger, as Bill Struth once remarked, but that the strength of his grip on historical reality had become a bone of contention.

Undoubtedly Allan, born in Kinning Park in 1879, romanticised the formation of the club he quickly grew to support and did not do enough to clarify the old chestnut – thankfully now settled and resolved – around the formation of the club in 1872 rather than, as he insisted, 12 months later.

Allan’s influence stretched beyond the written page to the very corridors of power at Ibrox itself, where he was recognised as a confidant of Struth in particular. The greatest ever Rangers boss was effusive in his praise in an obituary for Allan that appeared under his byline in the Rangers Supporters’ Association annual of 1954, his last of 34 years as Ibrox manager.

Struth recalled of Allan: I still see him walk into my room with the smile of the kindly heart and the clasp of a loyal Ranger. He knew many of my secrets. They were sacred to him. No confidence was ever in danger when given to John. Our success was his success, yet in his role of critic he was a forthright, honest chronicler who sought no favours and gave none in the line of duty.

He added: "I have known him to leave his office after many hours of exacting work, slip quietly into his home and pen the deeds of our great teams of the past until roused from his labours by the dawn breaking in on his thoughts.

"A few hours sleep and he was back at his desk. So brilliant a pen as his could have told an absorbing story without the necessity of detail. But as he said to