Six years ago this month, the
author, editor and publisher of the now iconic Downfall – How Rangers FC Self-Destructed, were putting together the
finishing touches for the book before it went to print. Downfall – How Rangers FC Self-Destructed, is once again being
reprinted this month. As with The Squad,
Phil’s recent novel, we will be offering signed copies exclusively from our Frontline Noir Online Store .
Downfall is timeless in that while it describes the lead up to an event
of 6 years ago, the liquidation of Rangers FC, it also describes the collusion
between media and subject to deny facts, spin untruths, and generally breath
life into the sense of entitlement that the Establishment Club had into its
successor, the new Rangers. Once again the bulk of Scottish Sports media is
missing in action, just as they were in years leading up to 2012.
I’d contacted Phil in June 2012
for the first time to discuss a different project entirely. I’d been put in
touch by a News International employee who’d recommended Phil. Ironically, the
same organisation would deny knowing much about Phil as they threw him under a
bus when they cancelled the serialisation of Downfall, a serialisation that News International had specifically
requested. I had, in fact, approached them to serialise a different book. It
was then that News International suggested, off their own bat, that they
serialise Downfall. We agreed, none of us anticipating the hysterical reaction ahead
which would result in News International cancelling the second instalment of
the Downfall serialisation.
At that time, very few people,
whether journalists or punters, were denying the fact that Rangers FC had been
liquidated. In fact, the front pages of the most widely-read newspapers had
banner headlines to that effect.
Downfall, then, can not only apply to the downfall of Rangers FC,
but also to the downfall of Scottish Sports Media as an independent, objective,
fearless collective. As an entity, Scottish Sports Journalism became a circus,
reducing itself to performing gravity-defying acts of intellectual contortion
as it simply sought to transcribe the New Story without ever calling it the New
Story as that would necessitate reference to the Old Story, which in turn would
undermine the New Story. The theory, of course, was that if the New Story was
repeated again and again then the punters would forget the Old Story, the one
on the front pages above. Even on sports
radio shows in Scotland, no one, not the journalists or the phone-in callers,
are allowed to mention Newco, Sevco, The New Rangers, The Old Rangers. The few
who have done so have been pilloried and, in the main, undefended publicly by
their peers. When The Mob, or The Klan (call that unscrupulous element of the
Rangers support what you will), get their metaphorical boots into “errant”
journalists who committed the transgression, deliberately or inadvertently, of referencing
the facts that dare not speak their name, look how few of their fellows, their
comrades, came out fighting and publicly challenged the lynchers.
How many said
#WeAreAllAngelaHaggerty, #WeAreAllJimSpence #WeAreAllGrahamSpiers and others? They
were few and far between. Perhaps they were outraged privately and got their tuppence
worth in behind closed doors. Fair
enough. But that’s hardly confronting a mob to the point it is called out and
embarrassed, is it?
Of course, suggesting every
Scottish sports journalist failed in his/her duty to report the truth would be
an error. Of course, there were several journalists who came out this whole
Orwellian period with their integrity intact, their courage all the more
demanding of respect because they were the exceptions. But the vacuum left by the absence of real journalism
in the wake (in every sense) of The Rangers Story played a big part in propelling
Social Media and while some in corporate media look down their noses at “citizen
journalism”, often citing “grammar and spelling”, they would do well to
remember, had it not been for journalism failing at a critical juncture in
Scottish sporting and social history, then punters like me would have been
happy to remain “mere consumers of news”. But, when you smell a rat and see
that the rat-catcher is fast asleep in a succulent lamb-induced food coma - or
at least pretending to be - it’s natural to stop consuming and try to find out independently
what is going on. You don’t need to be a vegetarian like me to not like this
brand of lamb. You just need taste.
With notable exceptions, Downfall was not reviewed in the corporate
media. One journalist I spoke to, and who I knew to be a decent, sane guy,
said, “Why invite a barrage of vile abuse, and get stalked by mental cases.” Several
journalists refused to even read it while at the same time criticising it,
another unseemly intellectual contortion, rendering their views on the book about
as pertinent as the those of the Psychic Reviewers, Klanites who’d reviewed the
book maliciously on Amazon before the book was even finished, never mind released.
Noo, that was clever.
We shouldn’t complain. All this furore
helped make Downfall a bestseller in
Scotland. Book stores sold it very well despite some having to sell it under
the counter due to fear of staff being harassed by less than well-wishers who’d
intermittently berate staff for stocking the book. Both of these facts became
added to the list of Facts Which Dare Not Speak Their Name.
The bottom line is that you have
to ask why Downfall is still the only
book on the demise of Old Rangers. It was one of the biggest sporting stories
in Scotland’s history. And yet the silence on the event is deafening, even in
2018. We will continue to reprint Downfall,
if only to enable the echo of history to break through that wilful silence.
