Читать книгу Ally McCoist - Rangers Legend - Alistair Aird - Страница 15

For the first time in many years the dawn of a new season was ushered in with an air of excited expectation around Ibrox Stadium. The League Cup success over Celtic and the mid-season unbeaten run in the league during 1983/84 had lifted the flagging spirits of the Rangers fans, with both going a long way to help banish the memories of what had been a painful final two years under John Greig. With the indomitable Wallace about to embark on the first full season of his second spell in charge, there was a genuine belief that the club’s six-year title famine could finally be ended.

Rangers were certainly well travelled as they prepared for the 1984/85 season. Ally McCoist and his team-mates clocked up the air miles and added several stamps to their passports, as the Light Blues embarked on a tour of Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States before refining their preparations with a series of matches in Switzerland and West Germany.

The trip to Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US took place just a few weeks after the conclusion of the 1983/84 season. Jock Wallace arranged the trip in a bid to foster a real team spirit in the first-team player pool. He had implemented the same strategy midway through his previous spell in charge of Rangers when he had taken his players to Australia and New Zealand in the summer of 1975, and the trip laid the foundations for two domestic Trebles. He was clearly hoping this excursion would deliver the same results as it had done nine years earlier.

The trip was by no means a jolly one, though. The team-bonding sessions were interspersed with a number of tough matches, with Rangers taking on the national sides of Australia and New Zealand before crossing swords with Toronto Blizzard, Minnesota Strikers and Bundesliga champions VfB Stuttgart once they arrived Stateside.

The round-the-world trip also afforded some ex-pats the rare opportunity to watch their Rangers heroes at close quarters and the attendances for all the matches were healthy, with the presence of such a large number of Rangers supporters only serving to illustrate to McCoist what a unique association Rangers have with their following. ‘Whenever you walk through the imposing front doors at Ibrox and into the marble hall you know that the club is special,’ he said. ‘But if you ever had any doubts, just one lengthy tour with the team would demonstrate the bond which exists between the club and its supporters. It is honestly quite incredible.’¹

Rangers played in a total of nine matches on their travels, winning three, drawing three and losing three, with McCoist playing in all the games and scoring four goals. He netted a brace against Australia in a 3-2 defeat in Sydney, once against the Australia ‘B’ side in a 4-2 victory in Newcastle, and once in a 5-2 defeat against Minnesota that was played on artificial grass at the indoor Metrodome Stadium in Minneapolis.

The tour was not without its troubles, though, with strikers Bobby Williamson and Colin McAdam both sustaining injuries that would effectively sideline them for the whole of the season ahead. Williamson made just one appearance before breaking his leg when he fell awkwardly after trying to jump over a small fence at the team hotel, and McAdam suffered the same injury during the defeat against the Aussies. The loss of Williamson, in particular, was a real blow for Wallace, as he had intended to team him with McCoist in attack for the season ahead.

With the ranks swelled by new additions Iain Ferguson and Cammy Fraser, both of whom were purchased from Dundee, Rangers completed their preparation for the new season with five games in Europe and an Ibrox friendly against Leicester City. Injury kept McCoist out of the first three fixtures in Switzerland and also excused him from a trip to the famous ‘Murder Hill’ on the beaches of Gullane in East Lothian. In his first stint as manager, Wallace and his players had been regular visitors to the sand dunes for pre-season training, and although the sessions were torturous (many players were physically sick as they ran up and down the unforgiving sandy slopes), they boosted stamina, which meant Rangers often outlasted their opponents when the competitive action got underway. Wallace was clearly keen to apply the tried and tested formula again, and although McCoist missed out this time around, he endured the ‘ordeal’ the following summer ahead of the 1985/86 season.

It was evident that the harsh training at Gullane was working as, in McCoist’s absence, Rangers racked up three straight wins against relatively modest opposition, knocking in eighteen goals in the process. McCoist returned to the ranks for the fourth match of the tour, a 3-0 reverse at the hands of FC Sion, and also took his place for the final contest, a fine 2-1 win over FC Kaiserslautern. He was paired alongside new recruit Ferguson in attack, and the duo showed signs of promise when they both got on the scoresheet in the last friendly before the league programme began, a 2-2 draw against Gary Lineker’s Leicester at Ibrox.

Three days after the draw with Leicester, the competitive action kicked off with a drab 0-0 draw at home to St Mirren in the Premier Division, a result that seemed to quell the initial optimism that had reverberated around the corridors of Ibrox Stadium just a few months earlier. However, Rangers soon recovered their stride and lost just two of their opening twenty league fixtures to leave them handily placed in the race for the championship. They recorded several morale-boosting victories in that period, with fellow challengers Dundee United beaten at Ibrox and draws registered home and away against Celtic, which meant that, as 1984 drew to a close, Wallace’s side were only six points adrift of league leaders Aberdeen.

For Ally McCoist, however, the opening gambit of the 1984/85 season had not been such a pleasant experience, as he struggled to rediscover the form that had made him top goalscorer at Ibrox during his debut season. He continued his love affair with the League Cup, scoring twice and delivering a Man of the Match display against Raith Rovers in the third round and three times over the course of the two-leg semi-final against Meadowbank Thistle (his tally of five goals made him the tournament’s top scorer for the second successive year), but he failed to reproduce that kind of scoring return in the Premier Division. He scored just twice in the opening twenty league matches – against Dumbarton at Boghead in August and Morton at Ibrox in September – and by November had lost his place in the first team following a glaring miss in a UEFA Cup tie against Inter Milan.

In addition to putting up a sustained challenge for the Premier Division title, one of Jock Wallace’s objectives for the season was to enjoy a prolonged run in Europe. The League Cup triumph against Celtic had handed Rangers a place in the 1984/85 UEFA Cup and they were drawn to face Bohemians of Dublin in the first round.

The first leg of the tie, played at Dalymount Park, was not McCoist’s first experience of competitive continental football, though. He had made his European debut on the holiday island of Malta a year earlier, as Rangers thrashed Valletta 8-0 in the opening round of the European Cup-Winners’ Cup. The name ‘McCoist’ may not have appeared on the scoresheet, but he did create three of the four goals scored by unlikely hero Dave McPherson. A bout of flu kept McCoist out of the return leg, a match Rangers won 10-0 to rack up a Scottish record 18-0 aggregate victory, but he played in both legs of the second-round tie against FC Porto. Rangers won 2-1 at Ibrox, but a 1-0 defeat in Portugal, while under the charge of caretaker manager Tommy McLean, saw them eliminated from the tournament on the away-goals rule.

Unfortunately, the match against Bohemians will always be remembered for events off the field rather than on it. The tie was played against the backdrop of a poisonous atmosphere stimulated by sectarian hatred, with passions stirred further when a Union Jack was torched in the Bohemians end during the first half. Both sets of fans exchanged vitriolic insults throughout the opening forty-five minutes to such an extent that the football match unfolding in front of them seemed coincidental.

By half-time, with the sides level at 2-2, the trouble had escalated, and when a Bohemians supporter entered the field of play in an attempt to attack the Rangers substitutes, the riot that had threatened to erupt at various junctures during the first half finally came to pass. A Rangers fan entered the fray in an attempt to attack the Irish pitch invader and within minutes supporters from both sides had also scaled the fencing that penned them onto the terraces. The police eventually restored some semblance of order, aided by Jock Wallace, who emerged from his half-time team talk to appeal for calm among the Rangers supporters.

Rangers were severely reprimanded by UEFA for the conduct of their supporters, but survived a threatened expulsion from the tournament to scrape through to the next round. McCoist actually broke his European scoring duck in the first leg in Dublin, hooking a cross from Davie Cooper into the net after just seven minutes, but the Dubliners fought back to win by three goals to two, and it took two late goals in the second leg at Ibrox to carry Rangers through 4-3 on aggregate.

Rangers’ opponents in the second round were Italian cracks Inter Milan, one of the most distinguished names in the history of European football. This was the second time Rangers had met them in European competition, with the previous contest in the 1964/65 European Cup ending in a narrow 3-2 aggregate victory for the Italians. As had been the case in the earlier meeting, the first leg of the tie with Inter was played in Milan, and took place just four days before Rangers were due at Hampden to face Dundee United in the League Cup final and it was in the cauldron of the San Siro that things began to turn sour for Ally McCoist.

Few gave Rangers much hope of progressing against the star-studded Serie A side. No Scottish club side had ever won a match on Italian soil, and Inter were a side decorated with a multi-national assortment of talent, ranging from Walter Zenga in goal through to Liam Brady in midfield and the dynamic front pairing of Alessandro Altobelli and Karl Heinz Rummenigge. Wallace’s men refused to be intimidated, though, and gave an excellent account of themselves throughout the match.

Inter took the lead early in the game but, despite doubling their advantage after sixty-eight minutes, Rangers were always in with a chance of snatching a crucial away goal, and sixty seconds after the veteran Franco Causio had notched Inter’s second goal, the golden opportunity presented itself. Midfielder Ian Redford unleashed a shot from the edge of the penalty area, which beat Zenga all ends up, and the Italian goalkeeper could only watch as the ball fizzed towards goal. It rebounded from the crossbar and McCoist, lurking in the six-yard box, followed the trajectory of the ball as it spun towards him, setting up a simple chance to score. With Zenga lying powerless a few yards away, the goal gaped in front of the striker and all he had to do was hit the target to give Rangers that much sought-after goal. McCoist mistimed his jump, though, and his header failed to find the target: the proverbial ‘sitter’ had been missed. ‘It was the kind of opening I should be able to put away every time,’ he said, ‘but in the circumstances I snatched at the ball, the chance disappeared and you know the rest of the story.’²

It was a glaring miss. Had McCoist scored, the whole complexion of the tie would have changed, as the away goal would have presented Rangers with a realistic chance of progressing to the third round. Instead, ‘the rest of the story’ that McCoist spoke about saw the striker punished for his profligacy when Inter stepped up a gear and chalked up a third goal three minutes from time. Altobelli was the architect, sprinting down the left before crossing for Rummenigge to head into the net from close range.

Although he retained his place in the starting eleven for the League Cup final at Hampden fours days later – Rangers defeated United 1-0 thanks to an Iain Ferguson goal a minute before half-time – McCoist was relegated to the substitutes’ bench for the second match against Inter at Ibrox. From his vantage point on the sidelines, he watched along with over 30,000 others as Rangers almost climbed the seemingly unassailable mountain. Wallace, who was unable to field Davie Cooper, after the winger failed to pass a late fitness test, gambled, throwing centre-half and captain John McClelland up front alongside League Cup match-winner Ferguson and the Australian Dave Mitchell, and it almost paid off when a spirited performance produced a 3-1 victory on the night. The result was not enough, though, and Rangers tumbled out 4-3 on aggregate, with many rueing the missed opportunity that had fallen to McCoist in Italy. One of them was Jock Wallace, who said: ‘Ally McCoist had the best chance of the game [in Milan] and failed to score. If that had gone in then we would have gone through. I’m convinced of that.’³

McCoist suffered as a result of his misfortune in front of goal in Milan. He was omitted from the squad for the next league match, a 2-2 draw with Hibernian at Easter Road, and was banished to the reserves. During his nine-game stint in the second team, he scored against Hibernian, Aberdeen (twice), Hearts, and St Mirren, but his return to form did not result in instant restoration to the top team. He missed a total of seven fixtures and rumours once again surfaced that his time at Ibrox was at an end. Alan Durban, now in charge of Cardiff City, approached Jock Wallace with an offer to take McCoist on loan, but Wallace rebuffed the proposal, stating that he had ‘no intention of letting the player go anywhere on loan or otherwise’ before moving to boost McCoist’s spirits by saying: ‘He has been put in the reserves to find his feet again and I have been pleased by his attitude.’⁴

McCoist’s improved attitude and form eventually prompted Wallace to recall him to the first-team squad and he made his return to the top team when he replaced Derek Ferguson after sixty-eight minutes of a 4-2 win over Dumbarton at Boghead four days after Christmas. However, although back in the first-team picture, the New Year kicked off just as the old one had ended for McCoist, as he made just one substitute appearance in the first three matches of 1985. He was left out of the squad that travelled to Parkhead on New Year’s Day, a fixture Rangers lost by two goals to one, and he missed out again when Rangers lost by the same scoreline at home to Hibernian eleven days later, turning out for the reserves instead.

Those two defeats, coupled with a 2-2 draw at Dundee, meant that Wallace’s men did not enjoy a happy start to the New Year, and when they were thrashed 5-1 by Aberdeen at Pittodrie on 19 January, all the early season promise evaporated. Their league form went into a sharp decline, with Wallace’s men winning only four of their last sixteen matches and losing nine of the other twelve. Such form is hardly the hallmark of championship challengers and Rangers once again limped home in fourth place, although this time only goal difference separated the Light Blues and fifth-placed St Mirren. The gulf between Rangers and the rest of the championship contenders was of mammoth proportions: they finished up twenty-one points adrift of champions Aberdeen, fourteen behind runners-up Celtic and nine away from third-placed Dundee United.

McCoist, without a goal for the first team for four months, had made his first start since the San Siro debacle in the 5-1 pummelling at Pittodrie, and he was still in the side when Dundee arrived at Ibrox on Scottish Cup business on 16 February. With the league challenge petering out, the Cup represented the last realistic chance for the Light Blues to add to the League Cup they had won in October, but on a desperate afternoon, their season came to a shuddering conclusion. The ninety minutes played out in front of a crowd of 26,619 represented the nadir of Ally McCoist’s Rangers career.

In the early 1980s, Dundee had been something of a bogey team for Rangers. The Light Blues had won just three of the previous eight Premier Division fixtures contested between the pair, and it was the Dens Park men who had extinguished Rangers’ hopes of an eighth successive Scottish Cup final appearance the previous campaign when they eliminated Wallace’s men at the quarter-final stage. Dundee arrived in Govan imbued by the confidence garnered from a 2-0 league victory over title-chasing Celtic seven days earlier and, with only ten minutes of the match gone, they set themselves on course for an Old Firm double when John Brown, who would later become a Rangers legend himself, put the visitors ahead when he flicked a corner-kick beyond Peter McCloy.

Rangers recovered from the early blow, though, and began to take control of the match, creating goal-scoring opportunities and dominating possession. Chance after chance fell to McCoist, but he contrived to spurn all the scoring opportunities that came his way, either putting the ball beyond the post, over the bar or seeing it stopped by the goalkeeper. No matter how hard he tried, he simply could not get his name on the scoresheet. His fortune on the day was summed up when he eventually did find the net only to have his ‘goal’ ruled out for offside. ‘I’d give up twenty of the other goals I’ve scored in my time at Ibrox just to have got one in the net that day,’ he recalled some years later.⁵

The match ended 1-0 in Dundee’s favour and another opportunity to bring silverware to Ibrox had vanished. As the despondent players trooped off the Ibrox turf, the home support howled and booed, baying for blood, with McCoist their number one target, the scapegoat for another afternoon of total frustration. Ibrox rose in unison to berate the striker and launched into a tirade of abuse that culminated in a song that told McCoist, in no uncertain terms, where he could go.

Once back inside the dressing room, the young striker was overcome with emotion and he burst into tears. ‘The months of abuse and controlling my feelings took their toll,’ he said, ‘and I howled like a baby.’⁶ Experienced pros like Derek Johnstone and Colin McAdam intervened in a bid to diffuse the situation and reassure their heartbroken team-mate, and they eventually helped McCoist compose himself.

Outside the main entrance at Ibrox, Edmiston Drive was alive with a throng of supporters angrily demonstrating against the inept performances of their team, with one disgruntled fan even hurling the remainder of his season ticket book through the front door. Wallace and his players were pilloried, with McCoist berated more than most. It seemed harsh on the young striker, as no one in a blue jersey had performed well on the day, but in situations such as this a scapegoat is often sought and his wastefulness in front of goal saw McCoist cast in that role on this occasion.

Taking the advice of his team-mates to keep his head down and not inflame the situation by engaging in any sort of discussion with the dissatisfied fans, McCoist simply gathered his belongings and headed for the exit. He did not stop until he reached the sanctuary of his car, but en route his ears were bombarded with vitriolic comments, ones that hurt to his very core. It was all the more upsetting, as McCoist’s girlfriend Allison and her aunt and uncle had made the trip to Scotland to see McCoist in action for the first time.

Rangers were torn to shreds the next day, as their supporters and the media sifted through the wreckage of another ‘car crash’ season at Ibrox. The focus of the fury of a clutch of supporters was the profligate Ally McCoist, and although Wallace leapt to his defence – ‘Nobody works harder than him and let’s not forget that it was the same McCoist who won us the League Cup last season’⁷ – it failed to prevent the beleaguered striker receiving a sack load of hate mail from a minority of supporters in the Rangers community. The criticism was stinging and upsetting, but the nasty correspondence was offset by a letter McCoist received from a gentleman by the name of Willie Woodburn.

Nicknamed ‘Big Ben’, Woodburn had made over 300 appearances for Rangers between 1946 and 1955 and had been a linchpin at the heart of the club’s celebrated ‘Iron Curtain’ defence of that era. He was a tough customer and a passionate man who hated to lose, but above all he had been a very gifted centre-half. Unfortunately, he is best remembered for receiving a sine dine suspension in September 1954, a punishment dished out after he had been ordered off in the final minute of a League Cup tie against Stirling Albion. It was the fifth time Woodburn had been sent from the field in his fourteen-year career and the beaks at the SFA decided to make an example of him. The ludicrous ban was eventually lifted in April 1957, but Woodburn had long since quit the game. In his letter to McCoist, Woodburn instructed the young striker to forget about his woes from the Dundee game. ‘He thought that I’d all the makings of a great player and that one day I’d prove all these fans wrong,’ McCoist recalls. ‘Getting a letter like that from a real Rangers legend was a tremendous lift – at a time when I really needed it. I can’t thank him enough for that.’⁸

McCoist was dropped for Rangers’ next match after the Cup exit, a 2-0 league defeat at the hands of Hearts at Tynecastle, but he played for the reserves and scored twice as the second string beat their Edinburgh counterparts by five goals to one at Ibrox. Another brace three days later in a 2-2 draw against Forfar Athletic in Stewart Kennedy’s testimonial staked his claim for a swift return to the top team, and Wallace, who had demoted McCoist in a bid to rebuild his shattered confidence, was clearly impressed with his striker’s performances, for he was immediately reinstated to the first eleven for the next league match against Dumbarton at Ibrox. It proved a seminal moment in Ally McCoist’s Rangers career, as it marked the beginning of one of the most successful goal-scoring stories in the history of Scottish Football.

Only 8,424 patrons graced the Ibrox stands that March afternoon, but the sparse attendance witnessed an emphatic return to form for McCoist. Eric Ferguson, making his first Premier Division appearance since August, opened the scoring after sixteen minutes, grabbing Rangers’ first competitive goal for a month in the process, and McCoist doubled the home side’s advantage in the twenty-seventh minute when he fired home a pass from Cooper. He then proceeded to complete his third double of the week two minutes into the second half, and only the athleticism of the Dumbarton goalkeeper Gordon Arthur denied him a hat-trick, the Sons’ stopper diving to tip away McCoist’s goal-bound header. Rangers eventually won the match by three goals to one to pick up only their second league victory of 1985 and, although it may sound a little melodramatic, it could be argued that the goals scored by McCoist that day were among the most important he ever struck in a Rangers jersey.

A goal-scoring contribution that had slowed to little more than a trickle was now back in full flow, and a spate of goals followed as McCoist became a mainstay in the side for the remainder of the campaign. Feeding on the confidence successful strikers thrive upon, he scored ten goals in the last nine league fixtures, a real purple patch for the striker. He only failed to score in two of those games, and included in his scoring haul was a late equaliser from the penalty spot in the last Old Firm match of the season at Parkhead and a superb hat-trick in a 3-0 win over Morton at Cappielow. One of McCoist’s goals in the latter match was created by debutant Ian Durrant, who was rewarded for a stellar display with the Man of the Match trophy. In those days, eighteen-year-old Durrant was McCoist’s boot boy, and the duo forged a brotherly bond from that moment. ‘I have made many friends in this football life,’ McCoist penned in the foreword to Durrant’s autobiography Blue and White Dynamite, ‘but in Ian Durrant I found the little brother I never had.’⁹

Given that McCoist had been staring into the abyss only three months earlier, his late-season goal glut represented a remarkable turnaround in both form and fortune. He was now back in favour with both the manager and the discerning supporters (his late penalty goal against Celtic had been greeted with a less than melodic rendition of ‘Super Ally’), and the ten goals scored in that period gave him a total of eighteen for the season. For the second successive campaign, he finished as the club’s top goalscorer, with a breakdown of twelve league goals, five in the League Cup and one in the UEFA Cup. He also scored one of Rangers’ goals when they defeated Kuwait 2-1 in a friendly match in Jordan – Rangers played three matches in the Gulf in March to complete a whirlwind year of travel for the club – and he had the distinction of becoming the first player to score a hat-trick in the annual Tennents Sixes tournament. McCoist’s treble helped Rangers to a 4-0 win over Hibernian, but his goals were not enough to keep the trophy at Ibrox. Despite beating Morton 4-3, holders Rangers lost 3-1 to both St Mirren and Dundee to exit the tournament at the group stages.

As the season drew to a close, McCoist was looking to the future with renewed vigour. His thirst for goals had finally been quenched and the twenty-two-year-old was now riding on the crest of a wave. He was refusing to rest on his laurels, though, saying: ‘I want to do better next season and keep my form all the way through the year. If I can work at that then maybe I can help the team challenge for the Premier League title – which is what we all want to win at Ibrox.’¹⁰

As the new campaign dawned, though, the pressure was mounting on Jock Wallace. He had been reappointed as manager in the hope that he could return Rangers to their former glories, but instead of closing the gap that had developed between themselves and the top trio of Aberdeen, Celtic and Dundee United, his Rangers side were being cast further adrift. Wallace was wise enough to know that neither the board nor the fans would tolerate another abysmal campaign.

He intended to prepare for the 1985/86 season in West Germany, but the Heysel tragedy in Brussels prompted a change of plan and Rangers toured the Highlands instead. McCoist found the net in both of Rangers’ games, scoring twice in a 5-1 win over Ross County and netting once in a 6-0 thrashing of Inverness Caledonian. The pre-season schedule was completed with victories over Ayr United and FC Twente Enschede, with the match against the Dutch side delivering McCoist’s fourth goal of the pre-season.

Despite the dreadful end to the previous campaign, Jock Wallace made only one new signing for 1985/86, recruiting midfielder Dougie Bell from Aberdeen. The fact that he did not attempt to shore up a leaky defence that had conceded forty-one goals in twenty-seven games in the wake of the departure of club captain John McClelland surprised many in the Rangers community. The big Northern Irishman had quit the club to join Watford in the English First Division in November 1984 having been at loggerheads with both Wallace and the Rangers board for some months over his wage demands. Failure to plug the gap he left ultimately proved to be Wallace’s downfall.

Initially, at least, things looked good for Rangers. The team got off to a good start and were unbeaten in their first six league games, with victories over Dundee United, Hibernian, Hearts, St Mirren and Clydebank and a 1-1 draw with Celtic at Parkhead taking the side to the summit of the Premier Division table. McCoist started the season in fine form too, netting in each of the opening two Premier Division fixtures against Dundee United and Hibernian and also making the breakthrough after thirty-four minutes of the Old Firm match when he knocked the ball into the net following some excellent wing play from full-back Hugh Burns.

However, Rangers’ good fortune did not last long and the wheels came off their championship bandwagon spectacularly in late September when the club suffered back-to-back home defeats against Dundee (0-1) and Aberdeen (0-3). Further defeats against Hibernian (1-2), St Mirren (1-2), Hearts (0-3) and Dundee (2-3) threatened to leave Rangers marooned in the bottom half of the table.

Throughout this calamitous spell, McCoist managed to maintain his free-scoring form, finding the net against Motherwell (a double in a 3-0 win at Fir Park in October and the only goal of the game at Ibrox two months later), Dundee United (solitary strikes in 1-1 draws at Tannadice and Ibrox), St Mirren (Rangers’ only goal in the 2-1 defeat at Love Street in October), Celtic (the third goal in a surprise 3-0 win at Ibrox on 9 November) and Dundee (a brace in a 3-2 defeat at Dens Park in which John Brown stole the show with a hat-trick for the home side). However, despite boasting an abundant goal-scoring return, McCoist was still powerless to prevent the club’s slide into mediocrity.

The team fared little better in the New Year. They lost 2-0 at Parkhead on New Year’s Day, and although they offered hope by stringing together a run of three successive victories that included a 5-0 home victory against Dundee, Rangers won only two of their last twelve league games. In total, Wallace’s men lost fourteen of their thirty-six matches in the Premier Division and eventually finished fifth in the table. They failed to average a point per game for the first time in their illustrious history and fifth place and passage to European football for 1986/87 was only granted on the last day of the season by virtue of a 2-0 home win over Motherwell. Salt was poured into the already gaping wounds when arch-rivals Celtic won the championship, their first since 1982, on the last Saturday of the season, winning 5-0 at Love Street against St Mirren to pinch the title from Hearts on goal difference.

No solace could be derived from the cup competitions either and the season ended without domestic silverware. Hibernian extinguished hopes of a third successive League Cup triumph with a 2-1 aggregate win in a two-leg semi-final. Alan Rough saved a McCoist penalty in the first leg at Easter Road as Rangers went down 2-0 and, despite halving the deficit courtesy of a trademark Davie Cooper free-kick at Ibrox a fortnight later, Rangers tumbled out of the competition. It was another side from the nation’s capital that halted any charge in the Scottish Cup too, with Hearts defeating the Light Blues 3-2 at Tynecastle in their third-round encounter. Any hope that a decent run in the UEFA Cup could bring some much needed cheer to Govan also ended in the opening round. In fact, the 2-1 aggregate defeat from Spanish minnows and European debutants Osasuna only served to deepen the depression that had enshrouded Ibrox. The 1985/86 season had been without doubt the worst in the club’s history. Rangers had hit rock bottom.

The one shining light through all the gloom, however, was the prolific form of McCoist, with 1985/86 being the most productive of his first three seasons in a blue jersey. He played in thirty-three of the thirty-six Premier Division games and scored twenty-five goals to finish the season not only as the club’s top goalscorer, but also as the leading marksman in the Premier Division. His haul included hat-tricks against Dundee (in January) and Hibernian (in March) and three Old Firm goals. He also netted a vital penalty-kick on the final day of the season, as Rangers defeated Motherwell 2-0 to clinch a place in Europe. Goals against Hearts in the Scottish Cup and Clyde in the League Cup took his final tally for the season to twenty-seven.

The last of his three strikes against Celtic came in a quite splendid clash of the titans in March. The compelling match, played out in lashing rain at Ibrox, developed into a real seesaw affair, with Rangers clawing their way back from 3-1 down at one point to lead 4-3 only to be pegged back to 4-4 in the dying moments of the contest. McCoist scored Rangers’ second goal, a sizzling 25-yard ‘daisy cutter’, and played a pivotal role in their first goal of the match too, as he provided an inch-perfect cross for Cammy Fraser to net the first of his two goals. ‘It finished 4-4 and it was one of those games, the only game, where both sets of Old Firm fans went home happy,’ McCoist recalled when reflecting on the contest in 1991.¹¹

The one blemish on the McCoist report card for the season was a red card, the first of his senior career, dished out during a league match against Hearts at Ibrox in August. He was dismissed for his part in a skirmish that ensued following an incident involving Dougie Bell and Walter Kidd eighteen minutes from the end of the game. McCoist was one of a number of players from both sides to have got involved, and when he threw a punch at Hearts striker Sandy Clark, he was sent for an early bath. Clark, who had been a team-mate at Ibrox less than eighteen months previously, was also ordered off, along with the initial perpetrator, Walter Kidd.

McCoist was heavily censured for his conduct. On top of a hefty fine from Rangers and the automatic one-match ban that accompanies a dismissal, he was suspended for a further three games by the SFA. He did attempt to have the additional ban quashed by lodging an appeal, but his plea fell on deaf ears at Park Gardens in spite of the fact that he boasted an exemplary disciplinary record up until that point. He had accrued just five bookings since he had signed for Rangers, but the ban stood and he missed Rangers’ league matches against St Mirren, Clydebank and Dundee and a League Cup tie against Forfar Athletic as a result.

The red card aside, the 1985/86 season was a personal triumph for McCoist. He had now expunged the memories of that horrific spell in the latter part of 1984 and the early months of 1985, and was now becoming a firm favourite with the Rangers crowd. This was borne out by the countless ‘Player of the Year’ awards he received from Supporters’ Clubs throughout the country, and McCoist also became an icon for the club’s young supporters, becoming the first recipient of the Young Rangers Club ‘Player of the Year’ award. He was an overwhelming winner too, polling seventy percent of the votes cast. However, although delighted to pick up these awards, McCoist was acutely aware that football was a team game and that personal accolades and praise in the media meant nothing if they did not bring with them success in the shape of silverware for Rangers.

The return of Jock Wallace to the helm at Ibrox had clearly failed, and his second spell in charge came to an end when he was sacked on the 7 April 1986, the day after a dismal 2-0 home defeat to Tottenham Hotspur in a friendly that only attracted a meagre 12,665 patrons through the Ibrox turnstiles. McCoist recalled that Rangers ‘were disgraceful that day’¹², but even victory over the London side would not have earned Wallace a reprieve. Performances throughout the previous campaign had been unacceptable on all fronts and, in the end, it turned out to be a somewhat ignominious departure for the colossal figure of Wallace, with the memories of his successful first stint in charge now fading into the distance.

Alarm bells were now tolling around Ibrox, with fans disillusioned and fearful of what lay ahead for their beloved club. David Holmes, the newly installed chief executive, knew he had to do something to stop the listing Rangers ship from crashing into the rocks, and the salvage plan he drew up and implemented not only reinvigorated the fortunes of the Ibrox club, it also shook up Scottish football and dragged it kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century.