Spl - Blog Posts
The heart of football
by Stuart, Ball Street
I was going tell you about Ball Street, however I can’t let events at Ibrox pass without comment.
It’s a tale of self-destruction with a vengeance, true of all parties involved in the toxic cauldron of Scottish football. But that’s for another day. Today let me tell you a story about football and the fan.
Rangers are the club of my uncles, two of whom had heart attacks at Ibrox watching the Rangers. One sadly passed; the amazing medical staff in the ground saved the other, who was the first to take me every other week.
It’s also the club of my late father, who worked on the rebuilding of the Main Stand and salvaged the old wooden seats and fittings to craft a handsome fireplace for his living room. Every time we went to the back shops, we would occasionally stop by old Jimmy’s to see if he needed any messages. Only later did I find out that Jimmy was Jimmy Smith, scorer of 225 goals in 234 appearances for Rangers between 1928 and 1946.
I know my history. I know that a love that’s been shared by generations of my family doesn’t exist on the balance sheet of Sevco 5088. The club can’t be taken away by liquidation, player departures, rulings or the ill-feeling of others.
A football club lives only the hearts of its fans. That’s true of any club. As Kevin Drinkell said recently: “Rangers fans who were supporters yesterday will still be supporters today. That's the bottom line.”
Sure it will be hard to see the likes of Naismith and McCabe grace other arenas - they've lost their chance to be legends - but Ibrox will always have its heroes. There may well be a succession of journeymen on the horizon who might never have climbed the marble staircase, but among them will be legends that we’ll still talk about in years to come.
Like many others, I’ve long said we should start over in Division Three. We should take our medicine and let others have theirs. I’ll look forward to Glasgow derbies with Queen’s Park and trips to Montrose where we holidayed as kids. And then I’ll be able to tell you more about why every league is a premier league.
Yelling about this again since it's a big pet peeve of mine but please be aware!!! that "kill the wolf" is not!! a valid translation of Sha Po Lang!! it's not even a "literal translation" it's just MTL gibberish trying to make sense of a term with no English translation
pasting the explanation I gave on twt below the cut-
杀破狼/sha po lang corresponds to three different stars 七杀/qi sha ('seven killings'), 破军/po jun ('vanquisher of armies'), and 贪狼/tan lang ('greedy wolf'), which are significant in a system of Chinese astrology called 紫微斗数/zi wei dou shu
when these three stars appear in certain positions in a natal star chart, they compose the 'sha po lang' star formation, which foretells change and revolution, a turbulent fate which could lead to one making a name for oneself in chaotic times, or ending up destitute
famous generals are often born under this star formation as well - as you can see, there are a lot of ties with the themes of the novel itself
but, however, it doesn't really have a proper english translation, hence why i'm in favor of the 'stars of chaos' version of the title
if you want to look at the actual stars (look closer at the vol 1 cover for a little easter egg!)
qi sha = polis/mu sagittarii
po jun = alkaid/eta ursae majoris
tan lang = dubhe/alpha ursae majoris
thank you minirant complete