I was in Rangers vs Celtic crowd for first derby 65 years ago but here is why this one could be weirdest of the lot

Daily Record

03-05-2025

I was in the crowd for my first Old Firm derby aged 10 years old. That was 65 years ago.
The one I'll watch along with everybody else on Sunday might, seven decades later, be the weirdest of the lot.
A win for Celtic at Ibrox on Sunday sends them 20-points clear of their historic rivals.
That's not a gap. It's a yawning chasm. A different postcode.
The distance between the clubs would then begin to look like the days when Celtic were in the Premiership and Rangers were languishing in the Championship.
But, at the same time, there also exists the possibility that Barry Ferguson could record successive wins over Brendan Rodgers in the league and run up a third win on the trot for Rangers over Celtic in 2025.
That's how weird it is on Sunday.
Govan is about to become America's 51st state.
And what a state 49ers Enterprises will inherit once the takeover paperwork has finally been completed.
But in the city of Glasgow's private world of looking at matters relative to the Old Firm rivalry, Sunday's game is a stand-alone battle for the right to lord it over the other lot for the duration of the close season.
It is also Ferguson's last stand. Barry's not going to get the manager's job at Ibrox on the back of four wins from 11 matches so far. He knows that himself.
But when the interim manager reverts to his ambassadorial role inside Ibrox on matchdays next season, he would love to pull up a chair in the corporate hospitality section and tell the patrons how it felt to put a blemish on the complexion of the season for the team across the road on the other side of the city.
And that is, partly, what has been Ferguson's problem while he's had temporary control of team matters at Ibrox.
He's got a team full of players who, in the main, don't feel the way he does about Rangers. And never will.
Ferguson, along with his staff, Neil McCann, Billy Dodds and Allan McGregor, could itemise the grief they caused Celtic over the years when they were playing and the list would be as plentiful as it was painful for the opposition.
But you always get the impression that, in spite of all his exhortations, all that stuff about emotional commitment goes over the heads of his team members.
As I always say, Hamza Igamane is from Morocco. He's more Casablanca than Castlemilk. But Igamane could still win the PFA Scotland Young Player of the Year award on Sunday night at their annual dinner on the back of goals like his stunning winner against Celtic in the last Old Firm derby.
And that's where the striker, and others, are guilty of a kind of industrial misconduct.
There are Rangers players who go to work when they play Celtic and are then guilty of mass absenteeism when they play everybody else, forgetting that derby wins alone don't constitute a challenge for the league title. As this season has shown in sharp focus.
But I would also bet that Ferguson would love to see one more example of that flawed professionalism if it meant his first win as a manager at Ibrox turned out to be against Celtic.
Even if a win meant, as Rangers' new owners would put it in the language of the other side of the Atlantic, diddly squat.
It's a guess. But I think I'm right.