MVP: DlW

Team DPs: 126

RAN are rivals to 4 teams.

Youth, players with ability, belief and luck at the right time.

How it all began . . .

FOUR young men shared a dream - to start a football club. They had no money, no kit - not even a ball.

Yet from such humble beginnings emerged the most famous of all Scottish football clubs - Rangers FC.

None of those four men could have foreseen what was to happen when they met in 1872. They cared only for having their own team, never daring to think that more than a century later their club would have won so many glittering prizes and would be followed by millions throughout the world. All those championships and cups would never have found their way into the Ibrox Trophy Room but for that encounter between Peter McNeil, his brother Moses, Peter Campbell and William McBeath.

Season 54 Review (written November 2023)

I’ve always maintained that you are likely to experience a helping of both good and bad luck in nearly every game. It isn’t the relative proportion of good versus bad luck that will decide your fate but more at what stage of the match resolution process that good and bad luck will strike. Ideally you want your good fortune to shine during the shot conversion process. I believe that you need luck to favour you at the right time in order for you to win a trophy and that’s exactly what happened through The Gers successful Cecil Cup campaign. We eased past Airdrie in the first round then defeated Motherwell 5-4 on aggregate after an epic encounter. This was a tie which illustrated my good luck bad luck theory perfectly. The Gers dominated the Calculated Shot Count over the two legs (18.03 to 10.70) but had the misfortune to face an overall 14-18 shot count deficit. However, our good luck came at the shot conversion phase as we converted 5 to 4. We then eased past Hibs 7-1 on aggregate before facing Celtic in the semi-final. Luck definitely smiled on The Gers in the away leg as we won 3-2 from a 4.56 to 9.34 CSC deficit. The home leg saw a huge home bonus swing of 70 which paved the way for a 3-0 win and a final appearance against St Johnstone. The Gers posted a big 15.14 to 6.49 CSC advantage which saw us lead 3-0 at half time. However, Saints pulled back two second half goals to make it a nervy, but ultimately successful, ending to the game and a trophy was won.

I’m not sure what to make of our league campaign. Results indicate that it was poor (W9 D8 L13) but performances indicated by CSC values tell a different story (W18 D2 L10). This suggests that The Gers should have ended the season with 56 points instead of their actual points tally of 35. That’s a big discrepancy. Was it bad luck or bad management that left The Gers first division status maintained through a playoff win? I’ll leave that for the reader to decide.

SESL Cup progress was going very well until we hit an obstacle named Hibernian at the Quarter Final stage. The Gers posted what should have been a decisive CSC advantage of 6.28 to 0.86 but failed to score then lost to a late penalty goal. This one made the top ten of my all time ‘Olmec’ bizarre outcomes.

Was Season 54 a bad or a good season for The Gers? Well, like most things, it depends on how you look at it. Our objective was to win one of the three available trophies and that we achieved by lifting the Cecil Cup. However our league results were extremely disappointing.