Ibrox pre 1978 thread

Some pics from the thread on the old board

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Rangers vs Celtic early 60's

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Early-mid 60's

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Rangers vs Real Madrid 1963

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Ibrox, probably late 50's....shed roof extension went up in 1954

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I remember hearing (or read somewhere ) that in the early days at Ibrox, a horse was used to pull the cutter to cut the grass. The story went that the Groundsman had a favourite horse and that after the horse died it was buried behind the goals at the Rangers end...similar place to in the pic.
I asked Tiny Gallagher about it once on a tour but she hadn't heard that and I think I emailed David Mason once about it.
Just wondered if anyone else ever heard that one..

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We played juventus in the second leg in late 1978 and the Copland road was being built, so we were using just three areas one of which I was in ...the old broomloan road end.

Down 1-0 from the first leg in Turin, we won 2-0 with goals from wee doddie & Gordon Smith.
Same here, mate and I were in the Broomloan that night..pissing down if I remember right? But what a night that was.

The only other time I was in the Broomie, with my Maw :rolleyes::rolleyes:, got in for free as my Uncle was on the turnstile there. It was when we played against St Mirren first game of the new season when we unfurled the Championship flag. Can't remember the result. Auld dear was more interested in the supporters getting stretcher'd out for reason unknown,Too much bevies, fighting or sunstroke as it was a belter of a day.
 
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Same here, mate and I were in the Broomloan that night..pissing down if I remember right? But what a night that was.

The only other time I was in the Broomie, with my Maw :rolleyes::rolleyes:, got in for free as my Uncle was on the turnstile there. It was when we played against St Mirren first game of the new season when we unfurled the Championship flag. Can't remember the result. Auld dear was more interested in the supporters getting stretcher'd out for reason unknown,Too much bevies, fighting or sunstroke as it was a belter of a day.
 
This is the first time I've ever read this version of events. It was well established that the club intended to modernise the stadium as a result of the Disaster. Yes, it took a bit of time but nothing on that scale had ever been attempted in British football before. As it is, I think the club got it right and gave the club a tremendous advantage going into the 1980's and beyond and the fact their core design has not had to be revisited in 40 years tells you how well it was planned. The financing of it was down by some borrowing, I'm sure, and by money from the Pools. I'm not sure the club had millions of pounds sitting in the bank at this time. I may be wrong.

However, I think you do make a good point about the attitude of the board at that time towards fiscal prudence. Conservative people who ran the club on a tight leash. This is in stark contrast to the shambolic Murray era. There are interesting snippets from AGM's of the time that reveal the support also took a dim view of the club taking on any kind of debt. There is an essay to be written on the expectations and values of the support from the 1960's/1970's in comparison to the modern day where the support openly demands more and more borrowing to buy players. You could even weave it in with the changes in Scotland itself and in public attitudes/values in that time.
The club didn't get it right. Their (Waddell's) vision was too small. We should have been going for a 60k capacity at least.

Would it have been a graveyard in the early 80s? Yes.

Since Souness, history has shown with STs and even pay at the gate facilities at a reasonable price, we'd have eked out 50k plus attendances, no problem.

And that lack of vision back then will hamper us for the forseeable future.
 
I don't rate my chances in any football quiz against you, but I'm sure he went to Crystal Palace.
Did he not come from Crystal Palace?

Bud you could be right, but he did end up at Spurs.

I think he went to Arsenal for a £1m and left before he played a league game.

I'm also pretty sure we played both Spurs and Arsenal in that close season.
 
Did he not come from Crystal Palace?

Bud you could be right, but he did end up at Spurs.

I think he went to Arsenal for a £1m and left before he played a league game.

I'm also pretty sure we played both Spurs and Arsenal in that close season.
Signed from QPR then onto Crystal Palace before going back to QPR then Tottenham
Never played a League game for Arsenal just a couple of friendlies

Yes we did Arsenal on the Friday night and Tottenham on the Monday night which was for the Opening of the Broomloan Road Stand
 
Did he not come from Crystal Palace?

Bud you could be right, but he did end up at Spurs.

I think he went to Arsenal for a £1m and left before he played a league game.

I'm also pretty sure we played both Spurs and Arsenal in that close season.
We did. Was it the Spurs game that was the opening of the Broomloan?

Didn't he start at QPR before Arsenal? He scored a lot of goals for Spurs the season Gough played for them.

Edit @rangeral answers all my questions!
 
We did. Was it the Spurs game that was the opening of the Broomloan?

Didn't he start at QPR before Arsenal? He scored a lot of goals for Spurs the season Gough played for them.
We did. Was it the Spurs game that was the opening of the Broomloan?

Didn't he start at QPR before Arsenal? He scored a lot of goals for Spurs the season Gough played for them.
You might be correct on both points bud. I just remember he played at Ibrox for Arsenal and went onto become a stalwart at Spurs. Despite their rivalry, moving from one part of North London to the other didn't start with Sol Campbell.

So it could be, he went to CP and then onto Spurs?
 
You might be correct on both points bud. I just remember he played at Ibrox for Arsenal and went onto become a stalwart at Spurs. Despite their rivalry, moving from one part of North London to the other didn't start with Sol Campbell.

So it could be, he went to CP and then onto Spurs?
The Oracle answered us in post 328!

I remember Pat Jennings played for both, and I think Terry Neill too.
 
The club didn't get it right. Their (Waddell's) vision was too small. We should have been going for a 60k capacity at least.

Would it have been a graveyard in the early 80s? Yes.

Since Souness, history has shown with STs and even pay at the gate facilities at a reasonable price, we'd have eked out 50k plus attendances, no problem.

And that lack of vision back then will hamper us for the forseeable future.

Unless Waddell and co. had a crystal ball in 1978, no-one could have predicted the season ticket culture of the late 1980's onwards. You know as well as anyone that Rangers could get 80,000 for a big European game or one against the Parkhead club but run of the mill fixtures would maybe be half of that. I have the numbers somewhere but what was Rangers' highest average attendance over a season pre-1978? 40,000 or so? It was peaks and troughs over a season.

Magoo conned the Yahoos that they needed to buy a season ticket for a 60,000 seater stadium when they'd never managed even 40,000 average over a season.

So I'm not convinced that Deedle called it wrong in 1978. And, remember, every seat that was part of the redevelopment adds to the cost of the redevelopment. And nothing like it had ever been undertaken in British football. It was a remarkable achievement.

You can ask why our custodian (ahem), David Edward Murray, didn't expand the stadium properly when he had the means and opportunity to do so. I think that's where the real blame lies.
 
Unless Waddell and co. had a crystal ball in 1978, no-one could have predicted the season ticket culture of the late 1980's onwards. You know as well as anyone that Rangers could get 80,000 for a big European game or one against the Parkhead club but run of the mill fixtures would maybe be half of that. I have the numbers somewhere but what was Rangers' highest average attendance over a season pre-1978? 40,000 or so? It was peaks and troughs over a season.

Magoo conned the Yahoos that they needed to buy a season ticket for a 60,000 seater stadium when they'd never managed even 40,000 average over a season.

So I'm not convinced that Deedle called it wrong in 1978. And, remember, every seat that was part of the redevelopment adds to the cost of the redevelopment. And nothing like it had ever been undertaken in British football. It was a remarkable achievement.

You can ask why our custodian (ahem), David Edward Murray, didn't expand the stadium properly when he had the means and opportunity to do so. I think that's where the real blame lies.
You make a valid point but my contention is Waddell played regularly in front of 60/70/80,000 plus crowds and even a few 90/100,000+.

He must have known the thirst for a successful team would far outweigh a 45,000 capacity Ibrox.

So for me, and yes, I agree we didn't know about the ST culture that would come about later, it was still a lack of vision on Deedle's part.

And I doubt with today's costs we can redress that lack of foresight.
 
One of the reasons the ST culture came about was because of the capacity. With 80,000 or 65,000 post Centenary Stand it was quite easy to get tickets for the big games. Some big games weren't even all ticket. The biggest crowd I was in at Ibrox was v Bayern 1970, pay at the gate. People tended to pick and choose their games with the result that crowds fluctuated from 80,000 down to 20,000, sometimes less, in a season. When it became harder to get tickets for big games in Souness's first season folk bought STs. I remember queuing all morning for tickets for the St Mirren game at the end of 86/87. And before that Sheep and Dundee Hibs had at least one game all ticket.
IIRC the original plan for redevelopment was 56,000 with the front sections standing. That was changed late on and may explain why the rake of the seating is different in the front and rear sections.
 
Unless Waddell and co. had a crystal ball in 1978, no-one could have predicted the season ticket culture of the late 1980's onwards. You know as well as anyone that Rangers could get 80,000 for a big European game or one against the Parkhead club but run of the mill fixtures would maybe be half of that. I have the numbers somewhere but what was Rangers' highest average attendance over a season pre-1978? 40,000 or so? It was peaks and troughs over a season.

Magoo conned the Yahoos that they needed to buy a season ticket for a 60,000 seater stadium when they'd never managed even 40,000 average over a season.

So I'm not convinced that Deedle called it wrong in 1978. And, remember, every seat that was part of the redevelopment adds to the cost of the redevelopment. And nothing like it had ever been undertaken in British football. It was a remarkable achievement.

You can ask why our custodian (ahem), David Edward Murray, didn't expand the stadium properly when he had the means and opportunity to do so. I think that's where the real blame lies.
I don't remember the exact figures but our highest average was around 1949-50 with average crowds of 44,000. We now play to a higher average than at any time in our history.
I don't have the book to hand but I remember there was one season in the 1950's when the yahoos were the 5th or 6th best supported club in Scotland, behind Dundee and Thistle
 
One of the best comments that I ever read about the old stadium actually came from one of that other mob. The guy concerned was reminiscing about his first visit to Ibrox as a young boy back in 1977. They took a 2-0 lead that day and we beat them 3-2. He said that when he got to the top of the steps at the old Broomloan Road end and looked across the stadium his jaw dropped at the enormity of it, which he had not expected. He also said that he was stunned by the volume of noise that came from our supporters that day.
 
I wonder what the crowd was that day?

Think that was Alan Morton in the middle of the front row and Maley with his hat on standing nearest to the camera.
Could easily be wrong, but that looks like Sandy Archibald, Andy Cunningham and Tommy Cairns in the front row with Alan Morton, and Tommy Muirhead in the back row.

I would expect t us to have dominated a Scottish league eleven back then.
 
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