Jan Žižka
Well-Known Member
TERRY Hurlock left Rangers, but Rangers never left him. He had lived and played in London all his days, yet Ibrox became an all to brief home from home.
It is almost two decades since Hurlock, after just one fleeting but successful season at Rangers, returned south of the border and finished his career with Southampton, Millwall and Fulham. Glasgow remains close to his heart, though.
He strides down the Ibrox tunnel with all the purpose and intent of his playing days. The frame is still imposing, the handshake firm and the accent unmistakeable but that famous mass of dark hair has gone, proof that not everything stays the same over the years.
Ibrox has changed, too. But the memories and emotions come flooding back for Hurlock as he returns to the stadium where he only spent one season but a club that made a long-term impression on the 61-year-old.
“Mate, it brought a tear to my eye walking back through that door,” Hurlock said. “My kids come up and they watch the Old Firm games but they haven’t been in here.
“I had a walk about where we used to get changed and went down the tunnel and I thought of my two boys and thought ‘if only they could see this’. They would absolutely love it to pieces.”
Hurlock was seeing Ibrox at the best it has looked for some time. A summer of modernisation and restoration has given the corridors back their lustre, the work symptomatic of the progress Rangers, as a team and a club, are making after the most difficult years in their illustrious history.
“Coming from Millwall, that was your taters and greens, you know what I mean,” Hurlock said. “Coming here, it doesn’t get any better. You can’t beat it here. It is tradition. The wood panelling, the picture of the Queen, what a place, what a club.
“I need my kids to see this. They are so passionate about Rangers but they haven’t been down here. They need to see this, this is a proper football club.”
The chance to visit Ibrox and take a walk down memory lane was an opportunity not to be missed, but it wasn’t the reason for Hurlock’s return to Glasgow.
On Friday evening, he was a guest at the Rangers Supporters Erskine Appeal dinner, an event that raised more than £25,000. The £1million mark is now in sight as individual efforts make a huge and heart-warming collective difference.
“Anything with the Military and the Forces, I will be involved in,” Hurlock said. “I always have been. I have been brought up that way. I don’t see it as giving back. I do my own little bits and pieces.
“But, what a great cause. They need us and I think we could all do a bit more. Not everyone thinks like us though, do they?”
A delayed flight from London ensured Hurlock’s time at Ibrox wasn’t as long as it could have been. That is somewhat apt, given that he only spent a year with Rangers in the double winning season of 1990-91.
Millwall’s relegation from the First Division paved the way for Hurlock to leave a club where he had earned a title medal and legendary status. Tony Cascarino did likewise, while Teddy Sheringham remained at The Den in attempt to help the Lions back to the top flight.
A wrangle over money delayed a move to Everton but cash was no stumbling block for Graeme Souness. A deal was done and Hurlock joined one of the most expensive and impressive squads in Britain.
“They were all big characters, big players and I was in awe of them, mate, in awe of them,” Hurlock said of his team-mates as the Souness Revolution gathered momentum.
“I had the likes of Terry Butcher, Richard Gough, Trevor Steven, Gary Stevens. %^*& me. I had watched these guys playing for England when I was in the Third Division. Now, I was playing amongst them. How good is that?
“I was in awe of them, I am still in awe. I am so proud, so lucky to have played with those boys at this club. Every single one of them were terrific footballers.”
The Second Division title that Hurlock won with Millwall followed a Third Division crown at Reading two seasons previously. He would match that tally of trophies in just a few months at Ibrox.
A 2-1 victory over Celtic secured the League Cup weeks after his arrival. Come the end of the season, the third of nine titles was won in the most dramatic of circumstances against Aberdeen.
“I jumped into a club that was winning everything,” Hurlock said. “They didn’t take no for an answer, they were winners. That is Rangers and I had to deal with that. I always trained hard. I liked a beer, but I trained hard.
“I couldn’t let anyone down, I never wanted to let anyone down. Even if I didn’t have a good game, I tried. These players, they could do it all and it made my job easier.”
In that star-studded Rangers line-up, Hurlock was never destined to stand out but that didn’t diminish his importance to the team. He would make 35 appearances and score twice for Souness’ side.
The second came against Hearts in a routine 4-0 win. The first, of course, was the equaliser on his Old Firm debut as a powerful strike from the edge of the area was followed by a roar and a punch of the air.
“It was new to me,” Hurlock said of the derby, a fixture that Rangers would win on three out of six occasions that term and that saw him sent-off for lashing out at Tommy Coyne in an ill-tempered defeat at Parkhead.
“The Ibrox game came early when I first came here. It was passion that I had never seen in the changing room. The team talk wasn’t a team talk, it was just ‘you know what this game is like, you know what it means’. I was looking about thinking ‘what is going on?’
“People were going potty, Bomber (John Brown) is nutting the wall. I thought ‘%^*& me, what is going on here?’ It was new to me, but I loved it. I was with them, I wanted to go with them and now I know how much it means. For me to play in that game... I can tell my kids, I can tell everyone down south.”
After drawing with Celtic in the September, Rangers beat them in October through goals from Richard Gough and Mark Walters at Hampden. Hurlock had his medal, but his prize money didn’t last long.
“I loved it, loved it. I was so proud,” he said of the Skol Cup success. “I’ll make you laugh. I got a few quid for winning it, a couple of grand. I went down to my pub and they said ‘there ain’t no beer’.
“I said ‘why is that?’ and they said my brother hadn’t paid Charrington (Brewery). He owes them that, that and that. It was exactly what I had earned. What I got from winning the cup went straight to paying the beer debt!”
By the time Hurlock had his second medal at Rangers, the boss that had brought him to Ibrox had gone. Souness - a man Hurlock ‘will never have a bad word about’ – was appointed Liverpool manager and Walter Smith guided Rangers to title glory.
Souness’ departure left an injury-ravaged Rangers reeling. When it mattered most, everyone at Ibrox played their part.
“Sometimes you can’t have the best game in the world, we all know that” Hurlock said. “But if you see someone that is putting a shift in, that is trying to do well for you, you can’t knock him.
“If you have someone there not pulling their weight, that is what drives a manager mad. I always did that, I was brought up like that by my father from day one. Every club you are at, run your heart out and try your best.”
A day and an effort that encapsulated Hurlock’s attitude and will-to-win proved to the finest of his Rangers career. The experience was brief, but life-changing, before a move to Southampton brought it to a premature end.
Four firm answers of ‘definitely’ are given in quick succession when Hurlock is asked if his reputation counted against him with Scottish officials.
‘They had to book me, I knew that’, he says. Hurlock was, he believes, left with no choice but to leave Ibrox.
“I had to move due to the circumstances and getting booked,” he said. “Times were changing. At my age, I had to go for the payday. I loved every second of it up here, that is for sure.
“I wanted to be here, it was just the circumstances of getting booked, getting sent off, getting booked, getting sent off. I would have been left in the Reserves and, at my age, I couldn’t be in the Reserves. If someone comes in with a good offer, you have to go. I didn’t want to go, I loved it here.”
That much is evident. Hurlock now watches on from afar and takes joy in what is unfolding at Ibrox once again as another Liverpool legend looks to transform Rangers’ fortunes.
The impact that Steven Gerrard has made is undoubted, but the silverware that has been sought for so long by supporters still has to be won before Ibrox hero christens a new legend.
“I am so pleased he is doing well, I really wanted him to do well,” Hurlock said. “Listen, it is the start of his managerial career and I hope he is successful. Like Souness, I have no doubt he will move on. But he will turn Rangers around first.
“It is about respect, and how can you not respect Gerrard? He has done everything. Like Souness, you look at him in awe. How can you ever be as good as them? You can’t. But you give your all for them. Steven has turned it around, God bless him.”
Gerrard will continue to play down any title talk this term but supporters are daring to dream. Hurlock is, too. “Mate, how good would that be?”, he says with a smile before he bids fond farewell to Ibrox once again.
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