The day Marvin Andrews took God with him to meet David Murray

dh1963

dh1963

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Marvin Andrew's has revealed he waived insurance while playing for Rangers, putting faith in God to keep him fit.

The centre-back joined the Gers in 2004 after leaving Livingston, and was named Players' Player of the Year in his first season.

That came despite a cruciate ligament injury suffered in March as a nail-biting title race entered its final stages.

Andrews famously refused to have surgery and instead played through the injury, putting his faith in God to heal him.

And the former Trinidad and Tobago international has revealed he did so without insurance, after being told to sign a waiver by the club.

He went on to play for another 10 years after leaving Ibrox in 2006, but had he required surgery he'd have had to foot the bill himself.

Andrews said on the Football Daft podcast : "Everybody had their opinion, people who damaged their ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) came out in the papers, they showed me ex-players, they even showed me Ian Durrant pictures when he damaged his knee at Aberdeen.
“All these ex-players whose careers were ended because of the same ACL.

“So, I tell them ‘no, God will heal my knee’.

“Then we had a big meeting at Murray Park, you had David Murray, all his staff, all the doctors, all the physios in the room - all of them on one side, and me and God sitting on the other side.

“So, me and God showed up in the meeting.

“They said to me ‘Marv, we respect your faith, we respect your belief in God, but we need to do what is best for Rangers Football Club. We just wanted to let you know that based on you rejecting our advice from the medical standpoint, we’d like to give you a disclaimer that you sign so that you take full responsibility if anything goes wrong with your knee from here on out’.

“So that if I damaged my knee or my knee collapsed in training or wherever, I cannot sue Rangers or cannot make the club pay for my decision.

“So, I signed the disclaimer, my faith believing that. And all that time, my knee was massive - the size of my knee was unbelievable.

“But the faith that I had in God, I said ‘no problem, I will trust God that God will look after me’.

“So, I signed the disclaimer, I took full responsibility, if anything happened to me, it’s my full responsibility.

“A lot of people don’t know - those times when I was playing for Rangers, I wasn’t under insurance from Rangers Football Club, my insurance was God. And a lot of people didn’t know that.”
 
Got to love the big man. I remember seeing him jogging past me on Helen Street at 8AM on a Monday morning not long after he was written off.
 
Did he not enventually get the operation a couple of years later 2008? I’m sure I read that somewhere before.
Fair play for what he done I know you can stabilise the knee by building up the muscles around the knee but I always thought that was more for provention than cure.

Useless fact Maurice malpas was born without an ACL and had had two testimonials.....god must have loved him.
 
I really respect him and my affection for him grr tenfold on meeting him. It’s often a cliche, but he’s one of life’s true gentlemen.
 
Fair play to Big Marv, but if there is a God, would he not have warned him about the dangers of Sir Flim-Flam selling to Craig Whyte in the future, and struck him down in that very same meeting ?
 
soapybubble said:
One of the most iconic Rangers images I have seen is the man himself on his knees arms raised up in praise. He believed when sadly I did not. Could a more tech savvy person upload this?
Click to expand...
With great pleasure . . . .

andrews_marvin_glasgow_rangers_kneeling.jpg
 
Met him this season when doing hospitality , him and Juke box came in and were pissing themselves laughing. Gordon kept telling us to ask Marvin for a song. He kept declining but his laugh had us all laughing it was so infectious. Top, top man.
 
I have a lot of time for the man. He knew his limitations and pre-injury he was one of the most under-rated players to wear the jersey. No frills, not much pace, but positioning, heading, tackling, just stopping the opposition. Pound for pound up there with Stuart Munro, Henning Berg & Tony Vidmar. A steal.

Unfortunately his extreme level of superstition led him to make a decision that took evangelising to the extreme. He genuinely believed that he could carry the injury through to the end of the season and heal during time off. At the end of that season you could see he was struggling badly. I think his plan was to get better with rest and do a thing that was along the lines of throwing away the sticks on American religious TV stations.

He carried on, but you could see he wasn't the same. I think we'd have got longer out of him had he said yes to the operation but it wasn't to be, and I'm sure it played a big part in him missing the World Cup. A real tragedy for him.

Last thing, it says a lot about Scotland that the media went for his throat over his faith-based disapproval of homosexual acts but refused to honestly look at his decision to play on.

We all make mistakes. Marvin's cost him a lot but he didn't harm anyone and he's a true gentleman. He'll know in his heart that he should've gone under the knife. Rangers lost out in the long run too, but he's more than welcome at any Rangers match or function.
 
Read thread Title and thought he took Souness.
Seriously tho what a Man. What a Player. More importantly What an Inspiration. Keep Believing.
Always Keep Believing.
 
After the game on Helicopter Sunday he got out of Easter Road pretty sharp-ish. I think he had to go to his church which was across the Forth Road Bridge.

Obviously going up Easter Road was incredibly busy with all of us on our way back to our cars and supporters buses, but he was hanging out of the sun-roof and shaking hands wish every single one of us.

Shaking hands with Marvin is my clearest memory of that day, even clearer than the Motherwell goals, and it will live with me until the end.
 
Even now a Marvin Andrews type player with no frills is the one that will roll up the sleeves and do what needs to be done on a bad January night in Kilmarnock is what we could do with.
 
bluewonder said:
Even now a Marvin Andrews type player with no frills is the one that will roll up the sleeves and do what needs to be done on a bad January night in Kilmarnock is what we could do with.
Click to expand...
Aye. Big Worrall had the build but instead of just demolishing everything in front of him he decided to try and play football when he had the ability of a woman.
 
dh1963 said:
Marvin Andrew's has revealed he waived insurance while playing for Rangers, putting faith in God to keep him fit.

The centre-back joined the Gers in 2004 after leaving Livingston, and was named Players' Player of the Year in his first season.

That came despite a cruciate ligament injury suffered in March as a nail-biting title race entered its final stages.

Andrews famously refused to have surgery and instead played through the injury, putting his faith in God to heal him.

And the former Trinidad and Tobago international has revealed he did so without insurance, after being told to sign a waiver by the club.

He went on to play for another 10 years after leaving Ibrox in 2006, but had he required surgery he'd have had to foot the bill himself.

Andrews said on the Football Daft podcast : "Everybody had their opinion, people who damaged their ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) came out in the papers, they showed me ex-players, they even showed me Ian Durrant pictures when he damaged his knee at Aberdeen.
“All these ex-players whose careers were ended because of the same ACL.

“So, I tell them ‘no, God will heal my knee’.

“Then we had a big meeting at Murray Park, you had David Murray, all his staff, all the doctors, all the physios in the room - all of them on one side, and me and God sitting on the other side.

“So, me and God showed up in the meeting.

“They said to me ‘Marv, we respect your faith, we respect your belief in God, but we need to do what is best for Rangers Football Club. We just wanted to let you know that based on you rejecting our advice from the medical standpoint, we’d like to give you a disclaimer that you sign so that you take full responsibility if anything goes wrong with your knee from here on out’.

“So that if I damaged my knee or my knee collapsed in training or wherever, I cannot sue Rangers or cannot make the club pay for my decision.

“So, I signed the disclaimer, my faith believing that. And all that time, my knee was massive - the size of my knee was unbelievable.

“But the faith that I had in God, I said ‘no problem, I will trust God that God will look after me’.

“So, I signed the disclaimer, I took full responsibility, if anything happened to me, it’s my full responsibility.

“A lot of people don’t know - those times when I was playing for Rangers, I wasn’t under insurance from Rangers Football Club, my insurance was God. And a lot of people didn’t know that.”
Click to expand...
What a guy.
But it must’ve been a very big risk he took.
 
Hap Hapablap said:
Before any of that is twisted, Rangers offered him surgery.
Click to expand...

Exactly. Rangers offered him the treatment and rehabilitation that expert medical advice was recommending.

His refusal meant that the club was unable to secure medical insurance cover for him hence the requirement for him to sign a waiver. Had he not signed the waiver the club would no doubt have had to terminate his contract as he wouldn’t have been allowed to train, let alone play.
 
Marvin says that one of his closest pals in football is one Barry Ferguson, indeed Ferguson was the first to turn up to Marvin’s book launch.

I don’t know why I find funny, an unlikely alliance I guess.
 
Had the privilege of meeting the big man before the league cup final.
They say you should never meet your heroes, but he is an absolute gentleman.
As others have said, I wish I had his unshakeable faith.
He posed for a photo with Raffles junior, I was shaking like a wee lassie and could hardly point the phone at them!
 
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