Europa/Conference League | Gameweek 5 | 28 Nov '24

Alan Harper's Tash said:
I think number 8 has probably had enough rubbing now. :-)
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Yep.. I've just got to the foreword by chairman John Lawrence
( after winning the Scottish domestic treble 1964)

" our ambitions now centre on winning the European Cup
Nothing can be allowed to stand in our way.."

Yes we,'ll leave it there..; )
 
dennishasdoneit said:
They hit the headlines when Gazza played a flute on derby day...
Before that when their glorious fans threw bananas at their winger Mark Walters.
Before that you have to go back to the days of Jock Wallace and John Greig.
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I’m all for a wind up and enjoy it more than most. You give it out you take it back BUT I cannot let the Mark Walters bit go! I have no idea where you heard this but it’s absolutely not true!!

Mark Walters made his debut against Celtic at Parkhead and was their fans who threw bananas at him. The following week we played Hearts at Tynecastle and once again the Rangers winger was belted with bananas. As you’d expect there was a huge public outcry at these arseholes shaming our country and after Tynecastle these scenes were never repeated

Mark Walters was an extremely popular player among the Rangers support and played a major part in a very successful Rangers team.
 
No.8 said:
I’m all for a wind up and enjoy it more than most. You give it out you take it back BUT I cannot let the Mark Walters bit go! I have no idea where you heard this but it’s absolutely not true!!
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They used to call mark walters Jaffa.
I recall an interview on tv with him and he hadn't copped on what it meant until he was there a few months.
He took it very well and said he wasn't offended by it as it was part of the culture and there were players who had worse nicknames.
 
Xhavenjoe said:
They used to call mark walters Jaffa.
I recall an interview on tv with him and he hadn't copped on what it meant until he was there a few months.
He took it very well and said he wasn't offended by it as it was part of the culture and there were players who had worse nicknames.
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A lot won’t get the ‘Jaffa joke’ but it was a different time.

Hopefully this puts it to bed. It’s from an interview with Mark Walters ……
Being born in Birmingham to a Jamaican mother and a Nigerian father meant racism was another constant for Walters growing up. But it didn’t stop when he began to win respect as a well-known footballer. Far from it. Rangers may have lost the Old Firm game in which he made his debut in 1988 but the score-line is incidental given what else happened – Celtic fans welcomes Walters to Glasgow by making monkey noises when he was on the ball and hurling bananas onto the pitch.

Television commentator Archie McPherson made scant mention of it at the time and many printed match reports no mention at all but a fortnight later in Edinburgh, at the smaller, tighter ground of Heart of Midlothian, it happened again. This time, with the fans right on top of him, Walters was actually hit by a banana as he went to take a corner. In the aftermath of the game there was, finally, condemnation of the fans’ actions. One writer even raised the spectre of “blatant, fascist racism” coming to Scotland.

But it wasn’t just bananas that were aimed at Walters. In both games he recalls darts and other projectiles coming his way.

“It was scary at the time, there’s no doubt about it. I’d gone from England, where it happened to a certain degree – I’m sure I had bananas thrown at me, and there was definitely verbal abuse – to actual things being physically thrown. I could see them being thrown and that scared me, because obviously if it hits you in the eye or in the wrong place it’s over, not just your football career but your life. So it was definitely a scary time for me. But I had a lot of support at Rangers.”
 
No.8 said:
I’m all for a wind up and enjoy it more than most. You give it out you take it back BUT I cannot let the Mark Walters bit go! I have no idea where you heard this but it’s absolutely not true!!

Mark Walters made his debut against Celtic at Parkhead and was their fans who threw bananas at him. The following week we played Hearts at Tynecastle and once again the Rangers winger was belted with bananas. As you’d expect there was a huge public outcry at these arseholes shaming our country and after Tynecastle these scenes were never repeated

Mark Walters was an extremely popular player among the Rangers support and played a major part in a very successful Rangers team.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the correction, you obviously remember the era well.
Mark Walters was from Brum and he had a lot of respect from me and my wider family back in the day for making it as a professional footballer at Villa. Walters was an extremely talented wide player, I loved his style , Birmingham in the very late 70s / early 80s close to my heart, I remember the excitement of Walters breaking through at Villa, us kids playing footy on the cobbled streets were heady on the news of any West Indian player breaking through.

As an aside, do you have a copy of " Playing for Rangers "edited by Ken Gallacher. (1964)I'm just reading it now mate. Different days indeed.
 
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