FORMER RANGERS DIRECTORS have exposed the big myth in Scottish football.
Since shortly after Rangers FC went into liquidation in 2012 we have been asked to believe that the successor club set up by Charles Green is somehow the same club but is different to the limited company that went into liquidation.
Charles Green of course doesn’t believe this. Indeed his own legal team have recently outlined on two occasions in the Court of Session in Edinburgh that the current Rangers is a new club.
Green’s counsel Mr Jonathan Brown, told the court back in November last year that “the vexed question of the mythical concept of the club.”
When Lord Doherty stated that the “articles of association show Rangers started as a club”, Mr Brown responded that this changed when Rangers incorporated in 1899 and clarified the position on behalf of his client, Charles Green.
Mr. Brown told the Court of Session: “Sevco Scotland did not buy the club they bought the business and assets of the club. There is a difference between the company and the business assets, but not between a club and a company. A club is an undertaking of it’s owners. As it has neither capacity of personality, no-one can be CEO of a club. The idea that someone can be CEO of an undertaking is just nonsense.”
Realising the significance of what he was telling Lord Doherty, Brown continued: “I realise that Rangers being the same club is a matter of life and death to some, but it wouldn’t be a proper legal case without the elephant in the room getting mentioned. The team are paid by Sevco, play at a ground owned by Sevco, trained by a manager who is employed by Sevco, fans buy tickets from Sevco. Rangers was a basket of assets that could be sold, but these were not indivisible.The players went one way and the ground another, where is the “club” then?”
Maybe Rangers Directors from the past can assist. Let’s go back to 1974.
In a German TV documentary from 1974 WILLIE WADDLE, the Rangers Director and General Manager stated that while the Rangers Football Club started as a sport, it developed to be run as a business organisation. Here’s the quote from 19 minutes into the film.
“It started purely as a sport. It’s gone beyond sporting instincts now. Top clubs like Glasgow Rangers, and big clubs throughout Europe, are run as business organisations.” Willie Waddle, Rangers Director and General Manager 1974.
If that isn’t clear enough DAVID HOPE, another Director of Rangers Football Club states bluntly that Rangers Football is a limited company. That’s a limited company with the same company number as the one that went into liquidation in June 2012. Hope’s words clears up any doubt about there being a holding company that was somehow separate from Rangers Football Club – in 1974, as in 2012, “The Rangers Football Club is a limited company.”
Here is what Rangers Director David Hope had to say:
“The Rangers Football Club is a limited company. You’ve got to buy shares to be a shareholder. Any member of the public can buy shares in the Rangers Football Club. You can buy the shares at the Stock Exchange through a stockbroker.” David Hope, Rangers Director 1974.
This is a remarkable film, that was banned from broadcasting in the UK at the time. It tells you a great deal about Glasgow in the 1970s, the Rangers bigotry that festered in that club and also a little about Celtic.
But it has particular relevance to today when Scottish football has to come to terms with corrupt football authorities trying to impose a lie that somehow the limited company that was Rangers Football Club survived liquidation.
It didn’t. Rangers died. The successor club is also a limited company. A different one, formed in 2012 and with a different company number.
Enjoy the film…
