It shouldn’t take Ricksen’s tragic death to tear down tribal barriers of our game
SUCCESS in British football is rarely followed by love and admiration. Rivalry comes first, respect through gritted teeth. Everyone has a team who ripped their knitting. In our house it was Alex Ferguson’s Aberdeen.
There wasn’t one thing you could pick on. It was the whole package.
The mind games of Sir Furious. Willie Miller refereeing more matches than Pierluigi Collina. Doug Rougvie assassinating enemies before flashing his ‘Jaws from The Spy Who Loved Me’ grin.
Neale ‘Tattie’ Cooper flouncing around with all that curly blond hair. And don’t get me started on Gordon Strachan.
Fergie’s Dons had the temerity to win too many football matches. And the sheer bloody cheek to add major trophies, rubbing salt into the wounds of Glaswegian teens like me by doing it in our own back green.
Even in Europe they refused to know their place, toppling Real Madrid to win a Cup Winners’ Cup then adding a European Super Cup for good measure.
Age clearly mellows a man. The mention of Miller and McLeish doesn’t prompt the same emotions these days.
Just respect and sepia-tinged nostalgia for a golden era when Aberdeen and Dundee United had players capable of winning titles and the Scottish league was a better place for it.
Admitting that at the age of 13 or 14 was never an option.
At that age, tribal lines are drawn and you think they’ll never shift. The good guys are there to shoot at the bad guys and that’s just the way it is.
The problem comes when the lines are blurred. When someone comes along and confuses the picture like Fernando Ricksen.
To say the Dutchman was a divisive Rangers player is a bit like saying Brexit splits opinions. Ibrox fans adored him while opposition fans loved to hate him. While they’d never admit it, most wished he was one of theirs.
Ricksen lived his life like the fireworks with which he once woke up half of Newton Mearns at 4am.
When the fuse was lit, you never knew what direction it would take or where it would land.
Every minute was high-octane and unpredictable. He brought light and colour to the Glasgow skyline, his fire burning so bright it took six years for motor neurone disease to finally bring him down.
It’s that bravery in the face of a muscle-wasting illness which explains the rare outpouring of respect and admiration from fans of Celtic, Aberdeen and everyone else this week.
Football rivalry is a harsh and unsentimental business. Let’s be honest, there was a time when Ricksen was footballing Marmite.
But players are not demons or gargoyles or criminals. Nor are they masters of the universe or immortal.
They’re human beings who succumb to the same problems and illnesses and misfortune as the rest of us. They’re as much the soundtrack to our young lives as The Jam, Dexys, Blur or Oasis.
The unlucky ones will pass on without having the first idea of how much they impacted on the day-to-day lives of fans.
The one blessing to come from Ricksen’s six-year struggle with a hideous condition was the chance it gave him to break down old perceptions and prejudices.
Fans who didn’t think much of him as a rival player came to admire his courage and qualities as a human being. Many took off the tinted glasses and saw him properly for the first time.
In the next week or two, friends and family will don black suits and solemnly mourn his passing.
The rest of us should consider the life and times of Fernando Jacob Hubert Hendrika Ricksen a cause for celebration.
There was wine, women and song. He won a Double in 2002, a Treble in 2003 and captained Rangers to an iconic title on Helicopter Sunday in 2005.
He was a Dutch international, had a family who loved him, and lived four-and-a-half years longer than the doctors thought possible.
His public suffering was deeply painful to watch at times. But by putting himself out there he raised awareness of motor neurone disease and money to fight it.
It really shouldn’t take illness or death to make it happen. But Fernando’s battle for life achieved the impossible by melting bitter tribal boundaries and uniting Scottish football in admiration, awe and respect.
How many other footballers of the modern era will manage that?