MY OLD FIRM LIFE BY CRAIG MOORE
ALLY McCOIST had been at Rangers for a decade and experienced all the highs and lows of the Old Firm pressure pot when he offered a freshfaced Aussie some advice.
A young Craig Moore didn’t know exactly what he was signing up for when he flew across the world to walk up the Ibrox marble staircase at the age of just 17.
But there’s nothing like an Old Firm derby to give you a glimpse of the unforgiving environment of playing for one of Glasgow’s big two. It proved a harsh introduction as Moore put the ball through his own net in a 3-0 defeat.
His goal either side of Pierre van Hooijdonk’s strike and a Rudi Vata free-kick made it a miserable afternoon at Hampden for Gers who also had keeper Billy Thomson sent off.
As criticism flew both the way of Moore and Walter Smith’s side – despite having already secured a seventh consecutive title by the time of that defeat – he called upon McCoist’s guidance to bounce back.
Ahead of the season’s first Old Firm clash of the season Moore, now 44, said: “When I first joined Rangers, every now and then I’d get the opportunity to train with the first team and I remember early on Coisty coming up to me.
“He said, ‘Listen son, if you want to survive and be a success at this football club then you’ll need to have thick skin’. And boy was he right!
“The highs are brilliant but the lows are brutal and can you get back off the canvas? I scored an own goal on my Old Firm debut and had to get back up again.
“I actually felt I did okay in that game apart from the own goal! It was an experience.
“Simon Donnelly played a cross, Pierre van Hooijdonk checked his run early on and with my inexperience my body position wasn’t right.
“So instead of clearing with my left foot I poked it with my right and it ended up in the back of the net.
“You’ve got to bounce back and I played the week after and managed to score a goal against
Partick Thistle at Ibrox in the final game of he season. But I don’t think that quite got me off the hook.”
While Rangers were second best in that final derby of the season, they finished 18 points ahead of their rivals in the league that season.
But the Hoops were improving under Tommy Burns and the Light Blues were determined to stay ahead in their quest to equal Celtic’s nine- in- a- row run achieved two decades earlier.
Wily Smith’s response to the 3- 0 Hampden hiding was immediate – as he tied his shoelaces after resting his foot on a chair inside the old press room at Hampden Park, he casually confirmed the capture of Paul Gascoigne.
The Geordie genius arrived from Lazio that summer and,