Character key in title battle
Burke warns Ibrox men it’s time to front up
FOR RANGERS, any lingering hope of edging Celtic for the league title is laced with cold, hard realism. Travelling to Parkhead on Saturday, Philippe Clement’s team face 60,000 hostile supporters and a team Brendan Rodgers regards as the ‘best version’ of themselves.
Buoyed by a three-point and five-goal advantage, victory would all but seal a third straight title. Rangers are up against it.
Amongst supporters, the fear that this group of players lack the minerals to get the job done is proving hard to shake. Accusations of mental flakiness dog their every move.
During seven years as a winger at Ibrox, Chris Burke played with the kind of street-hardened bruisers who relished the prospect of heading across Glasgow with their league hopes dangling by a thread and clawing their way back into contention. Rangers could use some of them in the starting XI now.
‘We had huge characters,’ recalls Burke. ‘I learned from Barry Ferguson, the De Boers, Shota Arveladze, Dado Prso and Fernando Ricksen during my time at Rangers. Every single one of them had ability and could change a game. But what they were really, really, really good at was their determination to win a game of football. Their character, their personality, their willingness to turn up when they need to turn up. It comes down to that when you play for Celtic and Rangers.’
From time to time, football throws up an unexpected finale. For 11 of the last 12 years, Celtic have lorded it over Scottish football and the bookies suspect they’re primed to tighten their grip on the league trophy once more.
Yet, for Rangers fans, May 22, 2005 is a day etched in the memory. The evidence that miracles sometimes happen.
When Scott McDonald of Motherwell fizzed two late goals into the Celtic net, they had much the same impact as exploding bullets. Burke sat on the Easter Road bench as Rangers played out a surreal 1-0 win over Hibs to secure the title in the final minutes.
The helicopter ferrying the trophy to Fir Park changed direction and the legend of Helicopter Sunday was born.
‘All I remember was the game ended up a little bit slow,’ Burke recalls now.
‘Hibs didn’t want to lose any more goals, so the game became a bit strange. I can remember both managers looking a bit edgy on the sidelines. They both wanted their team to keep the ball.
‘There was a period where the centre-backs just passed the ball to each other. It was a strange game. But the celebrations will live with me forever. Even though I wasn’t on the pitch, I was still on the bench.
‘You get to learn from the ones on the pitch and how they cope with the situation and how they celebrate.
‘It is so much hard work to win a league. You can win a cup, you can get the luck of the draw. But winning a league is complete and utter effort day in, day out, week in, week out, even if it is a double game week.
‘When you need to win, you need to win. If the other team wins, you need to realise that you need to win. It is not just physically draining, it is emotionally draining as well.
‘When the whistle goes and the release comes, you understand why footballers react why they react.’
Now head of Kilmarnock’s academy, Helicopter Sunday proved Burke’s only league winner’s medal as a Rangers player. Celtic won more than they lost under Martin O’Neill and Gordon Strachan and, in the last decade, the Parkhead club have established another period of domestic dominance.
They’ve been shakier this season and, despite the evidence of a return to form, Rangers need to find their Achilles heel. To preserve any hope of Helicopter Sunday Mark II, they need to secure their first meaningful win over their rivals in the league since 2021.
‘If we could ever see that again, it would be great for the country,’ adds Burke. ‘It creates memories. Ultimately, it will probably come down to the ones who have the character to handle those kind of situations.
‘It is difficult. You can talk about ability. Everyone at Celtic and Rangers have got ability. They can all turn a game at any moment they want. But I think the character, the personality, the charisma are important. The ones who can handle that and not look so much at the outside, who can just look at themselves and what they can do as a team to influence things, will be the ones who can lift the trophy.’
For Burke, a failure to win more trophies in light blue is still a big regret. Two goals on his Scotland debut in the Kirin Cup in Japan proved the highlight of his playing days. While there was a League Cup medal in 2008, silverware was more elusive than it should have been.
‘At that time, when I was playing for Rangers, I think Celtic were probably the driving force,’ he says.
Time is running out for the current group of players to avoid ending their careers with the same regret. Win the league and Scottish Cup and Celtic will draw level with Rangers on 118 trophies each. Yet, seven years in the pressure chamber of Glasgow football taught Burke that anything is possible.
‘At this moment, Celtic are favourites, but you just never know,’ he says. ‘You really, really don’t.
‘An Old Firm game is an Old Firm game. Every one is different.
‘I thought the last one was excellent, an entertaining game of football. It was a game of two halves. Clement will have looked at that and said, “Okay, how do we start the game better?”.
‘As much as Celtic are in the driving seat, you couldn’t say they are definitely going to win it.’