McGREGOR PUTS ONE HAND ON LEAGUE TROPHY
WITHOUT that strong right hand, Scotland would not be preparing to take part in their first major finals in 23 years. Without it, Rangers might also be teetering on the edge of the abyss rather than finding themselves just one last push away from scaling their own particular Mount Everest.
Two saves from Allan McGregor, just over two years apart, have secured his legacy and placed him, beyond question, in the pantheon of great Scottish goalkeepers alongside the likes of Andy Goram and Jim Leighton.
They have also put him into contention for a very special title all of his own: The Man Who Changed The Face Of Scottish Football.
It sounds quite dramatic, that. Melodramatic, even. And, yet, it is true.
The impact of Scotland making it to the finals of the European Championships next summer — and the remaining possibility of games being played in front of crowds at Hampden — cannot be underestimated.
It will be the first time an entire generation has witnessed the men’s national team on this stage. It provides a platform a poorly-resourced Scottish FA can try to build on following a last set of accounts that made issue of ‘material uncertainty related to going concern’.
It will also light up the entire country at the end — let us hope — of what has been a long, dark, virus-ridden tunnel.
Yet, it would never have
Those 10 years of hurt are almost over for a loyal fanbase
happened but for the intervention of McGregor back in November 2018. In the dying stages of a 3-2 win over Israel in Mount Florida that secured a spot in the Euro 2020 play-offs through the Nations League — the Rangers No1’s last game before retiring from international football — the country held its breath as a long diagonal ball picked out visiting striker Tomer Hemed in space inside the area.
Having moved between Matt Phillips and David Bates, Hemed stuck out his right leg to meet the cross first-time. In a split-second of pure, acrobatic instinct, McGregor threw his hand up at point-blank range and got his palm to the ball.
Hemed held his head in his hands as the danger was finally cleared. ‘An incredible save,’ he called it. It was certainly the most spectacular of parting gifts from McGregor at the conclusion of the 42nd outing of a colourful and often contentious Scotland career.
Hardly anyone, including some of the coaching staff, seemed to understand the importance of the Nations League then. They do now.
It was on McGregor’s 400th start for Rangers yesterday, though, that he produced something even more exceptional — and, almost certainly, just as seismic.
Now 19 points clear of Celtic, albeit having played three games more, Rangers are on the brink of winning their first title in a decade and ending their arch-rivals’ hopes of rewriting history by becoming the first side to win 10 consecutive crowns.
For many Celtic fans, that has been the centre of their very existence for years. It has been sung about inside Parkhead as though it had already happened. It was taken as a fait accompli and it should have been, considering Rangers had gone bust in 2012 and gone through all sorts of agonies on the circuitous journey back since.
Now, though, thanks to a 1-0 win at Ibrox yesterday, those 10 years of hurt are almost over for a loyal and long-suffering fanbase. And it is their own McGregor they really must thank rather than Celtic’s Callum, whose own goal surely put the final nail in the visitors’ coffin.
Still burdened by questions over their bottle in big games, Steven Gerrard’s side failed to turn up. Their midfield lacked the defensive nous of a Ryan Jack or graft of a Scott Arfield and were overrun — particularly in a one-sided first half. Despite winning, Rangers didn’t get a shot of their own on target.
They had a modern-day colossus as their last line of defence, though. A barrier that was never going to be breached on this day of all days. McGregor exhibited his brilliance just three minutes in when saving low from Odsonne Edouard. He barked at his own players throughout, berating some of them for mistakes that seemed to be brought around by stage fright.
There would be no freezing on this most momentous of occasions for him, though. Indeed, at the midway point of the first half, he produced the moment that signalled a shift in the balance of power inside Glasgow’s great divide once and for all. All against the emotional backdrop of the 50th anniversary of the Ibrox disaster.
Celtic striker Leigh Griffiths, given too much space 20 yards out, curled a magnificent, left-footed effort that looked destined for the top corner. McGregor, defying a body that will turn 39 at the end of this month, flung himself to his right and threw that hand up again.
There was no chance of getting his palm on the ball this time. It took the very tips of his fingers. And they somehow diverted it onto the outside of the post and behind.
Had Celtic scored, it seems unlikely Rangers would have recovered. The title race would have been on again. As it is, Nir Bitton got himself sent off in a moment of madness and Rangers, providing they can hold their nerve, are on the coast downhill to the finishing line.
It offers a chance to cash in on the game-changing finances of the Champions League group stage. The magnitude of that cannot be underestimated. Legendary status now awaits everyone in this set-up as one of ‘ The Men Who Stopped the 10’. Yet, despite all that, McGregor’s demeanour in his post-match interviews — that of someone whose dog had just been run over in the street — spoke to the winning mentality that will surely make sure his team-mates don’t falter now.
‘Hopefully, i n five months time it will be a huge win,’ he said. ‘I thought we were really, really poor in the first half and in the 15 minutes before the sending-off occurred. ‘I wasn’t annoyed at having to be so busy. It’s part and parcel of the game. But I was annoyed at how bad we were.
‘We need to start getting back to playing well and winning.’
McGregor has always been a goalkeeper of outstanding ability. Whether he was destined to become a gatekeeper of standards, maturing with age like Rangers’ answer to Italy’s 40-year-old World Cup-winner Dino Zoff, is open to question, though.
There was that Boozegate business, for one, when he got kicked out of the national set-up for bevvying on the banks of Loch Lomond after returning from a defeat in Holland and then making obscene gestures to photographers when being dropped next time out.
There were all those lurid stories about his private life and his ‘celebrity’ relationship. There was the controversy when he quit Rangers for Besiktas after refusing to transfer over to the newco club in the chaos of the club’s collapse under Craig Whyte. It sometimes overshadowed the fact he won 11 trophies in his first stint at Ibrox.
That’s all in the past, though. It is simply McGregor’s raw ability that hogs the headlines now and his first title since returning from an injury-plagued stay at Hull City in May 2018 is likely to be as sweet as any of those that came before.
That right hand has written its own chapters in history, brought an end to drought and redrawn the landscape of the national game.
It can only be a matter of time before Gerrard gets it to sign another contract, too.