I Play for Money Scotland's Game

the fans were gently persuaded to empty their pockets.

This programme contains some strong language.

Football.

Love it or hate it, you certainly can't avoid it.

It's deeply woven into our society.

It can affect our politics, and sometimes even our identity.

From the beginning, into the mid-1980s,

club football was still rooted in our industrial communities,

played in every street and backyard,

and many of the players we produced were world-class.

But the quality of those players

disguised a system in desperate need of modernisation.

As the industrial communities that supported the clubs also fractured,

Scottish football found itself at a crossroads.

This is the story of 30 years of social change,

self-delusion, greed,

risk, blind ambition,

and political intrigue.

The soul of Scottish football was up for grabs.

Three decades ago,

Scotland's game was riding high on its proud history.

A heritage that produced world-renowned leaders

who transcended class and culture.

Heroes to the working-class communities they came from

who, in turn, unified the whole nation.

But the times were changing.

A new wave of political doctrine had emerged,

placing money above everything.

Popular capitalism is nothing less than a crusade

to enfranchise the many in the economic life of the nation.

To be a success in the new era called for a new type of leader.

One that would keep one eye on the ball

and the other on business.

In 1986,

the first of many dynamic characters determined to shake the game up

did it in his own inimitable style.

I'm a professional footballer who plays for money.

I'm not ashamed of that. I've always been open about that.

I play for money.

'Three players to his right. He's picked out Souness,

'who picks out a beauty.'

Graeme Souness was already an international star.

He had scaled the heights of European football

and was one of the highest earners in the game.

He was probably a superstar at that time.

'Here's Souness.

'Oh, he's given them a chance right at the death.'

He was a master tactician and a dominant presence on the pitch.

We all know he could be really physical.

But he was a brilliant footballer.

Souness now redirected his career,

setting his sights on football management.

His target...

Rangers, one of the giants of football.

After years of decline, the club was badly in need of a major revamp.

Rangers' gates were down to, I think, 15,000.

We hadn't won the league for nine years.

People were totally fed up with it all. And we lit a fire.

So, gentlemen, welcome now our new player-manager, Graeme Souness.

Scotland's international captain, Graeme Souness,

signed on as Rangers...

It's speculated that Rangers are making Souness

one of Britain's highest-paid managers.

His first move was to initiate one of the biggest spending sprees

in the history of the Scottish game.

Him coming to Ibrox, even as a player,

raised everybody's eyebrows.

But as a manager, everybody knew

that this was light blue touchpaper and retire ten yards.

We knew this was going to be

a really fractious, argumentative,

dramatic move in Scottish football.

I thought I was aware how big a club Rangers was,

but I quickly realised they were far bigger than I'd imagined.

Do you think Souness can bring back the flag to Ibrox?

I think within two years, two or three years, easy.

But Souness wasn't prepared to wait that long.

I wasn't used to losing. I wasn't used to failure.

It had just been a succession of winning things,

and captaining my country...

I didn't see any fear in it.

His appointment coincided with a barren period

for the game in England.

Clubs were banned from lucrative European competition for five years

due to a wave of hooliganism.

In an audacious move,

Souness pounced for one of the best-known names in world football -

Terry Butcher, the England international captain.

We see Terry as the best player of his type in the world today.

We trained on the Albion, which is now a car park,

across from the main ground at Ibrox,

and I spoke to Davie Cooper and I said to him,

"Look, Davie, if I do join, will we win the league?"

And he says, "Yep, no problem, big man."

"You join - absolute certainty."

Graeme Souness had agreed a fee - I think it was 750,000 -

and he paid cash.

The traffic was always across the border, heading south, and suddenly,

the best players in England were coming to Scottish football.

That was quite remarkable and significant.

Big players were eager to try their hand in European football.

It was revolutionary. I mean, England internationals

playing in Scottish football?

Just unheard of.

My aim is to bring the best here.

Obviously, that's going to cost a lot of money.

You don't think you're going to miss the challenge

of English league football?

If you asked any Scotsman that up here, they'd laugh at you.

Scotland was a better league than the English top flight,

because there is much more interest, there was European football,

there was internationals going up there,

it was a phenomenal place to be.

I didn't know Graeme Souness at the time,

I played against him, but, you know, big plans for Ibrox,

big plans for the club and everything else like that,

and I really bought into it.

Right from his very first game as player-manager,

Souness made it clear he would never back away from a fight.

'The red card has been shown to Graeme Souness.'

I was ready for it.

I was fearless.

I've never felt fearful playing in a game of football.

The bigger the challenge, the more I like to think I rose to it.

His combative approach and huge spending power

having an immediate effect.

'And there is Terry Butcher,

'the first Englishman to hold that League Cup trophy aloft.'

That breakthrough success opening the floodgates.

'And there it is, the final whistle.

'Rangers have won the league, and on come the supporters.

'The crowd have gone berserk.'

He brought a swagger and a sense of confidence

and brought that sense of invincibility,

or if not invincibility,

simply, you know, "Who are you? Who are you looking at, sunshine?"

And he raised the game for everyone.

There was this severe paradigm shift

of depression and misery

to money, success.

So if it wasn't a revolution,

it was certainly something incredibly exciting and innovative.

It was just complete change.

Souness, however, was not the only manager

shaking up Scottish football with a new and distinctive approach.

There had been other examples on the east coast.

Success had been achieved at Aberdeen under Alex Ferguson

at a fraction of the cost of their Glasgow rivals.

Ferguson's great success would eventually see him lured

to one of the biggest clubs in England.

At Dundee United, Jim McLean was also riding high...

..but without access to a blank cheque book.

'There is a man who totally transformed

'the face of football in this city.'

Recognising their limitations,

McLean led them through the most successful period in their history.

'..second goal...

'There it goes. It's a goal.'

'There's the chip. He might get it...

'Oh, magnificent! Ferguson scores.'

Only the fourth Scottish club to reach a European final.

Although they fell short in the ultimate test

against Gothenburg in 1987,

the scale of McLean's achievements were obvious to the club's fans.

'I don't think I've ever seen a crowd stand like this

'for a defeated side.'

That chapter with Jim McLean and Dundee United

stands equal with anything we've done in Scottish football

in the last 50 years.

At times, McLean seemed to regard the players

as the sole property of his club.

Players were famously tied up on long-term contracts

during a period where the balance of power between player and club

still lay very much in favour of the clubs.

Something I always think was paramount to our success

was Jim McLean had a policy

that we all stayed within eight miles of the city.

We would socialise with each other quite a lot,

our wives were close, we were a close bunch of guys.

We trained a lot, we were really fit.

Even Christmas Day we could train, because we all stayed here.

So if things weren't good, you were quickly told with supporters,

you know, "Things need to improve."

Have a good night tonight, then, eh?

I'm baby-sitting tonight. Baby-sitting?

You'll be drunk baby-sitting. Yes! Thank you very much, pal.

We had dieticians, sports scientists, fitness coaches,

psychologists...

in the early '80s, long before it became popular.

Where he let himself down was his man management.

Everybody was treated the same.

They were all battered with the same brush.

HE SHOUTS ANGRILY

For all that he was a tinpot dictator,

for all that he might have flouted

the United Nations conventions on human rights,

I mean, he was a great football figure.

His ways wouldn't work now.

I played reserve team football at 15, against men.

Physically, you couldn't handle it.

But mentally, you grew stronger.

And you grew stronger quicker.

You had experienced players who literally would punch you

if you weren't doing the right things.

There was none of this mollycoddling you. You got a whack.

And you either grew up or you got shipped out, simple as that.

McLean made light of United's financial disadvantages

and applied his forceful personality to the pursuit of greatness.

It's a small club, it's a provincial club,

and we have to cut all corners

to try and stay competing at the top,

save money wherever we can.

McLean also had views on the very structure and future of the game...

..believing that to have 42 professional clubs

was unsustainable.

I honestly believe that clubs would be more successful

if they joined ranks and pooled resources

than at the moment,

where it's spread far too thin over the ground.

His contemporaries had achieved success

by following the money.

Alex Ferguson,

now at the helm of one of the richest clubs in the world,

would go on to achieve spectacular success.

But McLean, fearing his club

would soon be too small and impoverished to compete,

had ambitious plans.

And in 1999, he attempted to consume his city rival,

Peter Marr's Dundee FC.

It was very close to happening,

and the merger was very, very close to happening.

It was within two or three days of happening.

People don't remember, or certainly some people don't want to remember,

that that deal was done,

those two teams, on a Friday night, had merged.

They had come up with a new name,

they had come up with the strip they would play in.

And on a Monday morning, it had all changed.

What had happened had been some incident in a nightclub with...

I think it was Rab Douglas,

who was married to the daughter of Peter Marr.

Peter Marr came on and said,

"I'm not going to put my family through this," and it was off.

Jim McLean, who really wanted the merger,

and the proof is there,

asked me...

in every way to get that back on the table,

but Peter wasn't for it.

It was more a takeover than a merger, I believe.

But, hey, it's historic now. I'm not one to stir things up.

I've never said a thing about my neighbours up the road.

We're both important for each other in the city.

And, yeah, it never happened.

Jim McLean had responded to the increasing financial pressures

by suggesting the unthinkable.

In the end, it hadn't worked.

Those financial pressures

meant that football was now more vulnerable than ever

to people who saw it mainly in terms of the money it could generate.

Most people don't understand

how you can acquire A - a famous football club,

and then B - turn it into a strong company,

with nearly ?100,000 capital.

I mean, I lot of intelligent people have said,

"How on earth did you do that?"

Claiming to be a lifelong fan,

solicitor David Duff was given a seat

on the Hibernian Football Club board in 1987.

It remains to me, even to this day,

a mystery as to who exactly was David Duff.

He's very much an enigmatic character

in the history of Scottish football,

not someone that is well known, not someone that even in a pub quiz

you would necessarily come up with his name,

and I think the enigma around him is,

what was he really trying to achieve?

Duff attracted the attention

of Conservative Party treasurer-in-waiting

and tax exile David Rowland,

who agreed to bankroll an acquisition of the Edinburgh club,

but only if the Hibernian fans were also encouraged to fork out.

With the use of bizarre TV advertising,

the fans were gently persuaded to empty their pockets.

The most important person at Easter Road isn't Alex Miller,

Peter Cormack, John Collins or Steve Archibald.

It's you - Hibs fans.

While the team plays its part on the park,

we and all our fans play theirs.

There's no substitute for that.

The Hibs fans bought shares in huge numbers,

and a profit of about ?1.5 million

found its way back to David Rowland.

But hidden in the small print of the newly formed Hibernian plc

was the acquisition of a loss-making restaurant chain

trading in the south of England

and owned by one of David Rowland's companies.

Haemorrhaging massive debt, it dragged Hibs into receivership.

I think it pointed

to some of the issues that we see later in Scottish football

where the club is not only overextending itself,

but more importantly, starting to get involved,

by curious, circuitous route, in other forms of business.

And, of course, these are very different businesses.

They're not run in the same kind of way,

and it ended up to Hibs spiralling into economic chaos, basically,

and made them uniquely vulnerable to being taken over.

With the club on its knees,

Duff was ordered to an emergency board meeting,

where he discovered there was to be a hostile takeover of Hibernian,

and learned the identity of the individual behind it.

David Rowland said,

"Who is the worst person you could imagine

"that would bid for the company?"

And I speculated a few names that I won't repeat,

but not the right one.

And Jeremy kept saying, "No, worse than that, worse than that.

"The very worst person."

The Hearts chairman Wallace Mercer

strode into an Edinburgh hotel this afternoon

to announce the boldest takeover bid British football has ever heard.

This morning, Heart of Midlothian plc submitted an offer

for the full issued share capital of Edinburgh Hibernian plc.

His idea of taking over Hibernian Football Club

was totally a disastrous idea.

It shouldn't come as a cultural shock,

the thought of putting together two teams who have been...

competitors for a hundred years or so.

Disgraceful.

Are you going to go yourself?

Go where? Go to a new club?

No danger. No danger.

Anybody who really understands football

knows that you can't have yin without yang,

you can't have Hearts without Hibs,

you can't have Rangers without Celtic,

and you cannot, you must not ever

effectively deprive people of their football loyalties.

You can't do that.

Wallace Mercer's plan

was to sell both of the valuable city centre club grounds

and build a new all-seater stadium on the outskirts of Edinburgh.

But unlike other businesses, most football clubs

were still firmly rooted in strong communities...

..with their fans ready to be called upon

as a last line of defence.

Keep your predator hands off Hibernian Football Club.

CHEERING

It was a very modern campaign in that sense,

but it preceded social media,

so it wasn't done through forums or anything like that.

It was done through concerts,

through raising money through the buckets in the streets,

through hand-outs, flyers and things like that.

More was at stake than just the club's history.

Identity, trust in its owners,

and the fans' dignity were also on the line.

The community cared enough to believe it could make a difference

as the campaign took hold.

They had a rally in the Usher Hall,

and they asked me to go along just to show support to the Hibs players,

cos that was the other thing that was involved -

if the teams were to merge,

at least one full squad of 30-odd players would have been lost.

And I told the truth.

I just felt that the city was big enough for both clubs.

I didn't agree with it.

I knew a lot of the lads in the Hearts dressing room didn't agree with it,

and didn't feel it was right,

which didn't go down too well with the chairman.

It was probably close to the club's darkest hour,

and everybody who was part of Hands Off Hibs

deserves great credit for the passion that they showed

and the determination they showed to save the football club.

That's part of a recurring theme within football -

supporters are passionate about their football club

and just want the best for their club.

The relentless campaigning

piled pressure on David Duff and his business partners.

At the very last moment, they held on to their shares

and the deal fell through.

Since the takeover campaign began,

a simmering undercurrent of aggression stalked the city,

aimed mostly at Wallace Mercer.

The fact of having a 24-hour guard on my family by the police...

..bricks through windows.

I mean, really, it is so parochial, it is so short-sighted,

and in the end, it really is quite sickening.

'The ball through to Foster. He's got Robertson in the middle.

'John Robertson!'

Just weeks later, the pent-up anger boiled over,

the fans displaying their rage

at the bungled attempt to dismantle their club communities.

'We have an incident on the field.

'Several players having to race forwards, fans invading the park.'

The place was packed to the rafters, and it was a horrible atmosphere.

You know, Hibs fans were going bananas, and rightly so.

Hearts fans weren't too happy about it either.

We were the Antichrist at the time, we were the enemies.

'Well, there have been chants throughout the game

'against the Hearts chairman, Wallace Mercer,

'who's not here this afternoon.

'But no matter what's happened during the summer,

'there can be no excuse for these disgraceful scenes,

'these quite dreadful scenes.'

Tensions erupted, and the police, inadequately prepared

and completely misjudging the volatile atmosphere, lost control.

The game was suspended several times,

but the teams struggled on until half-time,

when John Robertson led Hearts off the pitch three goals ahead.

We came in at half-time

and in came the match commander and a couple of policeman.

He says, "Look, we fear another pitch invasion.

"We're going to basically say if you score another goal

"and Hibs fans invade,

"we may have to stop the game, we'll have to stop the game.

"So if you can help it, don't score."

And we're all looking stunned, thinking,

some strange request, that.

He went out the door, "Yeah, yeah, no problem at all.

"Thanks very much.

"We know where he's coming from, we'll leave it at that."

Shut the door and just says, "Nah, that ain't happening, guys."

WHISTLE BLOWS

'And there, in fact, goes the final whistle.'

Hibs lost the game,

but claimed victory in their battle with Wallace Mercer.

It wasn't the love of football that brought David Duff to Hibs.

It was the lure of making money,

and when that didn't happen, it was time to leave.

The biggest lesson is that you can't really trust anybody.

And I just want away from it now.

David Duff did move away, and eventually into prison...

..convicted of fraud in 1993

after swindling hundreds of thousands of pounds

from numerous banks and building societies.

An appropriate omen for the shape of things to come.

Financial turmoil became a common feature of the game.

And no club, regardless of size or pedigree, was immune.

For over a century,

Celtic Football Club had been under the control of a group of

close-knit families. Resistant to change, these custodians were

stuck in a rut, increasingly disconnected from their supporters.

Somebody's got to do something because the board are just

going to sit there indefinitely and they have got to let them know

what their feelings out.

What was actually going on at Celtic in the accounts and in the way

that money was spent, where the money ended up,

because they certainly weren't spending it on players,

they weren't spending it on the stadium.

Their attitude to football supporters was to treat them

like scum. You will have no voice. Keep giving us the money.

Don't ask any questions about where it's going and behave yourselves.

And it wasn't long after that where the fanzine phenomenon began

and became a real thorn in the flesh.

They began asking questions about how football fans had been treated.

Celtic fanzine.

ALL: # Sack the board, sack the board, sack the board

# Sack the board, sack the board, sack the board, sack the board

# Sack the board, sack the board! #

Liam Brady, who was then the Celtic manager,

he actually said to me, "you think Celtic are going to go under?"

That was the Celtic manager not sure about what the future held

for the club and everything else.

The old family dynasty, it was ancient.

It belonged to another era and it was time to move on and they

were not capable of modernising that club and that's what had to happen.

You had the famous headline with the hearse outside Parkhead

which was in one of the Sunday tabloids

which caused a lot of ill-feeling

and out of all of this, at the 11th hour, the saviour arrived -

Fergus McCann.

The so-called saviour brought with him new business ideas

and a fresh vision to a club and football system

bereft of direction and purpose.

McCann, a lifelong fan and self-made travel tycoon,

had watched from his home in Canada as the club's fortunes declined.

He responded to desperate pleas from supporters to mount a rescue.

I Had ?11 million sitting in an account to show that the funds

were there. I was not an illusion.

I was not some guy with other people's money or no money and all the rest.

"Has he got any money, has got any money?"

It was sitting there. The bank exercised a squeeze play.

By noon, on a certain day if you don't pay up, we will foreclose

and we will take over the assets and put you into administration.

So I responded to that and paid that off.

I only paid off the bank.

I did not have control of the shares or the company on that day.

For 48 hours, McCann was trapped in a financial no-man's-land.

With the assistance of director Brian Dempsey,

he attempted to hammer out a deal for full control.

The club's bankers warned the club was in peril of being put into...

The chairman, David Smith, had arrived in Glasgow,

saying he would resign...

Did you mislead the board over the current state of the finances?

Absolutely not.

The old board, under siege, held the line.

The fans gathered on the doorstep.

And the media waited for answers.

A lot of us journalists were holed up at Celtic Park while all

these negotiations were going on and it was the end of the negotiations.

Out of a side door, Fergus McCann appeared,

quickly followed by David Smith, one of the Celtic directors.

And David Smith opened the door for Fergus

and said, "Goodnight, Fergus."

And Fergus McCann kept his head down and said, "Goodbye, Mr Smith."

The game is over. The rebels have won.

CHEERING

We have new people, a new plan,

a new vision and the strength to go forward.

McCann's five-year strategy involved giving the supporters a stake

in the club's future and building a new state-of-the-art stadium.

He actually saved Celtic.

Celtic would have been out of business had it not been for

him and Brian Dempsey.

It was about giving fans more of an interest in their club in terms...

They could buy shares, which was largely unheard of here.

He gave the fans a new belief.

He did not think within the traditional parameters of

Scottish football. He came with new ideas.

It went against the grain with some people. So he was different.

McCann's radical approach to the business of football appeared

to be deliberately misunderstood by an increasingly hostile media.

His focus was utterly clear-cut about making Celtic a great,

powerful force in the game.

He would keep on saying,

"We don't do things conditioned to appease the press.

"We do the right things and we deal with the repercussions."

The football authorities frequently questioned many of his

American-style commercial practices.

McCann was issued with an order to appear before them

for enticing another team's manager to join his club.

'Celtic have been fined a record sum of ?100,000.

'The fine is the largest ever in the history of Scottish football.'

'..could be expelled from the Scottish league unless they pay

'a ?100,000 fine within the next two weeks.'

You can't have this football association with football rules

and football laws deciding to penalise to that extent.

I felt that was vindictive and it was unnecessary and excessive.

And was intending to go to a real court, which, by the way,

under the football rules you are not allowed to do.

They have a rule in the football rules which is an illegal rule,

namely, you can't use the law. Now, nobody is above the law.

And when the SFA chief executive Jim Farry mysteriously delayed

a big player transfer, McCann went to war.

That was an example of maybe, if you like, a panjandrum,

if you want to call him that. He made the rules.

He'd do things his way. It's all

about, "We are going to show this guy, McCann, who's in charge here."

Well, you can't and you can't prejudice a given club on

a given day, doing as he did. And he paid the price.

'The Scottish Football Association has suspended

'its chief executive, Jim Farry.'

'The SFA have been forced into an apology to Celtic

'and the finger of blame is clearly being pointed at the Chief Executive.'

Much of this ongoing conflict between the old and the new

was played out in the media, with the personalities involved

providing endless stories for the so-called "fans with typewriters".

When I started in journalism,

sports writers and journalists in general still had this

amazing divine privilege almost that when the newspaper hit the

doormat the next morning, you revealed the news to the world.

The main purpose of producing a newspaper is to sell more

than your rivals, sell as many as possible by any legal,

barely legal means possible.

And football sells.

The new world of sports media gave the fans what they wanted,

more column inches about football.

But for the clubs, controlling the media was still a new challenge.

Ayrshire businessman David Murray

had amassed a fortune in the steel and property industry and had a

deep interest in sport, particularly his local club, Ayr United.

He was looking to get involved in Ayr because his family are

from there. I said it's a mistake.

I think if you have the money, you could buy Rangers.

That's how it turned out. We got on very well. We became great friends.

Murray and Souness shared a similar outlook and world view

and both were fiercely ambitious.

Murray purchased Rangers in 1988 with aspirations

to join the European elite.

In a bold move, he further extended his empire

into the media business, creating his own newspaper.

Aware that a new era of football public relations had dawned,

Murray discovered that feeding the media was preferable to fighting it.

David Murray liked to hold court, which was great for the media.

The old journalists got sweeties from David and hence David was the

king and David's challenger, Fergus, was the village idiot.

Fergus was never prepared to try and compete by giving sweeties

to the media. And if you don't give sweeties to the media,

they don't like you and they hurt you and they treat you badly.

David Murray had the media in his pocket.

And he had very good methods for doing it.

We knew what the methods were and we discussed the methods at Celtic

and decided not to follow them,

but we knew how he was going about it, and it worked.

David Murray deployed shrewd manipulation of the media as well as

continuing his aggressive financial approach to running Rangers.

Very quickly you realise that he was a person who was going to spend

whatever it would take to make Rangers successful in Europe.

We have applied for a work permit for Oleg Kuznetsov,

the Russian captain.

He started to build and build and build

and spend, spend, spend and get players in and lay the foundations

for the dominance that Rangers had in Scottish football at that time.

If we weren't doing well, we'd lost a couple of games,

a new player would arrive. It was just wonderful.

That was the first indication

that anyone got that Rangers were going to up the ante,

and after that,

it was very difficult for any other Scottish clubs to compete against them.

At the time, nobody was talking about, "is David Murray

"spending too much money?"

Everyone was just going, "Brian Laudrup, wow."

"World-class." There was no sense that this was anything other than normal.

This was it, this is what Rangers do.

This is going to continue and the next superstar

is going to be in the door pretty soon.

'Paul Gascoigne finally concluded his much-heralded move to Glasgow Rangers

'to become the club's most expensive ever signing.'

Our ambitions hold no bounds.

More and more money will become available. This will be a regular feature at Rangers.

He enjoyed that rollercoaster.

He enjoyed high stakes,

taking risks, taking the club on this exciting journey,

and a lot of people bought into it, including...

and I don't spare myself this, including critical observers,

who should have been more prescient about it than we were.

Rangers are the biggest club in Britain, people better realise that.

We used to think we're a big club, we are a biggest club now.

Many other clubs copied the Rangers business model.

But in most cases,

simply racked up debt to pay for higher transfer fees and wages.

The age of the foreign import had begun.

'Here's Larsson, he's done it!'

I think having foreign players there was exciting for the fans and

also enriched our game in terms of the way it was going to be played.

It was more about the money.

People who support a local club like the idea of organic growth of

the players coming through the club, rather than being bought in.

I felt that the clubs,

including Rangers, went too far in getting foreign talent.

And clubs were spending, within their own financial contexts,

stupid amounts of money.

Look at smaller clubs like Airdrie, they were buying foreign players.

It's just daft.

Dundee United were probably as guilty as anybody else of

bringing too many foreigners into the game.

They probably took a lot of money out of the club and gave us nothing

back in return.

And then I think everybody jumped on that bandwagon,

and I think it hurt our game quite badly.

The game here became a dumping ground for second,

third and sometimes fourth-rate European players.

And that's because other clubs thought,

"We have to get foreign players to compete."

They neglected the talent on their own doorstep and that withered

a bit and I think that was a bad thing for Scottish football.

I think if you go back to the period of the escalation of wages

and the ability to spend to get the big players,

that has an impact on every major club in Scotland.

I think that's where the rot sets in. For me, that's where it starts

to go hopelessly wrong because it led to an escalation of wages

that were over and above what the economy of Scottish football could afford.

As the players performed for rapidly expanding wage packets,

the fans, treated like cattle,

paid to watch them from behind barbed wire fences.

After a series of horrific stadium disasters,

the government stepped in.

Lord Justice Taylor's report into 1989's Hillsborough disaster

ordered the clubs to modernise their grounds.

'Its 100 pages add up to the bleakest and most damning critique...'

'..scrap their terraces or be shut down.

'The Taylor report says it's the only way to stop Hillsborough

'happening again.'

The change demanded a move from ramshackle terraces to

all-seater stadia, adding another huge financial burden

to the already overstretched clubs.

Rangers had already suffered a horrific stadium tragedy

years earlier, in 1971.

In the aftermath,

the club rebuilt Ibrox to the highest safety standards.

When they were all spending money on stadiums,

we could match Man United, or Liverpool,

or Arsenal, anyone, for transfer fees and salaries.

At times, the Souness revolution appeared to embrace the political and financial climate of the day,

with its emphasis on free markets and deregulation.

However, this was not a philosophy shared by most of Scotland.

The Conservative party's policies - the poll tax, deindustrialisation

and mass privatisation - led to bitter hostility.

MEN SHOUT

Scab! Scab!

The national mood was a combination

of humiliation, bitterness,

worry, deep anxiety, insecurity,

perhaps above all, anger.

Scab! Scab! Get it up ye!

In 1988, Mrs Thatcher made one of her few visits to Scotland

when she attended the Cup Final,

a fusion of politics and football.

It gave her a chance to appeal to the Scottish voters.

It gave the football fans a chance to express their opinion of the political changes of the time.

We were all aware that she wasn't the most popular person in Scotland.

We lined up in the foyer and she came out and met us before the game,

so obviously, that tells you that they were

a bit worried about the reaction that that would get.

'And there is the Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher,

'making her first public appearance.'

The supporters were given red cards before the Prime Minister arrived

and held them up as she appeared in the Royal box.

'And supporters from both sides,

'making the noise as the presentation party comes out...'

Thatcher herself,

knowing she was losing votes in Scotland in the 1980s,

and trying to find out why this was, became aware it was not simply because of her policies,

it was because also the Protestant working-class vote

was no longer overwhelmingly going to the Conservatives.

That was the first erosion in the sectarian political divide.

As Scotland's political landscape evolved,

it began to challenge some of the less edifying traditions

that had taken root in both society and football.

Scotland's religious loyalties were also beginning to crumble and

a more tolerant society was emerging.

But some football clubs lagged well behind the social momentum.

The toxicity of sectarianism

had festered for decades on the terraces.

CHANTING: Hello! Hello! We are the Billy Boys!

CHANTING: We're all off to Dublin in the green - fuck the Queen!

Well, there wasn't that divide in the period before 1900,

in particular not between Rangers and Celtic.

It's only later that the sectarian poison enters the sporting arena.

Irish immigrants to Scotland at the turn of the century adopted Celtic,

a club founded in the East End of Glasgow

to help feed the city's poor,

while Ulster Protestants, brought in during the prewar era

to work in the city's shipyards, gravitated towards Rangers.

The religious divide that had only previously existed

in the confines of worship now found other outlets.

In the '20s and early '30s, the Scottish industrial economy

virtually collapsed.

There was huge levels of immigration,

a massive sense of depression -

that is the high point of the sectarian history of Scotland.

People look for scapegoats and among the scapegoats found were

people from an Irish Catholic background who were seen to

be threatening the very essence of Scottishism.

That is the period in 1923

when the Kirk publishes its notorious report and pamphlet,

"The menace of the Irish race to our Scottish civilisation."

The Kirk addresses the employers of Scotland -

"please only hire and promote those who are of the Scottish race."

And Rangers began to adopt -

as so many other Scottish corporations did in that period -

began to adopt a Protestant-only policy, in terms of signing.

Rangers continued with this approach until Graeme Souness was

appointed player-manager in 1986.

On the day he joined the club, he sought a different way forward.

I believe that if you are a Rangers supporter,

you want to come here and watch them winning every week.

Whether they be whatever colour or whatever religion,

if they're doing the business for Rangers, surely that's what the supporters want to see.

We've got our traditions at Ibrox.

We don't want to see them broke for the sake of one man.

Souness or no. We like wur ain traditions.

I'd like to see him pick whoever he wants as long as they're Protestant.

LAUGHTER

In May 1989, waiting in the wings was a one-time Celtic hero,

contemplating a homecoming to his old club.

I'm really delighted.

There was other offers but there was only one team I want to play for and that's Celtic.

But Johnston had not put pen to paper and signed a contract.

Behind the scenes, fierce negotiations continued,

resulting in a series of events

that reshaped the social and football landscape.

I remember I was in the house one day and I got

a phone call from my son.

"Have you heard any rumours about Mo Johnston signing for Rangers?"

I remember my reply to him distinctly - I said,

"There is as much chance of me becoming the next Pope

"as Mo Johnston signing for Rangers."

I've come to a really big club, possibly one of the biggest in Europe.

We can maybe go all the way in Europe, hopefully.

I'm just delighted to be joining the club.

It was stunning.

I was in the room. It was utter bedlam.

One of the most staggering days I can remember in sports reporting.

'Mo Johnston will be the first Roman Catholic to play in Rangers' first team.'

This was an absolutely brilliant signing

and not just in terms of the shockwaves that it caused,

but because Mo Johnston was at the absolute peak of his powers,

he was absolutely on top of his form - brilliant player.

I believe he's the best centre forward in British football today.

I knew at the time it had to be done. And it was right.

It was preventing us going forward as a football club.

He was a damn good footballer, that's all that mattered.

It wasn't just the fact that Rangers had signed a Catholic, which was big enough,

it was the fact they'd signed THAT Catholic,

in that particular manner.

I am Rangers through and through.

And a Protestant through and through.

You'll no' get me at Ibrox again, that's it.

Why not?

Because they signed a Catholic.

The big thing I remember about the Maurice Johnston signing

was Graeme Souness's determination

not to be bound by the sectarian policy

which had operated in signing terms really until then.

And that blew that apart.

Fair play to him. Brave little bugger, he was right up for it.

He deserves a lot of credit.

Obviously I've got to look to win the Rangers fans over and I think I can do that.

This whole thing that there's people burning scarves

outside Ibrox... your nutters,

the very few nutters who only saw the religious aspect,

but they weren't anything like the majority.

Almost every Rangers fan I knew was absolutely delighted because

it was one in the eye for Celtic.

I think he's a little traitor.

He's a mercenary for money.

And Rangers are welcome.

It's a brave signing - the guy's going to get hassle from both sides, Rangers and Celtic supporters.

'It goes to Johnston. That's a corner.

'It's getting pretty towsy...'

It's a brave effort for Rangers bringing him to Ibrox.

If you're going to sign a Catholic, sign a good one, he must be the best.

Will you be going back to Ibrox? Certainly.

It was sort of a signal to Celtic - "Even Catholics want to play for us,

"that's how good we are now."

'Johnston.

'And he's scored!'

A very, very big watershed for Scottish football

and a much-needed watershed in so many respects.

We suddenly realised the world had changed. It was transformational.

It was very difficult to appreciate what had just happened

to Scottish football.

It was a sign for everyone that the club was changing

not only in terms of being able to bring in

a higher level of player, but also historical aspects of the club

that weren't very savoury were going to change as well.

The context of the Johnston affair was patently important.

We see evidences in that time of the end of labour market discrimination,

it's more or less dead by the late 1980s,

so what Rangers do is fairly typical.

They are coming in for a lot of criticism, virulent criticism,

even from ministers of the Church of Scotland,

so the temper of the times was changing.

It was also a reflection of these deeper movements,

sometimes below the surface, in Scottish society,

which we can also see now as we look back.

But for many fans, particularly at Celtic and Rangers,

intolerance is a way of life,

with a proclamation of tribal allegiances part of the match day routine.

You must've thought long and hard what you had to do last summer.

Has it been all worthwhile? Yes, very much so.

The management have backed me, the fans have backed me

and most of all, the players have backed me. I'm delighted.

Club dressing rooms often mirrored the conduct on the terraces.

The new Rangers team, which now included Maurice Johnston,

were captured in full voice in this previously unseen footage.

# ..surrender or you'll die

# For we are the Rangers Derry Boys... #

Get in there.

When I came to Rangers, I got sucked up in it big-time, I really did.

For the first couple of years, it was fine, you sung the songs,

attended this, did that, all that sort of thing,

but I'm one that jumped in with both feet, and went the whole hog.

# Dundee, Hamilton, fuck your Pope and Vatican

# If they go to Dublin we will follow on... #

I remember Rita saying to me one time, "You really want to stand back and have a look at yourself

"and see what you're doing."

And I did and I thought, "Wow, what AM I doing?"

You do get sucked up in it.

And you do end up calling people names and singing the songs

and you actually believe it and I thought, "Wow, hang on a minute.

"It's football, I'm playing for Rangers, I've got my family,

"I'm not really a religious person, but I'm fine with it."

But you ended up, "Wow, look at me, I've become a different person."

And I found that I had to really step back

and I think was the only Rangers captain not to be a Mason,

all that sort of thing as well...

Wow, hang on a minute - where are we going with this?

Sectarianism reaches far into the soul of Scottish football.

But it's not exclusive to any one club.

Arguments may rage about what constitutes sectarian comment.

Religious or political.

We love the IRA, we love the IRA...

To the outsider and to the rest of Scottish football,

both things look and sound the same.

Indistinguishable from any other display of intolerance.

My position is that sectarianism is dying in Scotland.

And to me it's ironic as a historian that as it dies,

it's got much more attention in the public domain and in Scots law

than it ever did in its heyday.

A decade on from Souness' radical move,

Rangers' signing policy had moved on significantly.

I think by the time you've got to Amoruso coming along,

especially given he ended up captaining the team,

I mean, a Catholic captain at Rangers -

the symbolism of that is immense.

And now I don't think anybody bats an eyelid.

I don't even think it troubles your bigots any more.

The Souness revolution transformed and reshaped Scotland's

social and sporting landscape.

But his forceful character often fell foul of the football authorities,

and he, like Fergus McCann, attracted some puzzling verdicts.

At this point, I've got nothing to say, thanks.

A six-month touchline suspension quickly escalated to an

unprecedented two-year ban, leaving Souness with limited options.

I now feel I've gone as far as I will be allowed to go in trying to

achieve success at this football club.

So I feel now would be the best time for me to go.

It was becoming...too much, it was becoming boring,

it should always have been about the football club.

Instead it was about me being in trouble for different things.

The broader impact of the Rangers revolution under Graeme Souness

was, I think, aspiration.

At club level, what you started to see was that the clubs became

more important to fans than the national team.

And this idea of the emergence of super-teams that are

capable of competing in Europe, that can play in the bigger tournaments,

that can go the finals and win them and whatever,

became the real measure of success.

And suddenly when Rangers emerged in their nine-in-a-row period,

they were the equal of all the big English teams of the time.

Rangers' dominance of the Scottish game continued for almost a decade.

Walter Smith took over at the helm,

with David Murray continuing to bankroll the club's success.

'The moment belongs to Rangers. The ninth time in a row.'

The clash of these two very different business models,

David Murray's lavish spending and Fergus McCann's more prudent

approach, came to a head in May 1998.

'The cheers ring round Celtic Park.'

The cautious business plan had won the day,

leaving David Murray with a damaged ego.

But just weeks later,

he set about restoring injured pride with an ?87 million spending spree,

ensuring victory for his rivals was only temporary.

Today's the largest sum of money we have ever spent on a player

and I'm sure we will eclipse that again shortly.

We're not happy having lost our championship,

but we've got to pick up the gauntlet that was put down

and go and retain the championship.

For the victor, Fergus McCann, the celebrations were short-lived.

Thank you very much. It's a great pleasure...

CROWD BOOS

You look back now, bizarre - the hostility towards him among certain Celtic fans.

It seems crazy now.

Because at the time, he was regarded as being tightfisted,

he wouldn't release money.

And on my right hand is Tom Boyd,

the captain of Celtic football club.

CROWD BOOS

I couldn't get my head around that -

there should be a statue to Fergus McCann

outside the front of Celtic Park.

We're sitting here, haven't signed a player in over a year.

There's no ambition in this wee man.

While I was there, it wasn't always people saying I'm an hero by any means.

People were saying, just spend the money, Fergus.

One principle I just followed there was,

do not do bad deals just because everybody wants you to do the deal.

Don't do bad deals.

Don't pay ?10 million for a ?5 million player.

'I'm a professional footballer who plays for money.'

'Who is the worst person you could imagine?'

'You must not ever deprive people of their football loyalties.'

'Wow, look at me, I've become a different person.'

'I don't even think it troubles your bigots any more.'

'The rebels have won.'

CHEERING

'Our ambitions hold no bounds.'

Football had been transformed.

The landscape of the game in Scotland had been changed

out of all recognition. And some major figures had emerged.

But the increasing focus was on everything except football.

Absurd amounts of money.

A voracious media, inflated egos,

resulting in a future mired in hubris and incompetence.

The two men who had fought a business war both on and off the pitch

came together with a shared desire to lead the way

and further modernise the game.

Rangers and Celtic are the biggest clubs and I think we are both showing a responsible attitude.

There aren't really any other serious options...

We must help the whole of Scottish football.

In August 1998, the next major stage of the modernisation plan began,

with the newly-formed Scottish Premier League.

The new championship had a multi-million pound

television deal in place, ensuring increased revenue for the clubs.

The fraught relationship between money, football and television

was to have a major influence on the next chapter

in the history of Scotland's game.

'The Scottish Premier League is underway.'

'Hugh Dallas has been hit by something.'

Gretna was an absolute Ponzi scheme, it was a con of the worst kind.

We have entered into commercialism, we have made a deal with the devil.

Morale, understandably,

is not good and there is significant unrest within the dressing room.

David Murray told me he was convinced that Craig Whyte was the answer.

If Craig Whyte was the answer, I don't know what the question was.

The big house must stay open!