Tat Ta … For Now? By Donald C Stewart

Date: 30th April 2026

Tat Ta … For Now?

By Donald C Stewart

A sketchy and humorous look at the outpourings of the great, the good and the not so good of Scottish fitba’ by Donald C Stewart. Readers are warned that if they take this seriously then therapy is available – just let us know where you find it so we can pass it on to others…

Leaving dos. What do you do? How do you hold a leaving do for somebody who’s been there for 11 years?

Balloons? Enough about your teammates. Or the managers. Or the owners you’ve had to endure. The boardroom battles. The people who have come in, flashed in the pan, and fell into a fire somewhere else.

Who do you invite?

Do you get all the people you used to work with to come back in some kind of embarrassing this-is-your-life moment?

Or do you just slink quietly out the back door into a waiting taxi, a la Russell Martin?

Do you bring in your baubles, you know, the one League Cup medal, the one Scottish Cup medal, and the one Scottish title medal to parade them?

Or do you get somebody in the office who’s got a 15-year-old who’s pretty good at that AI stuff to do a card that would embarrass Moonpig and generally ends up embarrassing you at the shindig?

Do you get T-shirts made?

Your name and your most embarrassing moment on the front.

Or do you keep that for the cake?

And what kind of cake do you get?

Do you go to Costco and get one with jam and the cream in it that lasts for so long it feels like a nuclear explosion would be the only thing to get rid of it?

Or do you go and get several cupcakes or caterpillar cakes.

What’s the dress code?

Do you go fancy dress?

Do you decide that there’s going to be a theme that everybody has to turn up?

And one presumes that hoops would not be that theme.

Do you invite more than just those who are in the office? What about the people along the road, your greatest rivals? Are there anybody in that team that you would suggest should come along in order to see you off?

Or are they just going to stand outside applauding you as they get into the taxi at the end of the night, thanking God that you’ve actually gone?

All of these things and more may be being contemplated by Danny Rohl at The Rangers after the announcement that James Tavernier, after 11 seasons, is going to leave the Ibrox club.

A club legend during a time that was a bit like Rangers in the early 1980s.

A tough watch.

This season in particular, if there has been anything like the yo-yo for both The Rangers and Celtic, then The Rangers had suffered a little more than most.

After all, they didn’t have a sainted man to return to because Stevie G turned them down and decided it was not the most appropriate time to return to Ibrox. Whereas St Michael of O’Neill couldn’t help himself running full tilt. Well, at least as full tilt as a 70-odd-year-old man can back into the hot seat.

The Rangers, of course, do feel that they have picked the right guy in Rohl who seems to have got a tune out of a dodgy fiddle more than Russell Martin and other predecessors. And there is an opportunity that they have to win the title. If they win all their games, they win the title.

Given where they were under Russell Martin, that’s something that they would have bitten your hand off for. The problem is, it’s the same thing for Hearts and for Celtic. If they win all their games, they will also win the title.

It is the fitting opportunity for Tavernier to walk off into the sunset as the captain who delivered his second title in over a decade for The Rangers.

So, what would be in a going away party? A fitting cheerio? The Ibrox faithful will tell you. The second title during his reign as captain will be enough.

For the rest of us, we, of course, are all hoping that the Jambos do it and we get a different colour at the top.

And many will trot along to Hampden in black and white, supporting the Pars, to give us the first non-Old Firm treble since somewhere in the 1950s, I think.

And what send off we would give the Pars and the Jambos if that happened…

 

IMAGE Homes of Football

---

Posted in: Fan's Blog, Latest News

Tags: oor Donald, Rangers, Scottish football