The Big Interview David Low

“The battle may have been lost, but our war was won!”

The requisitioners were routed at Rangers AGM this week. One after another, their resolutions against the current board were defeated as all five of its members were re-elected.

The celebrating Light Blues directors have been warned, though, that things are not always what they seem in these situations.

Twenty years ago last month David Low was one of the leaders of the Celtic rebels trounced in an EGM they requisitioned against the men then in charge of the Hoops.

And afterwards Fergus McCann’s money man joined his partners in accepting defeat and vowing to walk away.

Only to sweep back into power three months later.

“We lost and the public perception was we were finished,” said Low, who was contacted by Charles Green about Rangers before the Englishman bought into the Govan club.

“To turn the famous phrase, they thought the game was over and the rebels had NOT won.

“The truth was somewhat different.

“We had lost a battle, but, what people, what Celtic fans didn’t realise was that we were almost certainly going to win the war.

“In my own mind I had no doubts at all it had been a disastrous EGM for the board.

“They were in financial meltdown yet rejected our plans for a share issue that would bring a capital injection of £17.9 million. In today’s money that was nearly £60 million. Try justifying that to a bank after you for monies owed. You can’t do it.

“The board had to go back to the bank with no sensible answer as to why they had rejected us.

“The real reason, of course, was the individuals concerned didn’t want to lose control. When they rejected that money it was truly the beginning of the end.

“They were stupid enough to believe they had won when the opposite was the case. They had actually lost.

“Though it took the best part of another three months for the collapse to come, November 1993 is when it all started to unravel and I knew that to be the case then.”

Not that either his or Fergus McCann’s public statements of the time claimed that to be the case.

“It is a fact in business and in life sometimes that what you say publicly and what you say privately can be very different,” said Low. “We were confident we would get where we wanted to be in the end.

“But we had a strategy so once it was over what we said was fine, that there is no point in flogging a dead horse.

“Of course, we got in but it was a two-year fight because the old board didn’t want to lose control.

“They thought they were Celtic. They were never Celtic. They never realised that. They probably still don’t realise that to this day.

“If they had done what was best for the club at the outset we would have saved a year-and-a-half but they didn’t.

“As history shows, Fergus, who famously said the directors would not get ‘one thin dime’ out of him, had to pay.

“I have to say that was one of the very few occasions I got him to change his mind.”

In the years that followed, the Canadian was to be reminded of the old saying, ‘Be careful what you wish for’.

“It is really interesting to look at where we were then and where we are now,” said Low.

“Once Fergus got in, we still had serious, serious problems to deal with. The Taylor Report compiled after Hillsborough demanded all-seater stadia. We had next to no seats. We would have had a capacity of 8,500 if we didn’t build. We had to almost start again or face having no revenue.

“At the same time Rangers were going for 10-in-a-row so we there was huge pressure to put a team out on the park that could compete with them which was near impossible because we were having to put so much money into the stadium.

“We now know they were spending money on their team they didn’t have.

“David Murray’s line: ‘For every fiver Celtic spend, we will spend ten’ we now know that tenner was the bank’s money.

“The English clubs were banned from Europe and they brought some huge names up here. What they did effectively was bring debt to Scottish football with others such as Dunfermline, Hearts and Kilmarnock following suit.

“We weren’t immune and Fergus and the board came under tremendous pressure from our fans who wanted us to ‘Spend, spend, spend’ because that was what Rangers were doing.

“But we didn’t do it for two reasons: 1) It was wrong, you can’t spend money you don’t have. 2) A lot of the money had to go to the stadium.

“So it was always going to be a very tough five years. At times, the amount of hassle was quite outrageous. I remember after we did win the League to stop Rangers winning 10-in-a-row Fergus got booed when he unfurled the flag the following season.

“The rank-and-file fans just did not get it. They thought he was a tight wad.

“Time makes people reflect on things and 20 years on he is a hero to 90% of Celtic fans. They’re all basically saying he was right after all, thank god we weren’t profligate with money the way Rangers were.

“If Fergus was to unfurl the flag next season he would get roared on the pitch. There were mistakes, of course there were, but he was right in just about everything he did.”

Time will tell how history will judges the players in the current Rangers drama.