The Club, The Company... The Mythology.

My last blog concerned the claims of a "Celtic Newco" and my intention was to put that theory to bed, in this blog however I have no such illusions, since July 2012 the debate regarding Club & company and whether they are one and the same has raged pretty much non stop and I don't doubt they will continue to rage, emotions run too high on this subject to expect anything else. I merely intend to put forward some facts for consideration by people who would like to know the truth.

The source of the Screen Grabs in this blog will be the Memorandum and Incorporation Certificate of The Rangers Football Club (1899) a copy of which can be found at :
Rangers FC Memorandum & Incorporation Certificate

 
sent to me by @celticservant on Twitter who has been very supportive of my blog in helping it reach a far greater audience than it otherwise would have.

I'll start off with the kicker, the line which for me and for anyone of sound mind puts to bed the argument that Club and company are separate entities contained on page 8 of the said document: "The words 'Club' and 'Company' and also the words 'Member' and 'Share Holder' throughout the said Memorandum and Articles of Incorporation shall; where the context admits of it , be of synonymous meaning."  This is therefore to say that Club and Company are nearly or exactly the same.

I know some will find a way to wriggle around this statement which completely contradicts everything they have argued for over the last 2 years, but the fact remains that in black and white the people who ran "the club" and incorporated it as "the company" intended that they would indeed be one and the same, a single entity for all intents and purposes.

This notion that in modern football a "Club" can exist without a company or that a Company is somehow a disposable add on which has no effect on fabled "Club" is a non-sense.

Understandably some people have too much of an emotional investment in a football club to accept that club is simply no more but unfortunately for them, that is the case and what they have now is a cheap imitation run by money hungry businessmen who have no real interest in the success of the club but only the amount of profit they can squeeze before financial ruin approaches.

I best heard the position of a Rangers fan summed up by a friend in this anecdote: 

I had a jacket once, it was my favourite jacket. I wore it everywhere, I had my wallet with £50 in my jacket pocket. One day as I ripped my jacket when I was out, when I took it to be fixed I was told it was damaged beyond repair, I was devastated. The very next day I went to the shop where I bought my jacket and bought another. It was exactly the same: style, size, colour, identical. I took my old jacket and put it in the bin, took my wallet from the pocket and put it in my new jacket, I told everyone that it was the same jacket, my favourite jacket and most people believed me but deep down I knew that it wasn't the same. 

Lets be honest the vast majority of them know its a different club, they know its gone deep down. They are just to emotionally involved to admit it and to be honest it they would be fit for pity rather than ridicule........ if they weren't such pricks about it.