Inside the Divide: One City, Two Teams . . . The Old Firm

Description

Since 1888, Rangers and Celtic football clubs have been locked into an intense and frequently explosive rivalry: Rangers the product of West Scotland's Protestant establishment, Celtic the team founded to raise money for the Catholic underclass of Glasgow. On 2 January 2010 the two teams met in the Old Firm's New Year Derby, a fixture that had been banned for ten years because of the trouble it brought with it. Richard Wilson puts that game at the centre of a book which delves into the history and widens out to the cultural resonance of the fixture within Scotland. It is a potent mix of close-up observation and big-picture thinking, with insight, understanding and depth.

Richard Wilson was born in Glasgow and spent almost 10 years at the Sunday Times Scotland, as deputy sports editor, then staff sports writer. In 2002, he won the Jim Rodger Memorial Award for best young sports writer. In 2003, at the Scottish Press Awards, he was named Sports Writer of the Year. He has regularly been nominated in the Sports Feature Writer of the Year category. He has written extensively about football, boxing and golf.

* An insightful and wonderfully written account ... Richard Wilson, more than anyone in recent years, has told us why Celtic and Rangers matter and why their adherents have little of which to be ashamed and much of which to be proud. I salute him Observer * A measured and thought-provoking treatise on the legendary rivalry between Scotland's two most popular football clubs Scotland on Sunday * It is an intensity that has frequently scarred Old Firm collisions with the violent and the reprehensible. But the Rangers-Celtic rivalry is so deep in the bones of so many Scots that - amid a football culture transformed beyond recognition by the wholesale importation of foreign players - it effortlessly remains a focus of mass emotion. -- Hugh McIlvanney * There were times when we might as well have played the first 20 minutes without a ball. The match would commence and the fans would hardly notice. -- Sir Alex Ferguson, Former Rangers Player * I'd heard a lot about the Old Firm game over the years and of the rivalry that exists between the Celtic and Rangers supporters, but it's only when you live in the city and see it up close that the true extent of the bigotry and hatred hits home. The fans were frothing at the mouth and at each other's throats right through the warm-up. When we marched out to kick off, it REALLY got intense. -- Tony Cascarino, Former Celtic Player