Free The Gallant Pioneers: Rangers 1872 by Gary Ralston Page A

from 1920, was adamant the big boys of the Scottish game were acting not out of malice in refusing a game, but out of concern for the well-being of the youthful club, fearful of crushing its spirit so early in its development.4

    Rangers played at Burnbank for a season between 1875–76. The image above shows the view north from Park Quadrant c.1867 across Burnbank to the new tenements on Great Western Road. The road to the left, next to Lansdowne UP Church, is Park Road, while the houses in the foreground belonged to the Woodside cotton mill and stand on what we know today as Woodlands Road.
    The third season of Rangers’ existence had offered glimpses of better to come, with 15 matches played in 1874–75 against sides long since gone, such as Havelock Star, Helensburgh and the 23rd Renfrewshire Rifles Volunteers. Rangers won 12 games, losing only once. The issue of a more permanent base was addressed in time for the start of the 1875–76 season, when the club moved to recreational space at Burnbank, a site on the south side of Great Western Road near St George’s Cross, today bordered by Park Road and Woodlands Road. A move to Shawfield had been briefly considered and then rejected, no doubt as Burnbank was much closer to the homes of the founding fathers around the Sandyford and Charing Cross districts of the city. Initially, Rangers shared the space with Glasgow Accies, the rugby club who were formed in 1866, although they later moved to North Kelvinside. In addition, the Caledonian Cricket Club, who also had a short-lived football team, played on the site, which was later swallowed by developers for tenement housing which still stands today.
  Burnbank did its damnedest to stand as an oasis in an increasing desert of red sandstone and was also the home of the First Lanarkshire Rifle Volunteers, who were raised in 1859 by the amalgamation of several existing Glasgow corps as a forerunner to the modern territorial army. Among the members of the First Lanarkshire Rifle Volunteers and the Glasgow Accies was William Alexander Smith, who founded the Boys Brigade in Glasgow in October 1883. Smith was moved to form his Christian organisation in frustration at his difficulty inspiring members of the Sunday School where he taught at the Mission Hall in nearby North Woodside Road. The youngsters were bored and restless, in stark contrast to the enthusiasm he came across as a young officer among the Volunteers on the Burnbank drill ground every Saturday afternoon. Smith, who was born in 1854, would have been no stranger to Burnbank at the time Rangers were playing there: more than likely he was fermenting his ideas for an organisation that still boasts more than half a million members worldwide at the same time.
  Rangers played their first fixture at Burnbank on 11 September 1875 against Vale of Leven, who had quickly established themselves as the second force in the Scottish game behind Queen’s Park. The match finished in a 1–1 draw, but Rangers were beginning to cause a stir. Previously a draw among fans at Glasgow Green, their youthful endeavour and skill at the infant game was starting to attract strong and admiring glances in the west end of the city. A Scottish Athletic Journal rugby columnist, The Lounger, looked back over a decade in 1887 and charted the growth of the fledgling club as he recalled: ‘When I used to go to Burnbank witnessing the rugby games that were played there I always strolled over to the easternmost end of that capacious enclosure to see the Rangers play, and I was never disappointed. They were a much finer team then than they are now. The Vallances were in their prime, P. McNeil was at half-back, Moses – the dashing, clever dribbler of those days – was a forward and P. Campbell and D. Gibb – both dead, I am sorry to say – were also in the team.’5 However, a lengthy run in the Scottish Cup, the principal tournament, was to elude Rangers for a second successive season. In the second