By David Herd
This weekend, Rangers face Queen’s Park in the Scottish Cup at Ibrox, a match that was once billed as “The Original Glasgow Derby” in 2012 when the teams played in the Third Division after the disaster of financial insolvency at Ibrox. This is not strictly accurate, as there were Glasgow clubs facing each other in the 1873/74 Scottish Cup, the season before Rangers entered into national competitive football.
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For example, the quarter-final in that debut season of the oldest national football competition in the country was Queen’s Park versus Third Lanark (known at the time by their original quaint name of Third Lanarkshire Rifle Volunteers). Even that first final was an all-Glasgow affair, when Queens defeated Clydesdale 2-0. But it is accurate to say that the teams who will run out onto the hallowed Ibrox turf on Sunday represent the two oldest surviving Glasgow clubs, so it is the oldest remaining Glasgow derby match.
The early history of Scottish football was dominated by the men from Hampden, and The Spiders are still sitting in third place behind the Old Firm in the list of clubs with most Scottish Cup wins. Despite the fact it is now 132 years since they last lifted the trophy, their ten victories is still two more than Hearts and three more than Aberdeen. Few would bet on them adding to their tally anytime soon, and they will be massive underdogs on Sunday.
But it isn’t just their place in the all-time trophy list that demonstrates the Queen’s Park place in football history. The club who were until recent years the last amateur side in senior British league football also have a history of giving famous players their first break in football. The current Scotland international team captain, and the current captain of Hearts both started their careers as Hampden amateurs (and both played in that 2012 fixture). Many famous names over the years have started out wearing the famous black and white colours, and that includes several who starred for Rangers, and for Celtic. Amongst the men who ended up at Parkhead were the likes of Aiden McGeady, Simon Donnelly and their 1950s centre forward Billy McPhail. Although by far the two best known would be their 1967 goalkeeper Ronnie Simpson, whose father played for Rangers, and full-back Danny McGrain who came through the Hampden youth system with Queen’s Park Strollers before being scouted by Celtic.
While Celtic have had their share of Hampden youngsters, the number who went on to wear the blue of Rangers is far greater. In a far from exhaustive list, these are just some of the players over the years whose football journey began with Queen’s Park and who went on to star for Rangers.
RS McColl, the superstar centre forward for Queen’s Park and Scotland at the turn of the twentieth century would enjoy a spell with Rangers in the 1900s before becoming even better known as the name on hundreds of high street shops.Jimmy Paterson, a brilliant winger who played for Queens Park before joining Rangers in 1910. He would win league titles before and after the Great War, and in between he won the Military Cross for gallantry when serving as a doctor on the front line tending the injured and dying.Derek Grierson, a forward who was Rangers top goalscorer in season 1952/53 as Rangers lifted both the league title and the Scottish Cup. These were the last major trophies won by immortal manager Bill Struth.Max Murray, a centre forward with a tremendous goals ratio in the late 1950s, and the man who scored the club’s first-ever goal in European competition against Nice in 1956.Alex Ferguson, another player with a very decent goals return, but whose Rangers career was cut short by the arrival of Colin Stein from Hibs. Obviously, Ferguson is a man better known for his incredible managerial career at Aberdeen and Manchester United, with both clubs still to this day wishing they could return to the days when he was in charge.Ally Scott, a striker who divided opinion in the 1970s, but a man who played his part in securing the iconic league title of 1974/75 when the championship was won for the first time in eleven long years.John McGregor, signed from Liverpool by Graeme Souness in the summer of 1987, and who started in the famous League Cup final win over Aberdeen a few months later when Davie Cooper scored that unforgettable free kick. He also started in the legendary win over Dinamo Kiev in the European Cup that season, but injury ruined his playing career and he would go on to join the club’s coaching staff.
There are plenty others who could be mentioned, but there are seven who deserve to sit at the top of the roll call of former Spiders who became Gers. They are the seven players in the Rangers Hall of Fame who started their careers at Queen’s Park, most of whom joined Rangers directly from Hampden. These seven legendary figures are listed here in the order that they played for Scotland’s biggest football club.
RC HAMILTON
Born in Elgin, Robert Cumming Hamilton was already on the radar of several clubs when he played for his local team, but when he moved south to Glasgow in 1896 to start a University degree to train as a teacher, he decided to join Queen’s Park as a part-time player to fit his football career around his studies. In just one season at Hampden, he made an enormous impact.
Hamilton was an outstanding centre forward, a player with two good feet, a powerful shot, and supreme predatory instincts near the opposition goal. In 1896/97, Queen’s Park were still regarded as one of the biggest names in football, but the club had resisted the lure of league football and were sticking to their amateur principles at a time in the years after every other major Scottish club had embraced professionalism. Not being a league club meant that they only collided with the best of Scottish football either in the minor competitions or in friendlies, and Hamilton found himself the talk of Scottish football in March 1897 after his side had played league champions Celtic in a Glasgow League fixture. The final score was Celtic 0 Queen’s Park 4, and Hamilton scored all four of the goals.
Such goalscoring power couldn’t be ignored by the professional sides, and Hamilton joined Rangers in the summer of 1897. This was a Rangers team who had just won all three cup competitions in the one season for the first time, and the winners of the Scottish Cup, the Glasgow Cup and the Charity Cup already had serious firepower in the team. But Hamilton immediately was given the job of leading the line, and over the next nine years, he became the deadliest marksman in the country, and still one of the greatest goalscorers in Rangers history.
In those nine seasons, RC Hamilton was the club’s top goalscorer in every single one. He was the top scorer in the top flight in six of them. He averaged better than a goal a game in six different league campaigns. His goals fired Rangers to four successive league titles, with the most famous being season 1898/99, when captain Hamilton led his team to an unprecedented league success when the team never dropped a single point. He also played in two winning Scottish Cup finals, scoring in both of them. And, as any great Rangers striker is measured in goals in the biggest games, he also set new records for goals scored in Old Firm matches. Overall, when various benefit matches, friendlies and one-off tournaments are included, his tally of 35 goals into the Celtic net has never been equalled. Even if we only include the recognised competitive matches of his era – Scottish League, Scottish Cup, Glasgow Cup, Charity Cup, Glasgow League and Inter-City League – he scored 24 times against what was a very good Celtic team at the time.
RC Hamilton was the first Rangers player to score more than 200 competitive goals for the club, this number growing to over 300 when non-competitive matches are included. And he repeated his amazing scoring feats at international level with 15 goals in 11 appearances for Scotland. He left Ibrox in 1906 for Fulham, where he won the Southern League and helped the club into league football. A less successful second spell at Ibrox followed, and his career wound down with stints at Hearts, Morton and Dundee. At Dens Park he enjoyed something of an Indian summer, and scored one of the goals that knocked Rangers out of the Scottish Cup in 1911.
After football, he returned north where he became Provost of Elgin for six years, as well as enjoying a highly successful professional career in teaching and in business. A genuine giant of the early successful years of Rangers FC.
JIMMY BOWIE
Bowie joined Rangers in 1910 after starring for two seasons in the Queen’s Park first team as an inside forward (attacking midfielder to modern readers). A highly creative footballer, Bowie instantly became a vital part of the Rangers team, a side who won three successive league championships between 1911 and 1913.
He won titles before and after the Great War, adding further championship badges in the wartime season of 1917/18 and the last campaign under manager William Wilton in 1919/20 prior to the tragic death of the Rangers boss. His sixth and final title was won the following season under new manager William Struth. Overall, Bowie would make almost 400 competitive appearances for the club, with his illustrious club career coinciding with the infamous Rangers hoodoo in the Scottish Cup, meaning he did not add the national cup competition to his list of honours. He did play in the 1921 final against Partick Thistle, a match Rangers were expected to win easily at Parkhead. Typically of the team’s luck in the tournament, Thistle scored the only goal of the match while Bowie was off the pitch replacing his torn jersey.
Bowie’s potential international honours were badly affected by the war years when there was no official representative matches. He did win two Scotland caps after the conflict ended, as well as playing for the Scottish League team five times. Never a prolific goalscorer, he still managed over 70 goals for Rangers, including half a dozen in Old Firm matches.
As well as a great servant to the club on the pitch, Bowie would then serve Rangers for decades off the field. He joined the board of directors in 1925, serving for many years as club chairman from 1934. He also took on the position of President of the Scottish League for many years. His departure from Ibrox in 1947, when losing a boardroom battle with manager Bill Struth was a sad end to his long association with Rangers FC.
ALAN MORTON
There are several candidates for the title of the best footballer ever to play for Rangers. While there will never be a definitive answer to that question, one candidate surely has to be the legendary Alan Lauder Morton.
The diminutive left winger was a part-time footballer for his entire career, fitting his incredible achievements on the football pitch alongside a job as a mining engineer. He remained an amateur at Queen’s Park until the age of 27, and was already a Scotland internationalist, when he finally made the move into the professional game. In the summer of 1920, he became the first signing made by the new Rangers manager William Struth, and there is an argument that Struth would never make a better acquisition.
If Morton made an impression on Scottish football while at Queen’s Park, it was nothing compared to the everlasting legacy he left at his new home. In a Rangers career that finally ended with his retirement in January 1933, not long before his 40th birthday, he won everything that could be won and earned a reputation as one of the best, if not the finest, wingers that British football had ever seen. Small, quick, with incredible balance and instant ball control, Morton would terrorise full backs for club and country in his trophy-laden Ibrox career. His list of achievements speaks volumes.
Nine league titles. Three Scottish Cups, including the iconic 1929 final against Celtic when the club finally brought the old trophy back to Ibrox after waiting for a quarter of a century. 494 competitive appearances, despite his age when joining the club. 117 competitive goals, including the winning goal in Struth’s first win in an Old Firm game as Rangers manager in 1920. Morton was the undisputed first choice for the left wing at Rangers for his entire Ibrox career, and he was also the undisputed choice for the role with the national team. In the days when the Scotland v England annual international was viewed as the biggest and most important international match in world football, Morton was selected for the match an incredible eleven times. The most famous of these occasions was, of course, the 5-1 win at Wembley in 1928 when Scotland thrashed the Auld Enemy and the team earned the immortal nickname The Wembley Wizards. Morton created three of the goals that day with precision crosses.
Morton had his own nicknames too. His wing magnificence earned him the famous title of The Wee Blue Devil, a name allegedly given to him during that Wembley massacre by a disgruntled English fan who was overheard by a journalist. Back at his club, he also was known as The Wee Society Man, due to his dapper dress sense and how it reminded fans of the “society men” who came round the doors to collect insurance money.
As a sign of the respect the club had for Morton as a player, and as a man, he was given a place on the club board of directors after his playing career ended. And he proudly remained a director of the club he loved until his death on December 15th 1971, a dark day for Rangers FC as it was also the day that the club announced the passing of the great Rangers star of the 1930s and 1940s, Torry Gillick.
BOBBY BROWN
Brown holds a special place in the history of Queen’s Park. The goalkeeper, who was a Spiders player between 1939 and 1946, has the distinction of being the last Queen’s Park player to be capped by Scotland. During WW2, the Hampden goalkeeper and trainee teacher enlisted with the Royal Navy, and trained to be a navigator of Fairy Swordfish fighter planes. But he found himself representing the forces on the football pitch rather than taking part in battle after Navy bosses intervened when discovering his sporting talent.
Brown represented Scotland in five unofficial wartime internationals, before earning a first official cap in early 1946 against Belgium. Within weeks, he had turned down a move to Manchester United to join William Struth’s powerful Rangers team. From his debut against Airdrie in the Victory Cup in May 1946, Brown became the reliable last line of defence in the great post-war Ibrox side who would win many honours.
Perhaps the most impressive thing in Brown’s Rangers career was his unbelievable consistency. He started in the first official league match of post-war football in August 1946 against Motherwell, and he then did not miss a single league game until rested in the last match of the season in 1951/52. It’s probably fair to say that many Rangers fans in the late 1940s and into the start of the next decade had no idea who the backup goalkeeper was, as they never saw him! Brown’s almost unprecedented reliability earned him numerous medals.
Playing behind a defence that would be known as The Iron Curtain, he was the ever-present goalkeeper who won the league title in 1947, 1949 and 1950. He was the ever-present goalkeeper who won three successive Scottish Cups between 1948 and 1950. And he didn’t miss a match in two successful League Cup campaigns in 1947 and 1949. This Rangers trophy dominance meant a first-ever domestic treble in season 1948/49, with Bobby Brown starting every single match.
In 1952, Brown was asked to go full-time by manager Struth, but the Jordanhill College teacher declined as he did not want to give up his profession. This led to Brown losing his place in the team to George Niven, and although Brown remained at Ibrox for a few years thereafter, he was never the regular custodian again. His 331 appearances, 4 Scotland caps and 8 Scottish League starts during his Rangers career demonstrate he was a goalkeeper of the highest quality.
Brown found fame as a manager, both at St Johnstone and for a time in charge of the Scotland national team. He famously was the man who guided Scotland to that famous 1967 Wembley win over the world champions. He would remain a regular attendee at Ibrox for a great many years, always seen dressed immaculately in shirt and tie. He would become the oldest living ex-Rangers player for a few years before his death at the age of 96 in 2020.
SAMMY COX
Bobby Brown was the goalkeeper behind the Iron Curtain, and two of the great defenders who played in front of him in the post-war years were also former Spiders. One of them was Sammy Cox.
Cox was born in Darvel in 1924, a village that has produced its share of Rangers greats. After starting his football career in the local juniors, he joined Queen’s Park in 1942 and turned out for them over the next two years. He also represented Third Lanark and was a Dundee player by the time the war ended, a conflict that saw Cox serve in the Army as a PE instructor in the Gordon Highlanders. In May 1946, he joined Rangers.
Cox was a wholehearted defender, strong in the tackle, and although predominantly left sided he could play almost anywhere across the back line. He made his competitive debut in the same Victory Cup match at Airdrie that Bobby Brown started for the first time, the players starting their Rangers careers on the same day then sharing so many great triumphs. He played on the right and the left of the defence in his early seasons, but would become the undisputed left half of the Iron Curtain, and he rarely played anywhere else in his Rangers career from 1948 onwards.
While Brown would see his Ibrox first team starts become less frequent after the summer of 1952, Cox would remain a regular in the team a while longer, playing beyond the Struth era and well into the first season in charge of new manager Scot Symon in 1954/55. He would start in 349 competitive matches, scoring 22 times. He collected four league titles, three Scottish Cups and one League Cup, missing the 1953 Scottish Cup final win over Aberdeen due to injury.
As well as his impressive medal haul, Cox had the distinction of scoring the very first Rangers goal in the Scottish League Cup, the opener in a 4-0 win over St Mirren at Ibrox in September 1946. A massively popular player on the Ibrox terraces due to his ferocious ball-winning, Cox was also a highly successful international player. He won 25 Scotland caps, and captained his country against England in 1954. One of his greatest compliments came from the great England winger Stanley Matthews, who described Cox as the most difficult full-back opponent he ever faced. This was even more of a compliment when left back was the position he filled at international level but only rarely with his club.
After leaving Rangers, he played briefly for East Fife before emigrating to Canada, settling in Ontario. A proud Ranger, he was a popular member of NARSA, with the North American fans creating a banner in his honour. When inducted into the club Hall of Fame in 2003, Sammy declared in his speech that “once a Ranger, always a Ranger”. He died at the age of 91 in 2015.
IAN MCCOLL
Incredibly, there was a third member of the legendary Iron Curtain who started out at Queen’s Park. Ian McColl was born in Alexandria and joined Queens Park in 1943 after moving to Glasgow to study Engineering at the city’s university. He came to the attention of William Struth when starring for The Spiders as a highly competitive but skilful half back, and moved to Ibrox in 1945. He made his debut for the club in a Southern League match at the age of just 18, and became a regular near the start of the first season of “normal” football after wartime restrictions ended.
As well as his game intelligence, his fierce competitiveness and his calm temperament, McColl was also a model of consistency. The right half position would be mainly his for twelve seasons, McColl playing longest of all the Iron Curtain players, and achieving the relatively rare feat of lifting the Scottish Cup in three different decades when returning to the side as a veteran in the 1960 final against Kilmarnock. 574 competitive appearances tells just how important and reliable he was, and with so many first team starts, that also meant plenty of honours.
McColl lifted seven championships, four Scottish Cups and two League Cups, and was team captain for a time after the retirement of the great George Young in 1957. Rangers would be the only professional club he ever played for, and his playing career ended in a way most modern fans would find hard to believe. He went straight from the Ibrox dressing room to the Scotland manager’s office, appointed boss of the national team in 1960 aged just 33. He would be the second most successful ever Scotland boss in terms of win percentage, and oversaw wins over England at Hampden and Wembley as well as a 6-2 win over Spain in Madrid. He would later be the Sunderland manager who signed Jim Baxter from Rangers in 1965.
Ian McColl sits in the top ten of all-time Rangers competitive appearances, and will likely remain there for many years to come. He died in 2008.
DEREK PARLANE
If ever a boy was destined to be a Rangers player, it was Derek Parlane. His father, Jimmy, played for the club immediately after WW2 and scored in an Old Firm victory at Parkhead. He was brought up in the village of Rhu in the Firth of Clyde, the area of the country where the club’s Founding Fathers hailed from. And as a schoolboy, he was a special footballing talent, so much so that he was playing in the Queen’s Park reserve team at the age of just 15. By the age of 16, he had been spotted by Ibrox scouts and had signed on as a professional player with Rangers in April 1970.
The Rangers management team at the time were two legendary former players, manager Willie Waddell and his assistant Willie Thornton, both teammates of Parlane Senior. And they were so determined that Derek would sign on the dotted line that they personally visited the Parlane home to persuade the teenager that Rangers were the club for him.
At this time he was a midfielder, and it wasn’t all that long before he was given his first-team chance. At the age of 17, Derek was selected for the New Year’s Day game at Brockville against Falkirk at the start of 1971, a game that was played just 24 hours before the big Old Firm clash at Ibrox. Tragically, that would be the day that disaster cast its shadow forever over the club, meaning the game the previous day is largely forgotten. Manager Waddell decided to field a very young and inexperienced side with the league challenge already looking hopeless, with his plan being to keep many of his top players fresh for the big game the next afternoon. As well as Parlane, young defender Gus McCallum was given his first start, in a Rangers team with an average age of just 20 years and 316 days. It was the youngest eleven ever chosen by Rangers in the professional era. They lost 3-1.
McCallum would never start another competitive match for the top team, but Parlane was very different. He was given occasional appearances to build his experience, but then on April 19th 1972, came the night that his career took off. Rangers faced the formidable Bayern Munich in the semi-finals of the European Cup-Winners’ Cup at Ibrox in a second leg tie finely balanced after a 1-1 draw in Germany. But Waddell’s plans for the night were thrown into disarray when inspirational captain John Greig was ruled out with injury. The player he decided would wear his number 4 shirt was Derek Parlane. In an unforgettable night in front of 80,000 ecstatic Rangers fans, Bayern were put to the sword by two quick goals. Sandy Jardine found the net in the first minute, and then after 24 minutes Ibrox had a new hero. Parlane swept the ball into the net for his first Rangers goal. He would go on to score 110 more of them.
He didn’t play in the final in Barcelona, and by the following season Jock Wallace had become manager with Waddell moving “upstairs”. The new manager saw Parlane’s eye for goal as wasted further back, and he converted the player into a striker. What a wise move this turned out to be. At the age of just 19, Parlane found himself leading the line, and he would be the top league goalscorer for the club with 19 goals from 29 starts as Rangers went on a brilliant unbeaten run in the second half of the season but fell just a point short of the title. Those 19 goals included his first against Celtic in the New Year game at Ibrox, the first league win over them in the 70s. The Scottish Cup final was the last match of the season, and it was an Ols Firm occasion, Celtic having just lifted their eighth successive title. In a classic match, Rangers won 3-2 to lift the cup in its centenary year, and it was Parlane who opened the scoring on his 20th birthday.
He had scored in Old Firm wins at Ibrox and Hampden, and a few months later he scored in a League Cup win at Parkhead to complete the set before his 21st birthday. Incredibly, Parlane would score at least one goal against Celtic for seven successive seasons, something that only Ally McCoist has done in a Rangers shirt since. Parlane was now given the royal title of King Of Ibrox Park, and the king was top scorer again in season 1974/75 when Rangers finally got their hands on the league championship for the first time in eleven long years.
That would be the first of three championships he won, with his honours list going on to also include three Scottish Cups and three League Cups. He also won 12 Scotland caps, as well as representing his country at under-21, under-23 and League levels. By season 1979/80, manager John Greig had decided Parlane was no longer going to feature regularly, and he played his last game in royal blue at Aberdeen in January 1980. A few weeks later, he was sold to Leeds United for £180,000. Derek Parlane had made 298 competitive Rangers appearances and scored 111 goals.
Parlane went on to represent several clubs before retiring, but he will always be associated with just one. The King of Ibrox Park is still a hugely popular figure with the fanbase at supporter events, and his Hall of Fame place is richly deserved.
When Queen’s Park emerge from the Ibrox tunnel this weekend, probably few if any of their players will know that the shirt they are wearing has so often in the past been worn by future Rangers stars. It’s maybe unlikely that any of the 2025 vintage will have glorious futures wearing the most famous blue shirt in football. But who knows, maybe one day another player will come through at Hampden and follow in the footsteps of these past legends.
RANGERS V QUEENS PARK PROGRAMME 2012 Screenshot 2025-02-08 at 08.27.34
1974 8-0 SCOTTISH CUP (FORMER QP PLAYER ALLY SCOTT IN PICTURE) Screenshot 2025-02-08 at 08.28.09
1974 8-0 SCOTTISH CUP (FORMER QP PLAYER ALLY SCOTT IN PICTURE) Screenshot 2025-02-08 at 08.28.09
2012 FRASER AIRD GOAL 1-0 IN THIRD DIVISION (30,000 AT HAMPDEN) Screenshot 2025-02-08 at 08.29.14