“Nisbet whips it in…Oh my word! It’s a goal by Nisbet. It’s the break and the stroke of luck Rangers needed. It might be the biggest fluke in Europe this season but who cares!”
The immortal words spoken by ITV commentator Alan Parry detailing one of the most surreal goals scored at Ibrox is an incredible 30 years old today.
Rangers welcomed Club Brugge to a raucous Ibrox on matchday four of the inaugural Champions League but no one could’ve envisaged what would unfold next.
Walter Smith’s men had negotiated past Danish champions Lyngby before triumphing against Leeds United in the Battle of Britain, as they dished out a footballing lesson to Howard Wilkinson’s side both home and away to qualify for the group stages.
A dramatic 2-2 draw with Marseille was followed by a hard-fought 1-0 win over Russian champions CSKA Moscow. A Pieter Huistra equaliser earned a point away to the Belgians before Hugo Broos brought his team to Glasgow for the return a fortnight later.
The Rangers team that lined up on that sodden wet evening in Govan was as follows: Goram, Nisbet, Murray, Gough, McPherson, Brown, McCall, Steven, Durrant, Hateley and McCoist.
It was a side coming off the back of an incredible 43-match unbeaten run and, unsurprisingly, there was an air of expectancy that was felt both in the stands and on the pitch.
Heart and Hand host David Edgar, aged 15 at the time, was one of the thousands of punters who descended upon Ibrox.
“We had knocked out Leeds United and we had good results including that amazing comeback against Marseille,” he recalls.
“This was an excellent Rangers team and we do have a tendency to underrate our own side. This was an era where Brugge and ourselves would go into the group stage thinking we could win the whole tournament.
“We realised it was going to be a tough game but we did expect to get a result. There was confidence in the air but if we were playing a Belgian side tomorrow, regardless of how good they were, we’d expect to beat them.
“Brugge were an excellent side. They were very progressive, technically very good but the conditions that night were a good old Scottish equalizer in that regard.
“We were soaked going into the ground because it was a filthy night. We used to park at Bellahouston Park and walk up and by the time we got there, there were all these drowned Rangers fans walking in dripping with rainwater.
“I remember the Champions League branding around the stadium. Football was becoming more commercial, but this was a huge leap in terms of that and you were aware that it was different. You also had the special programmes on sale outside the ground that were bigger than the normal ones.
“There was an air of anticipation. You were aware that all the eight teams in the group stage were kind of pioneers in this. Everything felt fresh and exciting and dynamic. You felt that electricity in the air but the other thing I would say is, at that time, we felt we could win it.
“We knew we’d have to get something in France but we thought we could. The only thing I would compare that campaign to is the runs to Manchester and especially to Seville where it wasn’t just picking up European results to be proud of. There was a sense of, ‘hold on, there’s something very special happening here'.”
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That feeling of belief from the stands was echoed in the squad built by both Smith and his predecessor Graeme Souness.
Scott Nisbet, who would emerge the unlikely hero of the night, tells the Rangers Review, this was a special group of players.
“We had an absolutely phenomenal squad,” he says.
“We were all mates and the banter was good, we used to have Scotland vs England games. Even on a Friday before a game, we used to slag each other off and kick the shite out of each other, it was mental, but in a good way, it was brilliant.
“The game itself feels like yesterday, I can’t believe it’s 30 years already. It was just a great run, we were undefeated for 44 games as well as being undefeated in the Champions League, the squad was flying.”
Despite a playing surface that wouldn’t look out of place in Sunday League football, Rangers broke the deadlock on 39 minutes when Ian Durrant rifled into the corner following a clever move.
It was lift-off at Ibrox, almost literally, as ITV commentator Parry explains reflecting on that night.
“Rangers took the lead just before half-time, Trevor Steven threading through a great pass and it was a really good finish from Ian Durrant," he says.
“The TV gantry where we did the commentary was literally shaking with the reaction to the goal, it was unbelievable.
“We thought we were all going to fall off, the cameras and everything. It was one of the strangest experiences I’ve ever had during commentary because literally underneath the ground, people were jumping up and down and the gantry was responding accordingly.”
The feeling of euphoria that engulfed the vast majority inside Ibrox would soon evaporate when Mark Hateley was shown a straight red following an altercation with the Brugge defenders.
With Smith’s side reduced to ten, Edgar feared the worst.
“I remember it vividly because I was apoplectic at him being sent off for that,” he says.
“Nowadays, it’s a red card, absolutely, but we were still coming out of the era where a first-half red card was very rare. Referees just didn’t do it, in general.
“Scotland was still a very, very physical league, elbows would be flying about, tackles from behind, going through a player and getting a warning. Some of the tackling was ferocious but we’ve gone into Europe and you got refereed to the way they play football which doesn’t allow you to have that physical edge.
“I think big Mark just got frustrated. It was very clever from the defenders. I think in Scotland there was probably more of an honesty about it between defenders and forwards. It was like, ‘I’m going to hit you, you’re going to hit me, all well and good, at the end of the game we shake hands and go off the park.’
“In Scotland maybe you’ll get a booking, you’re certainly not getting sent off in the first half for that but in Europe you did. I’m 15 and very biased and at the time I thought we were being done here by the referee and that was the sense in the stadium. I can’t remember anybody, certainly near us, that was anything less than puzzled and angry by it because you saw it in every game domestically.
“The perceived wisdom was if you get a player sent off in the first half, you're going to get beat. It was a case of, in the second half, can we come out? Can we keep them out? Can we defend the one-goal lead and maybe nick something on the break?”
However, the feeling of dread wasn’t one felt in the home dressing room at half time as Rangers defender Neil Murray recalls.
“I watched a few Rangers games from the 90s recently and if you’re judging it by modern standards there would be three or four red cards. The game was certainly a lot more aggressive back then.
“Hateley’s sending off was a bit soft I think in a sense that it was unexpected but I don’t think anybody was overly concerned about it. We were probably more concerned that he would miss the next game.
“The reality was he’d been sent off and we just had to deal with that and we had to go and win.
“At half-time, sure there was a disappointment we had lost a key player in a key area but there wasn’t any real sense of panic. It was more about focusing on what we’ve got and what we can do.”
What followed was a half-time pep talk from Smith that would inspire the Ibrox club to a second group stage win.
“We still had belief,” Nisbet continues.
“The gaffer came in and said, ‘keep everything tight, don’t give anything away, win the tackles and get the ball forward, go in the corners and try and hold it up.’
“We still believed we would win the game and we did.”
The players may have believed but when Lorenzo Staelens netted an equaliser seven minutes after the restart, Edgar and many others felt the match was only heading one way.
“They were really confident, they didn’t force it, they weren’t panicking or trying to go long and they weren’t getting frustrated,” he says.
“They score a peach of a goal and when you watch the footage there is nothing but silence.
“Then we really had to dig in because the 10 to 15 minutes after that they were hammering at the door and had they got one in that spell they would’ve maybe gone on and won 3 or 4-1.
“We were having to work very hard just to stay in the tie. You were bricking it when they got within 30 yards of the goal because they had guys that could easily just ping one top bin no problem.”
But Rangers weathered the storm before one of the most freakish goals in the club’s 151-year history.
Steven’s intended ball into the penalty area cannoned off Stuart McCall’s back towards Nisbet.
With Vital Borkelmens closing in, Nisbet got to the ball first, putting his laces through it and gazing in disbelief as the ball looped up into the air before spinning over the head of the despairing Dany Verlinden in the Brugge goal.
“I went in to go for a tackle and the guy sort of pulled out and I just hit it,” the goalscorer says.
“It went through him and the ball just went up in the air. When I looked at the ball it was heading towards Harthill!
“Then the ball just decided it wasn’t going to Harthill and started indicating to the right. The keeper came out and it bounced about three yards in front of the keeper and it bounced right over him and just went in. I just remember the noise, it was unbelievable.”
Nisbet wasn’t the only one inside Ibrox rendered speechless. For experienced broadcaster Parry, this was unlike anything he had witnessed before.
“It was one of the most bizarre goals I’ve ever had to commentate on,” he says.
“You wouldn’t think there was any bounce on that pitch and yet it took the weirdest bounce.
“The famous Maradona goal was called the Hand of God, maybe this was the Hand of God in favour of Rangers because the goalkeeper had come out to the edge of his six-yard box, there was a moment's pause in the entire stadium and then suddenly the ball bounces and flies over his head and goes into the net.
“I probably didn’t say anything for the first three or four seconds because you thought, ‘hang on, do I believe what I’ve just seen?’
“I always say about football, every time you think you’ve seen everything, it throws in another surprise or something that you haven't seen before and that was certainly one of those occasions.
“Commentators are supposed to be unbiased, but I've always been a Rangers fan. That’s why when Scott Nisbet’s goal went in I said, ‘it might be the biggest fluke in Europe this season but who cares.’
“I think you get a certain amount of leeway as a commentator when it's a British team playing a foreign team, as was the case in this game. I probably went a bit over the top but I stand by those words. No one with a Rangers background would’ve given a damn how it went in.”
For Neil Murray, the goal was redemption after Hateley’s first-half dismissal.
“It’s one of these moments you don’t get very often and to be fair to their goalkeeper, he was a very good goalkeeper but he wasn’t particularly tall,” he admits.
“Maybe that’s helped with the bounce over his head and he’s just misjudged it. It was a bit of good fortune for us and unlucky for them but over the 90 minutes, I think we deserved it. I don’t think we looked like losing the game. It was maybe that touch of good fortune that helped us win the game but on the balance of the 90 minutes with Hateley’s harsh sending off maybe we deserved that wee touch of luck.
“We were on a 44-game unbeaten run. The team had that bit of resilience during that run. There was a big chunk of games where Rangers actually lost the first goal but went on to win so there was a lot of resilience in the squad and a good belief to go and win games.”
For a 15-year-old besotted with Rangers, it was a moment that’ll live with David Edgar forever.
“I love Nizzy,” he beams.
“He was the very definition of a cult hero. He’d been there forever through Souness and through Walter. In some of the games under Souness, he’d be playing up front as a target man. He played midfield and that night against Brugge he played right back. He wasn’t a first pick but nobody was saying he was rubbish.
“I remember the goal so clearly because it played out almost like something from a movie. He goes in for the tackle and we roar because we’re Scottish and we’re up against it. He smashes the ball off the defender and then it just starts to go in that weird direction.
“It did take a second or two to get up out my chair with everybody else and go, ‘hold on a minute, this has got a chance'.
“The only thing I can compare it to is Kemar Roofe’s goal against Standard Liege in that you’ve seen it start to go but you do still have time to actually go, ‘oh, hang on that might go in'!
“It’s then spinning and then it bounces and it takes that crazy spin and you’re thinking, ‘where’s that going'?
“Then it nestles in the net and the place went barmy.
“And Nizzy, of course, was going absolutely berserk. It absolutely changed the atmosphere and the dynamic inside the ground. I think the remaining 18 minutes passed about as slowly as the Hundred Years' War if you were a Rangers fan.
“They battered us for the last 10 minutes but the thing about this Rangers side was that it was like a dog with a bone. Once it had the bone in its mouth you were not getting it back. These were guys who, that night, would’ve bust hamstrings and broken legs if it meant the team was getting out of there with a victory, that was the attitude.
“It is a cliché but maybe what we lacked in the technical ability that they had we made up for in just sheer stubborn bloody-mindedness that we are not going to get beat here tonight.
“When the final whistle went it was just euphoria. It was just this explosion of noise and, as a fan, you’re always looking for portents of things to come and things of good favour and that goal, I remember it clearly coming out and people were saying, ‘we’re going to win this'.
“It was just that sense of elation coming out of the ground because you see a goal like that and the circumstances of being down to ten men and they come back into it. Somebody’s smiling down on us here, there’s something happening, there’s something strange going on.”
Meanwhile, for Nisbet, the sense of delirium continued after the full-time whistle.
“Everybody came up to me and congratulated me in the dressing room,” he says.
“The funniest thing was going in to do the press conference. I just looked at everybody looking at me and we all just burst out laughing.
“Doug Bailie, Graham Clark and all the press guys just burst out laughing but in a good way because they couldn’t believe it as well.”
Unfortunately, there would be no fairytale ending for Rangers in Europe with draws against Marseille and CSKA Moscow not enough to see Smith’s men reach the first-ever Champions League final.
However, on that magical March evening in Govan, Edgar and thousands of others dared to dream.
“It was a remarkable night all in and then you walk back up the road, it was like walking through a wet hurricane, getting into the car and we’re just soaking but just buzzing because we had seen something really, really special.
“I genuinely did think as we left the ground that night that we were certainly getting to the final. I just felt there was a strange kind of voodoo working in our favour.”
For Nisbet, his career would come to a shattering halt in the following game against Celtic when he suffered a career-ending pelvic injury. However, despite also battling against cancer in recent years, he remains as upbeat and as jovial as ever.
“Only five weeks ago I got a brand-new hip put in to replace my bad hip that forced me to retire,” he explains.
“I’m getting there, I’m going out to a nightclub next week to see how good it is!
“I’m still battling with cancer. I’m three tumours down at the moment so one to go.
“I’m back in next month for my six-month tests so we’ll find out more with the CT scan, my blood and my ultrasound but I just need to keep battering on and laughing and joking.”
In a sense, that night will always belong to him. When a tackle became a goal and a dream started to be realised all around Ibrox.
It might have been the biggest fluke in Europe that season, but nobody inside Ibrox that night cared.
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