IN TODAY’S modern age, you’ll struggle to find a football stadium as steeped in tradition as Ibrox. Former Rangers boss Mark Warburton summed it up perfectly when asked what it was like walking through the doors of the Main Stand for the first time. “Loved it, Loved it, he said. “It just smells of football. The smell, the wood, the tradition; loved it”

And it doesn’t come much more traditional than the iconic Blue Room. It is where many famous historical events have taken place through the years, where managers and players have been unveiled to the world’s media and where directors have made monumental decisions that would shape the future of the club.

It’s also the room where you’ll find incredible, detailed murals of the club’s managers, directors and captains from years gone by. However, anyone who has been on the hugely popular Ibrox tour will notice the murals stop at Walter Smith and Barry Ferguson. The person tasked with creating the famous artwork is artist and lifelong fan Senga Murray.

She has been synonymous with the club for the best part of 36 years and even helped commission the John Greig statue commemorating the Ibrox disaster in 1971. In an interview with the Rangers Review, Senga says she'd be happy to bring the murals up to date.

She said: “It took two years to paint. I finished the first murals about 2000 and I went back in around 2007 and that’s when I painted Walter Smith, Paul Le Guen and Alex McLeish.

“It was manager’s one side and captain’s the other side because the murals go from managers, directors to captains so there were only two panels to fill and I painted them in oils.

“I had finished Barry [Ferguson] and I think the last manager I painted was Walter so I haven’t even done Ally [McCoist] or Davie Weir or anything like that and there is space to allow me to go back and put more work into them.

“Sandy Jardine phoned me up and invited me back in 2012. He said, ‘Senga, we’d like you to come back and update the murals but we don’t have any money, that’s the bottom line.’

“I said, ‘Well, Sandy, I love the club but I can’t work like that. I’m so particular about what I’m doing that I’d be doing it for months and then at the end of it I would get a ‘hurrah, that’s brilliant.’ I just couldn’t do it. They came back to me again about a year ago. It heats up and cools down in The Blue Room so there are bits that need a bit of work.

“I gave them the cost for that and updating it but it's not happened yet. I’m going to write them a letter saying, ‘Mr Park, I think you can do something here.’ It is historical and there are people getting married in there.

“I’m getting older now, if they’re going to leave it much longer I’m not going to be able to get up the blooming scaffolding!”

Senga’s first introduction to life at Rangers happened by chance.

She explained: “Art was the only thing I was really good at. I always wanted to go to art school but never thought that would happen because nobody where I lived really went to art school. But I worked hard and went to Glasgow Art School and got my degree, just!

“I left and decided I was just going to get a graphic design job as that’s what I studied. I didn’t study painting so I ended up working at a sign manufacturing company. It was quite disciplined, I was doing big-scale drawings but during that time one of the directors at Lawrence was a friend of my husband, they played rugby together.

“Lawrence Marlborough owned Rangers at that time and David Holmes was Managing Director. David had wanted to create a history of Rangers and the only artist Alistair knew was me so he turned up at the flat one weekend and asked me if I would be interested in doing some drawings.

“There was me and three other guys that were interviewed. I went to the interview and got the job. Unbelievably, Campbell Ogilvie phoned me up and he said, ‘You’ve got the job Senga,’ and I’m like, ‘Wow! This is amazing.’

“So I went away, whilst I was working at the factory where I worked long hours and nights and came up with a synopsis of what I thought the history of the club would be. I did that over two weeks then went back to Ibrox. It was probably the most exciting day of my life and presented this synopsis of what I thought the history of the club be.

“David Holmes said, ‘We love everything that you’re doing Senga, just go away and start it.’ It was just incredible. I had to pack in my job at the factory and that was it. I became self-employed at the age of 23 and it just continued from there.

Rangers Review:

“I would just submit drawings. No one took me through it or gave me any quotes with regard to the history of the club. I just went and did my homework. It helped that I was a Rangers fan anyway.

“My dad was a Rangers fan too but it was me looking through books that Campbell Ogilvie gave me and just did my research. I would start it from the very beginning so the original origins of the club. I went to the Mitchell Library mainly and I got to know quite a lot of journalists. I’d go to the old Rangers News offices and rifle through all the stuff that they had.

“The guys at The Herald would give me old photographs and stuff. It was just incredible but the further back you go you get wee tiny grainy photographs that are postage stamp sized, they’re absolutely tiny and that’s perhaps the only photograph you’ve got of that particular player.

“Some of the early drawings are quite difficult because you’re kind of making a lot of it up. Unless you’ve got a clear image, it’s really difficult to piece all that together. Some of the early ones, I look at them and think they’re not that great but I think through practice I got a lot better.

“They opened up their first executive suite and I did something like 24 drawings in a month and then it culminated in the ‘Made in Govan’ piece that took me about four months to do. I would work 14-hour days, you just live and breathe it.”

The hierarchy at Ibrox was so impressed with Senga’s work that when the time came to refurbish The Blue Room, she was the first port of call.

“The first paintings that I ever did was The Blue Room," she recalled

“I had just had my daughter and I was going to take two years off from working with Rangers. By that time I was there for around 15 years, I was doing the history of the club, interior design and commercial work, I was involved in everything so I thought I’m going to take two years off.

“Iona was just two weeks old and I got a phone call from Campbell and he said they were refurbishing The Blue Room which I thought was big because that was very traditional. Campbell said he wanted me to meet the interior designer who had flown up from Jersey.

“I went to meet him and he said, ‘What we’re looking for is like a Trompe L’Oeil to make it look as if it’s old plaster in a mural sort of style.’ I had never painted before and I said, ‘Yeah, I can do that, no problem.’ So I went away and panicked! I just had a newborn baby, I can’t believe I did it.

“I came up with what I thought the new style of The Blue Room would be. It was never going to be a Trompe L’Oeil, it was going to be a painting as far as I was concerned. It took two years on and off.

“It was watercolour, I didn’t even go into the history of how to apply paint to plaster. You just have to wing it! You never say no, just go for it. The maintenance guys loved me because the scaffolding would have to come down on a matchday and then put the scaffolding back up on Monday morning again for me coming in.

Rangers Review: Senga hard at work creating the famous murals in The Blue Room.Senga hard at work creating the famous murals in The Blue Room.

“The room is so iconic. Some people didn’t think it was a good idea to have the murals in The Blue Room. They wanted it to be completely traditional and I can understand that because that’s where all the press conferences were back in the day. They introduced Mo Johnston and Graeme Souness there, they’d always introduce new players in The Blue Room and also the directors would have important meetings in there whilst I was up the scaffolding painting.”

Senga’s spell at Ibrox coincided with the greatest period of success in the club’s 150-year history as Graeme Souness and Walter Smith guided Rangers to Nine in a Row. It was a time that the Hamilton-born artist will never forget.

She recalled: “I was ensconced in the club during the Nine in a Row era. I was going to all the games, I was going to parties with the players. I was there all the time but that group of guys were just incredible. I’ve never seen such a talented bunch of guys within a football club and I don’t think it’ll ever be repeated.

“They were so close and it was so exciting. To what it had been before Graeme Souness came, the club weren’t doing that well, David Holmes comes in and then David Murray comes in and money is just no object.”

She may not have been performing on the pitch, however, off it, Senga was very much part of the team.

She recalled: “I think the guys there just adopted me, they were so nice. They would come in with a pot of tea, especially when I was doing the murals in The Blue Room. It was the best decade of my life being at that club. The guys were brilliant and they loved the mural. It’s like Michelangelo as far as they’re concerned.

“They would come in for a wee chat, whether it be Jorg Albertz, the Italian guys or whoever. The players loved coming in and having a wee chat and to talk about their family, it was brilliant.”

The arrival of Dick Advocaat brought about a culture change at the club as several high-profile players arrived from overseas including current Rangers boss Giovanni van Bronckhorst but Senga remained part of the furniture. She recalled: “I loved Dick Advocaat. There was something really charming and attractive about him. I think it was his demeanour. He liked his portrait in The Blue Room so he said to me, ‘Could you do my portrait, Senga?’

“I quoted him as a private commission and sent him a letter because I prefer writing a letter to an email and then he wrote me this tiny letter back saying, ‘I was only joking Senga. I did not want my portrait painted. I think you misunderstood me.’

“I think he was expecting a freebie, I don’t think he expected to pay for it. But he added ‘Excuse me, but I love your work.’ So maybe there was a compliment in there.

“I knew Gio back in the day when he was a player so when he became manager I thought, ‘I don’t know how this is going to work.’ He was such a brilliant player and his demeanour at that time was that he was quite a cocky wee guy. The Dutch guys were very different from the Italian guys and equally the Italians were very different from the Scottish boys. There was quite a culture shift. They were very straight to the point. They didn’t seem to have much fun.”

Nowadays Senga continues to be overwhelmed by demand for her Rangers prints and original paintings from supporters around the world.

She explained: “I’ve been involved in loads of football clubs but I think with Rangers, because you’re a fan, you get a bit precious about the history and what the club means to you. You can’t help but be emersed in it. I think there’s something special about Rangers.

“It’s so interesting because I kind of stepped away from football for quite a wee while. After I finished the murals in 2008 I had a two-day exhibition on my paintings in The Blue Room. I had just completed the update and had this exhibition which was absolutely magic. Walter and Ally came and I sold paintings in Ibrox. It was a dream come true.

“But I had done football for so long I was a wee bit tired of it and I thought I want to be a serious artist now, I want to do landscapes and portraits and that’s what I did. I got a lot of commissions and did really well.

“It came up to lockdown and I’d been working for two years for an exhibition that was cancelled three times because of Covid. I was devastated because I was working for two years and wasn’t making a brass bean.

“My son, who’s a marketing manager and does a lot of work on my behalf said, ‘Why don’t you go back to football? You have got portfolios full of stuff and old prints, originals.’

“So I started going through the portfolios and I couldn’t believe all the stuff I had. Chris put it out there on social media and people started getting in touch and I sold a lot of prints that had been in my portfolio for 20 years.

“I sold originals, a signed Andy Goram original, all the Davie Coopers, Ally and Mark Hateley ones are gone. I haven’t done Gazza yet. That’s on the to-do list.

“The reaction from everybody has been absolutely amazing. I’m overwhelmed, I thought people would’ve forgotten about me.”