Wingin' It: The Mark Walters Story by Mark Walters & Jeff Holmes

Author:Mark Walters & Jeff Holmes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pitch Publishing
Published: 2018-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

A Few Ibrox Icons

WHEN I signed for Rangers I didn’t just join an incredibly successful club, I was also fortunate enough to become part of a very special dressing room. It’s a well-known fact in football that a happy dressing room tends to be a successful one. I’ve been part of both, and I know which one I prefer. At every club in the UK you will encounter many different types of characters. We had that at Rangers, and some amazing characters too. Each region of the country has its own accent, sense of humour and character traits, but I doubt there is a double act anything like the one I met in the home dressing room at Ibrox. Two guys who would keep everyone going with their impersonations and gags; but while they were comedians off the park, they were deadly serious on it. I had never known a duo like Ally McCoist and Ian Durrant.

Durranty was a couple of years younger than me, probably about 20 or 21 when I arrived at Ibrox, but he was already a permanent fixture in the first-team squad. He loved a joke or two and was always quick with a gag, but what a player he was. From what I witnessed of Ian, I reckon he could have been world class. He was one of the finest box-to-box players around, and he had a real eye for a goal as well. He was the complete player. The injury (in the match against Aberdeen) came at the wrong time for him (not that there is ever a right time for that type of injury!) as he was surely destined for great things. Rangers were a massive club, but if he’d wanted, he could’ve played for any of the richest teams in Europe, in my opinion. I’d played alongside, and against, players who were real box-to-box guys, but Ian had a couple of the most vital components most of them lacked, and that was his ability to remain composed in the most difficult of situations – and then stick the ball in the back of the net. His ability to chip in with 10 or 15 goals a season made him invaluable. And he also had the knack of scoring in big games. He was, in my eyes, a David Platt type of player, although I reckon he was much better than David, and you see what he achieved in the game. Coincidentally, Platt’s old club Sampdoria were reportedly interested in signing Durranty, and the fee quoted was around £1m. A new rule had just been introduced in Italy which allowed clubs to sign three foreigners from the beginning of season 1989/90, but thankfully Graeme Souness was having none of it. I had a lot of time for Durranty and I was delighted when he eventually made a full comeback from that horrific injury and went on to enjoy many more years doing the thing he loved most, because he really had been to hell and back.

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