They had to congregate hours ahead of kick-off to be escorted into the stadium by police. They paid over 50 quid a skull for their ticket. But each and every one of the 2500 Rangers supporters who were granted access to Celtic Park had the time of their lives as away fans returned to the Old Firm clash.
Prior to the match, even Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers had said he was pleased to see them, wanting the fearsome – if frequently distasteful – back-and-forth between the fans that made this game so famed throughout the globe restored to somewhere close to where it once was.
The party atmosphere in the away end was tempered momentarily, with Celtic managing to turn around a two-goal half-time deficit to bring their own fans to life.
Their wild celebrations were heightened of course by the reaction of their team to adversity, but the presence of that sizeable wedge of blue in one corner of the ground seemed to add a further edge, allowing those home supporters in the vicinity to gloat in the faces of their rivals through the black netting that had been erected between them and their visitors.
That sort of petty one-upmanship is of course what supporting a football team is all about, and both sets of fans enjoyed their moments to do so. And just as it looked as though it would be the Celtic support who would be able to lord it over their neighbours once more, Hamza Igamane’s late bolt from the blue that rocketed past Kasper Schmeichel saw the travelling party explode in a blurry mass of joyful limbs yet again.
For all the debate around the make-up of the allocation in the stands though, what these derbies have really lacked in recent years is a competitive edge on the pitch, as Celtic’s dominance has seen Rangers reduced almost to the role of cannon fodder at times.
And yes, when taking the wider context of the Premiership standings into account, all that was really on the line in this particular episode of the long-running Glasgow saga was bragging rights for the fans, and at a stretch perhaps, a psychological edge for the players of the victorious side going forward.
But still, it seems that for all their failings on the domestic front this season, what Rangers have managed to do recently – both under Philippe Clement and now Barry Ferguson – is find a way to cause Celtic real problems.
They have scored nine goals against them in their last three matches, and have only lost one of those games. Even then, that was after extra time and penalties. And they now have their first win at Celtic Park in nine attempts and five long years.
Whether deploying the 4-2-3-1 favoured by Clement or the 3-4-1-2 Ferguson plumped for here, they have pressed Celtic into errors and disrupted the flow of their usually fluent passing game to great effect.
They were aided in that regard here of course by the absence of Callum McGregor, with the Celtic captain’s tight calf meaning that Arne Engels was dropped back to try to emulate what his skipper brings to the table. In truth, the youngster proved something of a pale imitation on the day.
Without McGregor’s calming influence, and with Rangers pressing high from the off, Celtic were all over the place in the early exchanges, with even their vastly experienced keeper Schmeichel looking like a bag of nerves.
Rangers had clearly identified a weakness in Celtic’s set-piece defending at their near post, and exploited it twice in the first half, once for Nicolas Raskin to head them in front and then for Leon Balogun to come close to adding a second.
The Rangers fans wouldn’t have to wait long to celebrate once more though, and when Mohamed Diomande’s strike hit the back of the net before the interval it was the cue for the half time festivities to really kick off in the away end.
A rejig from Rodgers though saw Celtic finally bring what we all know they can to the party, with James Tavernier’s arch nemesis Daizen Maeda pulling out onto the left and immediately getting a goal back for the champions.
When Reo Hatate latched onto Luke McCowan’s clever pass to bring Celtic level, it looked as though the sort of jubilant scenes this ground has seen so often over recent years would soon be sparked again, but Igamane and Rangers had other ideas, and with a swipe of his right boot, the home party was pooped.
What it all means in the grand scheme of things remains to be seen. Celtic will win the league, handsomely and deservedly so. Afterwards, Rodgers admitted he was concerned with the recent pattern emerging in this fixture just of late against their city rivals, but to add a sense of perspective, they are still likely to end the season with a treble.
For Rangers, and more specifically for interim manager Ferguson, the result could well have further-reaching effects into next season, with the former Ibrox captain surely giving his own chances of landing his dream gig on a permanent basis a real shot in the arm this week. Even if getting him to say 'hail hail' appears more likely than getting him to admit it.
For the Old Firm fixture though, the initial phase of the staggered return of away fans was a success. And while Celtic fans won’t particularly care about the neutral perspective after this defeat, the game itself seems a proper occasion once more for these recent developments both on and off the pitch.
