Old rivalry renewed

It is the first league match between the teams since a 5-1 Rangers win in 1958. Queen's Park will go into the match hoping to consolidate their one-point advantage at the top of the division, but that is only part of the story, of course.

In a way, Scottish football itself will come full circle in a match which pits a team who were Scottish Cup winners 10 times before the turn of the 20th century, and are renowned for their amateur ethos, against a club whose failure to live within its means brought its very existence into doubt.

Doing his best to resist the temptation to say, 'I told you so' will be Peter Buchanan, Queen's oldest surviving past president and a former player, coach and committee member who joined the club in 1960. He missed that 1958 match while on national service.

A burly striker in his day and a contemporary of Sir Alex Ferguson, Buchanan, 74, will be on the team bus with Gardner Speirs' men as it makes the short journey across the south side of Glasgow.

He said: "We look after our pennies and what have you. We are not a wealthy club by any means, but we bring young players on and see them move on to bigger and better things. Nowadays we are even losing coaches to bigger clubs."

On Saturday's match, Buchanan added: "The players are excited but not frightened about it. They know what the Third Division is about and they all can play. To go there and win again would be up there with any result in the club's history, certainly better than anything in the recent history. Both teams' pitches are much the same size and we have a lot of pacy players. Rangers will have to watch out or else they will be chasing their tails."

Former goalkeeper Bobby Brown made his debut for Queen's Park in 1939, played for Rangers after the Second World War, and went on to become Scotland manager. Brown recalls travelling from Larbert to Glasgow to play for the Hampden club, his only reward a fish tea and his manager reading out a recap of the match.

"I loved it at Queen's Park," Brown said, "They were a good team and a force in the land. Sometimes at Hampden you would play in front of 30,000 people, the bowler-hatted brigade, and when the team were on top they used to stamp their feet and shout, 'Queen's, Queen's, Queen's'."

Brown, who played as a guest for Chelsea during the war, of course, found that Rangers players lived in a different world financially from those at Queen's Park.

He recalls: "My basic wage was £20 a week, but I got my signing on fee on top of it – for tax purposes, you see. I wasn't too popular with [Willie] Waddell and [George] Young because they knew I was getting a lot more than them. With part of the signing-on fee, I built a beautiful house on two acres of ground below the Wallace Monument. It's still there."

For all the nostalgia, Saturday's match is a deadly serious business for Rangers. Defeat to Stirling Albion in their last match was a chastening experience for the club's fans.

In the week the club unveiled their plans to float on the AIM exchange, Sandy Jardine felt moved to remind their players that, transfer embargo or not, some of them are running out of chances.

"These players have started a journey," the former full-back said. "If they're good enough then they'll go all the way with us. If not, then they will go by the wayside."

Jardine remembers a match against Queen's Park in the Glasgow Cup at the start of the 1970s. "I played centre-forward in it and scored four goals," he said. "There's not many times you do that for Rangers.

"For the first 15-20 years, Rangers hardly ever beat Queen's Park. They were THE team not just in Scotland but in Britain. In many ways the two clubs drifted apart when Queen's Park retained their amateur status and professionals took over elsewhere. But now we've come back together again."