How the World has changed since Aberdeen won a league game at Ibrox.

Last updated : 13 November 2010 By FF.com

It’s been a long time since Aberdeen won a league match in Glasgow at the home of World Record holders, Rangers FC.

28th September 1991: a 2-0 Ibrox win for the dandy dons dudes.

The week Nirvana’s Nevermind was released.

Seems a long time ago, doesn’t it? Probably just as well that Spencer Elden (pictured) isn’t a Sheep fan.

So what’s happened since then?  Counting caretakers - and it may well soon be time for Shaggy, Scooby and co. to unmask a new one - Aberdeen FC has had nearly a dozen men in charge.

But let’s not be parochial: enough of the excitement of Union Street and the nice days out at the beach.

Let’s find some context; what was going on and what has happened since that day in September?

 

The fag-ends of 1991

 

A gentleman serving as Governor of Arkansas announced his intention to run for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States of America.

Whatever happened to him?

 

Freddie Mercury’s rock candle was still burning, although not at both ends.

President Gorbachev was still running the Soviet Union. The what? I know. What happened to the map he had on his head? So many questions; but at least the CIS later allowed Scotland a magnificent win at a major football tournament.

Not only was Diana still alive (see Daily Express) but her and the future King Charles (or whichever royal name he takes) were still together. Well, at least legally.

 

But enough about 1991 – what about 1992?

Windows 3.1 was all the rage. We talked about nothing else. Well, when the new speaker of the House of Commons, Betty Boothroyd, a real woman no less, would let us. Indeed, it was only just over a year since we’d seen the end of that other one, the Prime Minister. European holidays took on a sinister new twist with the opening of Eurodisney. A theme park; a palace and playground of fun, soon to be infested with and by Germans and Englanders. And located in France. The small Dutch city of Maastricht, not content with one treaty limiting the border between the Belgians and those we now call the Smoking Porno Dutchies, was the host for the signing of the Treaty on European Union, which lead to the formation of the European Union - although not the Champions League (even if it was the same year).

Younger readers aren’t going to believe this, but football itself was yet to be invented. Fear not: 1992 saw the birth of the English Premier League (EPL, aka The Greatest League in the World ©) which came along and changed our lives forever. Before this rebranding and television exercise football was played only on marshes and bogs, and nobody can recall a single player or team, save Bobby’s brave 1966 team and the Busby Babes.

Rangers were pretty good.  Phil O’Donnell won the SPFA Young Player of the Year.

In other sports, some guy called Bret Favre (how that can be the real spelling is beyond me) made his first start for the Green Bay Packers.  Keep an eye on him...

And at the summer Olympics in the beautiful city of Barcelona (how Montserrat missed the now departed Freddy) the ‘Blue Riband’ event  of the Men’s 100m (quite how this chocolate bar, released in the year that Jesse Owens miffed the moustache in Berlin, came to sponsor it may be difficult to understand but remember this was a long time ago – people hadn’t even bought iPods and fell in love with FCB and Oasis weren’t even together, far less Kasabian) was won by our own British cheat, Linford Christie, who later ruined Record Breakers and is now to be filmed morning, noon and night in the jungle, hopefully not eating his lunchbox.

Politicians in the Free World took advantage of the collapse of Communism by maintaining standards of excellence. No drugs, but extra E for the kids with their potato.

 

Highly respected theologians demonstrated some remarkable forward-thinking, such as the Bishop of Rome, who by 1992 had closed a 13-year investigation into the Church’s condemnation of the notion that the Earth revolved around the Sun  and ‘vindicated’ that well-known heretic and lunatic, Galileo Galilei. Many commentators are convinced that in a few centuries time the (presumably still dead) astronomer will become a Saint. The Pope’s conclusions were not meet with universal favour within his flock.

 

A close relative of this bird would later find fame, if not fortune, at Hampden Park, Glasgow as the famous Establishment Pigeon.

 

Oh, and some film released the year before, cleaned up at the 1992 Academy Awards. That film was The Silence of the Lambs. Hmm: there’s a good phrase...Need we go on?