In Conversation with Clare Gemmell
As the Old Firm derby returns to Govan for the first time in nearly five years, the Rangers captain on 31st March 2019, Clare Gemmell, reflects on a career that included a seven year stay at the club.
New Tinto Park is a modest abode.
Home to Benburb FC, a side currently operating in the sixth tier of the Scottish men’s game, it’s located at the end of the residential Craigton Road. There’s a fairly modern club house that peeks towards a little metal stand while white railings, paving stones and green banks surround an artificial playing surface; functional more than flashy.
From one side you can see across Glasgow’s Southside. To your left and overlooking the houses that were built on the ground’s previous plot there can be glimpses of activity along the River Clyde. To your right a supermarket, and in the distance the top of the Bill Struth Main Stand and the Archibald Leitch designed red stone facade of Ibrox Stadium, home to Rangers Football Club.
There may only be a few hundred metres between two venues that can regularly share a match day but it’s not unfair to say that they are owned by two sides competing at different levels.
This Sunday the more familiar of the two, Ibrox, hosts a Govan-based Old Firm derby for the first time since the 31st March 2019, when New Tinto Park hosted the fixture.
It’s fair to say a lot has changed in the adjoining five year period.
Clare Gemmell led out the home side that day and I’m speaking to the former Rangers’ captain to reflect on her career as the derby takes place on Edminston Drive for the very first time following Celtic Park, albeit without fans during the pandemic, and Hampden in playing host to the Glasgow rivalry.
“Obviously you’re thinking that you’re in Govan, you’re playing for Rangers but you’re using this non-league facility when there’s Ibrox just down the road.”, she reminisces about Rangers former home.
“The club that run it were always accommodating when others might not have been but I remember one night we came in and part of the pitch had been set on fire! Somebody must have broken in and to repair it they had to just cut part of the astro out and replace it, every time you played you could see this different coloured square.”
“It’s such a significant marker to have a game like Sunday’s at Ibrox. It’s the stadium of the club.”
Gemmell retired from playing in 2021 having spent seven years at Rangers. A plaque in an upstairs room suggests that the midfielder played 135 times during that spell, she’s sure that the real number is actually higher, although there is a mutual recognition that accurate figures from the past are not always easy to obtain.
“My Granda got me into football”, like most players from her generation the path to the pitch wasn’t always straightforward, “I actually used to swim and I would just play football in the street with the boys. At the time you had to be twelve to join a girls team so it was always said to me that if I still wanted to play football once I reached that age then I could.”
“So when I got to twelve that’s exactly what I did.”
Having grown up in the town of Port Glasgow, Gemmell’s closest club would be found down the coast in Largs before a merger with another side led to the creation of Arsenal North. Arsenal North would then become the side now known as Celtic with Gemmell travelling twice a week for a year long playing stint in Perth somewhere in-between.
Two years at Celtic were followed by five successful seasons at Glasgow City before a year long break due to work commitments saw her step away from the game.
“I missed it so much that I had to get back.”, the passion for playing the game would become a recurring theme during our conversation. “So when Kevin Murphy, who was Hamilton Accies coach at the time, got in touch, I knew I wanted to get back to playing.”
“I was still going to have to miss the odd game due to work but he was understanding of that.”
In 2014, and after two years in Lanarkshire a move to Rangers where Murphy had also gone would follow.
“I was really keen to go because I knew Kevin as a coach and a person. When I first came in we were training at Toryglen and playing the games at New Tinto but people were always pushing for more.”
“After Kevin left Amy McDonald came in who eventually was able to get us into the Training Centre but at the start we only had one day a week there. We’d come in at eight at night after all the other players had left and most of us would get home late and then be up for work or uni early the next morning.”
“We sometimes struggled to have a physio, we managed to get kit but I think that made us one of the lucky ones. It was miles away from where things are now.”
Changes began to gather pace with the biggest arriving in February 2020 when it was announced that Rangers would be moving to a full-time professional model, eleven months after that contest with their city rivals but Rangers’ transition to full-time football did not come without it’s casualties.
Only Gemmell and youngster Brogan Hay were retained as the club’s hierarchy prepared for a new era, and of the Rangers’ players involved in the 2019 game none are currently with the current league leaders. Some do still ply their trade in the SWPL, most notably Scotland international Amy Muir, others drifted away, while Hay, another SWNT star, who was, and still is, a Rangers player, only missed out due to availability.
“I think people will be surprised by the number of people released from the club.”
“I’d played with all these girls for a good number of years. I respected them as people and as players and to see them effectively be moved on as the transition to becoming professional happened it was difficult, but, perhaps because I was a bit older, I understood that things move on.”
“For me it was exciting. You were part of the first professional team.”
The 2020/21 season would see Gemmell, who was also captain, add a layer of continuity as Rangers revamped their playing and coaching staff in an attempt to win major honours in the women’s game for the first time but the season would end in disappointment; Rangers finishing third as Glasgow City claimed a 14th consecutive title and Celtic the second Champions League spot.
“Before the investment we had kind of developed this habit of finishing fourth [behind Glasgow City, Hibernian and Celtic]. We could never quite push on, and even when we went professional in that first season we still only finished third.”
“There was a lot of noise because of the changes and I think a lot of expectation came with that too, but sometimes football doesn’t work like that. Some fans were asking questions because they were seeing a side finish only one place higher despite the investment. It was a process and I think it’s sometimes forgotten at the time how good Glasgow City were too.”
Her last game in football would come on the final day of that season away to City although the image of Gemmell receiving a guard of honour at the Rangers Training Centre the week prior, against a Motherwell side including a handful of her former Rangers’ teammates, has emerged as the image that landmarked the end of a 20 year playing career.
“I’d kind of already made my mind up that I was retiring at the start of the season, partly because of how fast the game was moving but also because I didn’t want to start picking up niggly injuries and for it all to just peter out.”
“I liked it at Rangers and for a number of reasons it was probably my favourite club to play with over the course of my career so I liked the idea of it ending with them. It’s never easy, so I wanted to have a plan and to go out with as much control as possible.”
Gemmell had planned to be there this Sunday, the second time Jo Potter’s side will have played at Ibrox this season following a 7-0 victory over Hibernian in October, but circumstances have meant she will be watching on from home.
For a player who still remembers that night where she and her teammates turned up to train across scorched astro the visibility that playing a game of this stature at Ibrox can provide will only have long term benefits for the future of the women’s game.
“You want to get people in the door to watch it, more folk are interested all the time. Rangers have had to move from the Training Centre to Broadwood to accommodate a growing support.”
“I’m not suggesting you’re immediately going to sell out Ibrox but the numbers keep on increasing, that 15,000 odd that Celtic had last season was unbelievable.”
“It will take time but even if it's continual small improvements it’s going to keep going up and up, but if you never give it the platform to grow, then how is it supposed to.”
Following Gemmell’s departure Rangers’ investment would continue and in 2022 a first SWPL title would be won, followed by a Sky Sports Cup victory the next season, but despite still clearly carrying a deep love for the game Gemmell has often felt the need to follow from afar.
“I’d won trophies in the past with Glasgow City but given everything that had happened it would have been nice to have done it with Rangers but football doesn’t always work like that.”
“I’ll watch games on TV and I’m lucky enough to have started doing some co-commentary work. Getting asked to watch a game of football and to talk about it, I think that’s everybody’s dream, but to just go and sit and watch, I still find it hard not to be a part of it.”
“There’s been benefits to retirement of course. You can go on holiday whenever you want, your life doesn’t revolve around the weekend but I miss football and I do miss playing. Nothing recreates that feeling it’s never went away, and even now it still hasn’t.”
Rangers host Celtic in an Old Firm derby this Sunday with a 15:10 kick off at Ibrox Stadium with the game also live on BBC Alba and iPlayer.
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