By David Herd
It’s 25 years since Follow Follow moved into the internet age, and I’d love to say I’ve been there since the start. But that would be untrue. I did buy the fanzines back in the 1980s and 1990s, even contributing the occasional article, but in the year 2000 I was nowhere near joining the digital age that so many had already discovered. I did buy my first computer before the new millennium arrived, but it was more for work than leisure, at the time I had enrolled in an Open University course and a PC was needed to do the assignments and to read online articles. Our home internet was unreliable, expensive at a time when money was tight, and it also meant the house phone was out of action whenever I was online. Dial-up now seems like from the dark ages!
But by early 2005, my Biology degree was finished, my finances were better, and I had heard all about this incredible Rangers resource from fellow fans at matches and at work. I decided I had to find out more. Unlike a great many others in the last 20 years, I’ve only ever had the one username, and it is one that demonstrated my total lack of imagination. And once I joined, I realised how dull a name I had given myself, as I saw names such as The Treble Kings and Sir Duncan Ferguson. Why hadn’t I thought to give myself a similar Rangers-themed moniker?
Most Read on FollowFollow.com No change of Heart – Rangers 0 – 2 Hearts The FF Weekly Quiz Rangers quotes from the Brugge game
Like many, I “lurked” for a few days, trying to get a feel for the place, and nervously wondering what to say in my very first post. Eventually, I decided to ask folk what their favourite Rangers song was, and was confused by the “sniff sniff” response from a few. But as I navigated through that first couple of weeks, events on the pitch helped convince my True Blue credentials, as Rangers and Celtic were locked in one of the most memorable title battles ever. Telling my new unknown online pals how much I loved Dado Prso and Nacho Novo, and how much I despised the poisonous creature in the Celtic dugout, had me now accepted into the fold. It was a season that ended with the utter bedlam of Helicopter Sunday, and after returning from Easter Road, I realised that the first place I wanted to be was on the messageboard to complete an unforgettable day. I realised then, I was hooked.
In the years that have passed since, I long ago stopped buying newspapers. I don’t go to the pub all that often. I very rarely switch on the radio to listen to phone-ins. Follow Follow has replaced them all. It is the place I now automatically go to every day to read Rangers, talk Rangers, and breathe Rangers. And in those 20 years I feel as if I’ve made friends, or at least got to know, so many people who I haven’t met (or only rarely). I’ve celebrated with them, I’ve shared in communal misery during so many terrible times, and I’ve even mourned the loss of people who passed away despite not even knowing their name. Posters like Remember The Wink, Number Eight, Commentator and George Goudie are no longer with us, but left such an impression on me that I can still recollect threads they started or discussion we took part in. Of course, there have been posters I don’t miss as much. Who can forget the insufferable Mr Pentland!
I’d say that over these two decades, there were three particularly enormous periods of my FF addiction. The first was in 2006, with the arrival of Paul Le Guen. Our great European hope who would take us into a new golden age of professionalism and of continental success. Or as it turned out, a fraud who completely underestimated our club and who made a total arse of it. The messageboard drew up battle lines, you were Team Le Guen, or you were Team Barry, the club captain who revolted against his manager and who was stripped of the armband for it. As a member of the latter camp, I was involved in so many lengthy, and often vitriolic, threads where posters would find ways to use Monster Munch or the Sahara Desert to abuse each other. I’m so glad I wasn’t a moderator back then! As our house still had dial-up internet at the time, these long and circular arguments meant the house phone was engaged for hours. I lost count of the times my exasperated wife got told next day of someone trying to call her and failing to get through. “Were you on that Rangers thing again” became her battle cry.
By the time the next massive period of my online activity happened, we at least had internet that worked independent of the phone. While celebrating the glory of the second Walter Smith era, the club was in a perilous place financially, and was sold to the shyster Craig Whyte. His tenure started with most in FF bought into the new man’s wealth and his stated plan to build on the success Walter had given us. But reality was very different, and from the Administration announcement of February 2012 through a summer of fear and hostility, FF was my place of sanctuary for hours at a time. We all needed reassurance that our club was going to survive, and as the rest of Scotland came together as one big Rangers-hating mass, this was where we found the safety of our own kind, and where defiance was born. From marches to Hampden, to the hedge at Brechin, and the realisation that Rangers were still in the hands of the untrustworthy, FF was where we organised ourselves and where we fought back.
The third period of semi-constant messageboard presence came with a global pandemic. This was a couple of years after the wonderful Stevie G Express thread (an all-time favourite), and it meant that we were all in the house with no football to watch. We found ways to keep the FF family occupied, I remember myself and the brilliant Stephen Millar of the Rangers Archives coming up with a daily poll to decide which of two spectacular Rangers goals was the better. It might be a touch melodramatic, but I genuinely think this website helped me through the boredom and the uncertainty of lockdown. It was also the time when I first really bothered with The Lounge. What a place that can be!
And, of course, I have FF to thank for my new “career”. It was in this messageboard, that I started to write biographies of bygone players, threads that seemed to get a good response and messages of support. I remember my first one was on John McPherson, a star of the Rangers teams of the 1890s and early 1900s. I wrote it after reading another great old thread, “On This Day” by the poster Sam English, and then looking up who the McPherson was that kept being mentioned as a goal scorer in games from back then. Those online articles became an idea to write a book, and in early 2022, that book was published.
Here I am now, in the summer of 2025. There have been three more books written, and I’m currently trying to complete another. I now have the honour of a red username, the world of board Admin has opened my eyes to the massive amount of work behind the scenes that nobody else sees, and appreciates. If only everyone knew why certain posts have to be chopped! And, of course, now that I write for FF, I have been given the pleasure of sitting in the media room and the press gantry to cover matches, meet players and management, and make memories that I never thought possible.
25 years ago, society, football, and Rangers were very different from now. Many might argue that all were better back then. But one thing that has definitely made things better is the community built by this website. It has been, and still is, full of great people, united in their love of the world’s greatest football club. It has been a pleasure to be one of those people. In fact, we ARE the people.
dh1963