Helicopter Sunday and Big Eck are rolled out to rally the Ibrox troops into believing Hearts and Celtic can be caught

Big Eck, the Ibrox hero.

The man who openly admitted his side would never have been able to compete with Celtic if it hadn’t been for EBT’s.

The man who once fielded a side with 11 ineligible players.

Yes, the ultimate Ibrox hero.

Forever remembered for the last day of the season in 2003, and Helicopter Sunday.

Alex McLeish has been called upon to issue one final rallying cry to the Ibrox troops in the Record this morning.

With Helicopter Sunday being just the tonic to get the Ibrox pulses flowing.

The ‘Ibrox Legend’ (only legendary because of EBT’s), insisted all hope is not lost.

I must admit, I’ve got to admire his self confidence with this sub-heading in the Record:

I am R*****s hero behind Helicopter Sunday and this is what Danny Rohl must do to stun Celtic and Hearts

He isn’t subtle about how he sees himself anyway, is he?

I’m not going to give bother dissecting McLeish’s comments.

To be honest, I don’t see the point because I can’t take seriously somebody who cheated on an industrial scale.

Everything he says has a hollow ring to it.

Instead, I’ll make my own point about Helicopter Sunday.

Martin O’Neill will always remember how things went down that day.

I’m sure its probably one of the biggest regrets he had during from first tenure as Celtic manager.

If anybody thinks he’s forgotten about it, I’d imagine they’re sorely mistaken.

Whether he speaks about it or not, Martin O’Neill sees this season’s title as his path to redemption when it comes to what happened to him and Celtic that fateful day in 2005.

He doesn’t want to re-live it again.

And with the way things are going in this last leg of the title race, there’s every chance something like that could happen.

But out of the three managers involved in this title race, O’Neill is the only one who has been over the course before.

In addition to that, he is also the only manager who has tasted last day defeat, not once, but twice, in a title race.

I sincerely doubt he has any wish to experience it a third time.

In fact, I’d be pretty sure he is determined he is not going to.

O’Neill also knows that those two last day title concessions happened when Celtic were up against a team that was financially doped to it’s eyeballs.

Question marks still float over the way Dunfermline lay down to Rangers 1872 on the last day of the season in 2003.

Chris Sutton voiced exactly how he felt everything went down on that day.

If he felt that, you know to a degree that his manager did too.

Martin O’Neill probably has those various traumatic memories set aside as motivation for the current side.

Redemption lies four games away for O’Neill.

He can banish the demons of ’03 and ’05 by winning this.

Right now, our fate is in our own hands.

Let’s keep it that way.

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