Antelopes do not fly. That’s why I often wondered why Rangers International Football Club of Enugu are nicknamed ‘the Flying Antelopes’.
I know the genesis of the name ‘Rangers’. It is a deadly and destructive cannon used by Biafran soldiers during the bloody Nigerian Civil War.
In ‘fighting’ their way back to the mainstream life in Nigeria, and in shedding the toga of a defeated people after the Civil War, some Igbo leaders set up the football club to fast track their re-integration and chose the name ‘Rangers’ to reflect strength, power and an indomitable fighting and winning spirit.
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One year after the end of the war, the team played its way to the finals of the most prestigious club competition in Nigeria at the time – the FA Cup!
They were only halted in their march to the top only by the heroics of Amusa Adisa, the goalkeeper of WNDC FC, the team that later became IICC Shooting Stars International FC.
Adisa had dramatically caught a last-minute penalty kick taken by Godwin Achebe, Captain of the Green Eagles (before and immediately after the War) and of Rangers FC, that would have possibly helped the team to go on and win a match they were dominating up till that point in the dramatic match. That’s how Rangers lost their first major final match by 2-1 to a team that would become their greatest rival in Nigerian football through the decades since then.
That same year, 1971, in a competition that was referred to as an ‘emergency league’, Rangers FC emerged as the league champions for the first time.
But it was in 1974 that their 3-year dominance of Nigerian football truly began. From that year, they went on to win the FA Cup 3 times and the league cup twice, back-to-back.
These achievements were unprecedented in Nigeria’s football history and have not been matched fifty years after.
Remarkably, it was not only the victories that made Rangers International FC famous and a great team. It was in the manner of their performances on the field of play. They played with uncommon passion and determination. They had very skillful, very strong and very fast players in all departments on the field, with a goalkeeper who, at about 6 ft 5 inches tall, was a real giant between the posts. Emmanuel Okala went on to become the most celebrated goalkeeper with his award of Africa’s Best Player in 1978 by the African Sports Journalists Union.
Rangers International FC always and everywhere played as if possessed, contesting for every ball on the field as if their lives depended on it, physically intimidating and dominating teams with their physicality, power and speed, leaving a physical or mental ‘scar’ on every opposing team.
These achievements were unprecedented in Nigeria’s football history and have not been matched fifty years after.
Remarkably, it was not only the victories that made Rangers International FC famous and a great team. It was in the manner of their performances on the field of play. They played with uncommon passion and determination. They had very skillful, very strong and very fast players in all departments on the field, with a goalkeeper who, at about 6 ft 5 inches tall, was a real giant between the posts. Emmanuel Okala went on to become the most celebrated goalkeeper with his award of Africa’s Best Player in 1978 by the African Sports Journalists Union.
Rangers International FC always and everywhere played as if possessed, contesting for every ball on the field as if their lives depended on it, physically intimidating and dominating teams with their physicality, power and speed, leaving a physical or mental ‘scar’ on every opposing team.
In 1977, Rangers FC added the appellation ‘International’ to its name when it won the Africa Cup-winners’ Cup, only the second Nigerian club side to win the same continental trophy. One year earlier, in 1976, IICC Shooting Stars International FC had blazed the international success trail.
That achievement meant a great deal in Nigerian football and to the global followers of the great club based inEnugu. To mark the 40th anniversary of winning the continental trophy, in 2017, the club’s patrons and supporters organised and held the biggest celebration in the history of the team in Houston, Texas, USA.
