However, the two clubs soon began to differ in their approach to religion. Catholic Celtic has always been open to everyone on principle; some of the club\u2019s greatest legends are even Protestant. Take manager Jock Stein, for example, who led Celtic to a sensational victory in the European Cup in 1967. When asked whether, given two equally talented players, he would sign the Catholic or the Protestant, Stein replied: \u201cThe Protestant, because I know the Rangers won\u2019t take the Catholic anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n
At Rangers, an unwritten rule against signing Catholic players took root in the 1920s under the influence of officials and players who were also members of the Orange Order, a radical Protestant organisation named after William III of Orange, who had defeated the Catholic King James II\u2019s army in Ireland.<\/p>\n
A few Catholics still played for the club, but they had to hide their faith. South African striker Don Kitchenbrand, for instance, only disclosed his Catholicism years after leaving Ibrox, explaining, \u201cI couldn\u2019t admit it back then. I would have ruined my wonderful life.\u201d<\/p>\n
From the 1970s, political and media pressure mounted on Rangers to drop the ban, with rumours of a FIFA investigation into alleged discrimination. Club officials repeatedly announced the signing of Catholic players, eventually opting for the most high-profile targets to make the change stick.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"However, the two clubs soon began to differ in their approach to religion. Catholic Celtic has always been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":603723,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,1379,596,20248,3919,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-603722","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-features","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-premiership","13":"tag-rangers","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=603722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/603723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}