Former Rangers Manager Ally McCoist couldn’t care less about the background of his potential signings, as long as they were of sufficient quality to enhance his team, saying: “It’s 2013, I couldn’t give a monkey’s. I’d sign anyone from anywhere.”
However, even in 2013, Jon Daly recalled on Football CFB that not everyone was prepared to take that view.
Jon recalls a letter arriving at his family home and being read by his wife BEFORE he had even joined Rangers
Daly said: “I am Catholic because I am born into the religion, I am not a practising Catholic.
Religion is a big big issue with certain people and certain individuals, but it is not with me.
“I am not bothered by people’s religions or where they are from. I view it through my own lens, which is how I do a lot of things.
“Obviously it caused issues for certain people because I did play there.
“I actually remember coming home to my house after the end of season after being at Dundee United.
“I had signed for Rangers, gone away on holiday with the family, gone back to Ireland to see my own family, then come back to the house and walked in carrying all the suitcases.
My wife was there reading this letter, and she was boiling. I said ‘are you alright love?’, and she was shaking her head.
“I walked over and said ‘give me a look’.
“It was a letter someone had sent to Dundee United that they had forwarded on to my home address from a person saying how disappointed they were – and I’m putting it politely – that I had signed for Rangers.
“The letter said that I was this and I was that. And my family would be disgusted with me etc etc.”
“The fact of the matter is that my dad was quite ill at the time and he was over the moon that I got the chance to play for a club like Rangers.
“My family were over the moon that a club like Rangers wanted me to play for them.
“I was over the moon to go and play for Rangers.
“Certain people in this world can be quite narrow-minded and if you let them affect your decisions and your judgement, you are not going to make the ones that you think are the right ones for you.
“There were a number of people who got in touch, whether it was letters sent to Dundee United getting forwarded on or getting sent to the training ground.
“I used to have a great laugh with the boys reading these letters.
“But by the end I just said to Stevie on the front desk ‘if there are any letters which come for me just open them and if they are of that nature just put them in the bin’.
“I don’t need negativity in my life.
“Unfortunately signing there, that happened. And it came with it.
“But it doesn’t cloud my experience with the club or leave me having any negative feeling for it.”
