Best night of my life

THE Rangers captain, Lorenzo Amoruso, held the Scottish Premier League Championship trophy in the air last night in front of an Ibrox support that had almost driven him from the club earlier in the season.

Those dark days, when the Italian was being booed by the fans and when he contemplated a transfer back to Italy, were forgotten in the party atmosphere that engulfed Ibrox last night after the 0-0 draw with Hearts. There were 49,495 fans in the ground and, while they saw Rangers miss two penalties in the second-half, nothing could dent the party spirit that mirrored, in an admittedly larger scale, that enjoyed by the followers of Hibernian and Livingston, who had been presented the previous day with the first and second division trophies respectively.

Nor did the goalless draw, and the earlier seeming rejection of Amoruso, affect their acclaim for the club captain. Afterwards, Amoruso admitted: ''This is the best night of my whole career.

''Hopefully I will be able to win more trophies with Rangers. Hopefully this is only going to be the first. But, as the first, it is always going to be very special for me.

''I think that we had many new players at the start of the season and, therefore, to be able to win the League Cup, and to win the championship, has been tremendous for the players and for the supporters.

''I do believe that we have a great chance to win the treble. Tonight it was normal that we relaxed a little bit too much because we had already won the championship.

''Now we can get back to concentrating on the games - and to concentrating for the cup final. We want to win that too.''

Amoruso continued: ''It is not my place to say so - it will be up to the coach and the chairman - but I think we have a very good base for a team here now. Maybe one or two new players can come in and make us better, but I don't think we need to sign the same number of players as we did last summer.

''We have shown how well the team can do and we can go on to do better. We were maybe a little unlucky in Europe against Parma and so now we have next season to look forward to.''

The Rangers coach, Dick

Advocaat, added: ''We have come a very long way in just one season with so many new players. It was good tonight for the supporters, and for the players, to be able to celebrate the championship together.

''Last week, obviously, we were not able to celebrate because the game was at Celtic Park. Tonight everyone was together.

''It was a very big night and, while I have won a championship before, with PSV Eindhoven in Holland, there were not so many people there. Tonight it was very emotional for all of us.

''Okay, we did not win the game, but we did make enough chances to deserve victory and that is something we have to remember. The crowd showed how proud they are in the players.

''Last week I would say I was more emotional than this, but it was still something special. We all know here at Ibrox how far we have come to get this result. We wanted to win the game tonight, too, and had enough chances but unfortunately did not take them.

''It was never our intention to take it easy tonight and we went out for a victory, but maybe that bit extra was not there from us and we had to settle for a draw.''

Rangers missed two penalties, from Jorg Albertz and Gabriel Amato, to enable already safe Hearts to claim a point from their visit to Glasgow. The Edinburgh outfit knew that their Scottish Premier League place was secure after Dunfermline Athletic's home loss to Celtic yesterday, but they still produced a battling display to frustrate Rangers.

Manager Jim Jefferies was unhappy with the first award, when Grant Murray's challenge on Jonatan Johansson was harshly punished by referee Stuart Dougal. Jefferies complained: ''I thought the first one was never a penalty, though the second one was, but we hardly got given anything this evening.

''No decisions seemed to go our way. We showed a lot of spirit and determination, though, and I felt we were capable of snatching it on our first-half performance.''

Tony Vidmar, who limped off in the first half, was suffering from a hamstring injury. However, Advocaat admitted that the Australian defender had been taken off to avoid any serious injury. It was, he said a precautionary measure.

Hearts, meanwhile, denied weekend reports that they had accepted a #2m offer from Celtic for their central defender, Paul Ritchie. Celtic, too, indicated that no such offer had been made, and no deal had been agreed.

Yesterday's presentation to Rangers completed a weekend in which all the outstanding promotion and relegation issues were settled. Hibernian, who clinched the first division title weeks ago, were presented with their league trophy at Easter Road, while, there was a similar party atmosphere at Livingston as the home side received the trophy as reward for topping the second division.

qRangers proved far too strong for Celtic as they powered their way to a 4-0 victory to claim the Glasgow Cup for the forty-eighth time.

BP Cup holders Celtic were without six members of the team that disposed of Dundee on Wednesday night, including Mark Burchill, and the Ibrox side went in front early on and dominated throughout.

After a short delay to the kick off to fix a peg into one of the nets, it took Rangers just three minutes to open the scoring.

The Celtic defence was unable to clear a corner and, when Malcolm Ross returned the ball into the penalty box, Peter MacDonald was on hand to head in at the back post.

Two goals from MacDonald and Paul McHail before half time killed the game. Mac Donald took advantage of a slip from Celtic goalkeeper Allan Morrison to chip in his second on 29 minutes before turning provider for McHail six minutes later.

Jimmy Gibson got a touch on to MacDonald's cross, playing the ball into McHail's path with the striker making no mistake as he drilled the ball into the net from a tight angle.

With nine minutes remaining, Gibson himself scored when he converted a Lee Feeney cross after the young Irishman had made ground down the right wing.