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Ex-Green Eagles Star, SEGUN ODEGBAMI
A few weeks back, 7 time Nigerian Professional Football League, NPFL Champions, Rangers International Football Club of Enugu, nicknamed ‘The Flying Antelope’ clinched their 8th title in grand style by defeating Bendel Insurance Fc of Benin, two goals to nil at the Cathedral, their home ground with a game to spare.
Ex-Green Eagles superstar, Patrick Olusegun Odegbami in his column ‘The return of the Flying Antelopes’ quoted by saying: “Am a Ranger that never played for Rangers International,” he said. According to him, it was apparent from my unscripted story that my love for Rangers International FC is deep. “It was a team I would have loved to play for in those days of our rivalry, but for the fact that I was Yoruba, and Rangers were a team that wore the banner of a team with a mission after the Civil war between ‘brothers’.
“That’s why, I refer to myself as a Ranger that never played for Rangers International FC,” he said. Meanwhile, this football legend of the 70s and 80s still wonders why this prestigious club is called Flying Antelope. “Antelopes do not fly. I often wondered why Rangers International Football Club of Enugu is 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. “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 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 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,” Odegbami said.
He continued: “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
“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 in Enugu. 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,” he said.
According to him, most of the surviving players of the 1970s and 1980s had moved to the USA for studies or in pursuit of a better life. It was, therefore, a great opportunity to reunite and celebrate them in an audience of members of the Igbo community in the USA with a surprise guest to embellish the historic event.
“When I received a phone call from the Patron of the Rangers FC Supporters Club in the USA, Chief Benson Ejindu, inviting me to the celebration, it was a confirmation of my deepest love. I had always loved members of the Rangers International football players in the national team. They infected every one of us from different clubs with their positive attitude and fighting spirit. They inspired and drove us to new heights in the national teams of the 1970s. A few of the players became my best friends beyond the football field, a relationship we have sustained till this day,” the veteran footballer said. He However cleared that his love for Rangers International stops whenever they meet in the field because of his commitment to his team and for sure he is their nightmare.
“Despite this mutual admiration and respect between us, I was a tormentor-in-chief of Rangers International FC during the years of their rivalry with my team, Shooting Stars FC. There were 6 players from Rangers FC and 5 from Shooting Stars in the 1980 AFCON-winning Green Eagles. We should have been ‘enemies’, but were not. The friendship between us sustained beyond our times as members of the national team.
“The epic semi-final matches of the Africa Cup-Winners’ Cup in 1977, pitched Rangers International with their fiercest domestic rivals, Shooting Stars FC. Those two matches are still considered amongst the greatest and most memorable football matches in Nigeria’s football history. Although Rangers eventually won via penalty kicks after the second match that was played on neutral ground in Kaduna, the story of what transpired could only be recalled and told by one deeply involved in the unprecedented football drama,” he said. He concluded by saying that with all this being said, that’s why, he refers to himself as a Ranger that never played for Rangers International FC.
“That’s why, last week, I celebrated Rangers International’s return to the top of Nigerian football in their achievement as NPFL winners,” he said. Odegbami in his playing career won 46 caps and scored 23 goals for the Nigeria national team which he guided to its first Africa Cup of Nations title at the 1980 tournament in his homeland. Nicknamed Mathematical, he was famous for his skill on the ball, and the speed and precision of his crosses from the right wing.
He played for IICC Shooting Stars of Ibadan his entire career, from 1970 to 1984. His last game was the 1984 African Champions Cup final defeat to Zamalek of Egypt. The source of the nickname “Mathematical” was that Odegbami attended and graduated from Nigeria’s premier technical institution; The Polytechnic, Ibadan where he studied engineering.
–Benprince Ezeh
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