Farewell to Rangers icon Andy Goram marks the passing of a moment in time for football - Hugh Keevins

The first capacity crowd of the new season will be recorded tomorrow afternoon. Except it won’t be called a crowd, it will be more properly termed a congregation. And every place taken up won’t be inside a football ground. It will be contained within a more conventional place of worship inside a church.

And when the great and the good gather for Andy Goram ’s funeral service, it will seem like saying goodbye to a place in time for football as well as bidding farewell to The Goalie. A level of irreverence will need to be tolerated within the context of the more sombre aspects of the occasion – how could it possibly be any other way?

Ally McCoist, John Brown and Donald Findlay QC will take turns at the lectern to immerse themselves in the sorrowful side of a man’s passing. They will also recall a litany of stories to describe the life of a player acted out during a time when the composite picture of a professional’s life still left room for what was innocently known as high jinks.

The notion of a place in time coming to an end for good came to me after speaking to Chic Charnley on the radio. Chic is enshrined in the game’s roll of honour under the heading of hellraiser, not a description he could deny after having declared he “had O levels” in the creation of mayhem in his heyday.

Seventeen red cards, three of them in one game, signposted the trail of destruction in his wake while attaining legendary status under John Lambie’s management at Partick Thistle. And then there was the time he fought off the intruder wielding a samurai sword who was intent on disrupting a training session in a public park adjacent to Firhill.

As you do. Or as you did in the era that’s now about to be laid to rest. Chic wanted to publicly pay