HAUL OF FAME

Goal king Tav completes medal collection and cements his place as a Rangers great

- DAVID MCCARTHY

RANGERS........1 ABERDEEN........O

JAMES TAVERNIER finally got his hands on the one trophy to elude him in Scottish football.

And not for the first time in his eight-and-a-half years at Ibrox, the Rangers captain shouldered the responsibility of finding a way to win when his team-mates couldn't plot their way to goal.

Tavernier didn't need a penalty. Just an iron will to get on the end of a Borna Barisic cross to knife a volley into the sodden Hampden turf up and past Kelle Roos, who had kept Aberdeen in it until the 76th minute of a sometimes brutal war of attrition.

Philippe Clement, only 14 games into his Rangers tenure, has won his first piece of silverware.

Tavernier has played more than 430 matches for the club and now has the full collection of medals.

Yet there are still some who doubt this man's place in the club's Hall of Fame. Maybe now, with his 114th goal in the bank, that nonsense can be put to bed.

There was a time in the late 80s when these two made the League Cup Final their own personal plaything. Three years in a row from 1987, they went head to head at Hampden, producing memories like Davie Cooper's thunderbolt free-kick past Jim Leighton in the opener and Paul Mason's double for the Dons in the final instalment of the trilogy filed in folklore by their respective clubs.

Those matches might be 30-odd years in the passing but the rivalry remains undiminished and both teams arrived in Mount Florida emboldened by their European success stories in midweek.

Aberdeen's record against Rangers this season a win and a draw should have fuelled their belief.