chair and was said never to have set foot in Ibrox ever again, such was his disdain for the circumstances of his departure. Struth went on to steer Rangers to eighteen league championships, ten Scottish Cups and two League Cups in his 34-year tenure as manager. He was also the first manager in the history of Scottish football to win the domestic treble, in season 1948–49. The success was based on the so-called Iron Curtain defence, which remained virtually unchanged from 1946 to 1953. Under Struth's reign, Rangers managed to set a new record of becoming the first club in Britain and second club in Europe (after MTK Budapest) to win nine consecutive league championships (from the 1938–39 to 1946–47 seasons), although the middle seven were wartime competitions considered to be unofficial. After Bill Struth collected two more domestic doubles, in 1950 and 1953, Scot Symon was appointed as Rangers' third manager on 15 June 1954. Under Symon (1954–1967) Symon continued Struth's success by winning six league championships, five Scottish Cups and four League Cups. He also became the second manager to win the domestic treble, in season 1963–64. Another purple patch began at the end of the 1950s: from 1957 until 1965, Rangers achieved four league titles, plus an equal number of wins in both the League and Scottish Cups. Jim Baxter was a notable Rangers player during this period. Baxter departed for England in 1965, but the void he left was filled by John Greig, and although Rangers finished the decade in the shadow of their European Cup-winning neighbours, the foundations were being laid for future success. In the 1956–57 season, Symon took Rangers into the European Cup for the first time, but it ended quickly when they were knocked out by Nice. The following season saw Rangers suffer their worst-ever defeat by their arch rivals, with Celtic beating them 7–1 in the 1957 League Cup Final. Rangers reached the semi-finals of the European Cup in 1960, losing to Eintracht Frankfurt by a record aggregate for a Scottish team of 12–4. In 1961, Rangers became the first British team to reach a European final when they contested the Cup Winners' Cup Final against Fiorentina. They lost 4–1 on aggregate. Rangers reached the final again in 1967, losing 1–0 after extra time to Bayern Munich. Following the death of incumbent chairman John Wilson in 1963, Rangers appointed John Lawrence