The U18s Head coach expressed his excitement to compete in the final game of the tournament next week as the young Gers look to end the season on a trophy winning high.
Speaking exclusively to RangersTV ahead of the tie, he said: “As you can imagine, all the boys are absolutely buzzing around the building just now.
“For most of the players, given the cup final has been delayed the past couple of years due to Covid this is the first year that they have been eligible to go and play in the Scottish Youth Cup – which is a huge deal.
“If you look back traditionally at the club, so many players who have graduated and gotten into the first team have come through and won this competition as well. It is a big deal for them and it’s a great opportunity to go and end the season on a real high.”
Campbell added that the additional element of playing in front of the fans at Hampden will be a massive opportunity for the youngsters to get a taste of senior football.
He continued: “This will be a totally different environment because it’s one of the first time’s this season that we’ve played in a stadium, and they will also be selling tickets for. So, there’ll be people paying, coming to watch the boys play, that brings a different pressure as well.
“If we go back to speaking about that development aspect to the players journey, part of it is playing with an expectation to try and win and get trophies. Playing in a stadium is another bit of external pressure, then you add in the fans, and it becomes a key moment in their careers from a development point of view.
“It’s going to be huge; I think that fortunately some of the U18s have been involved with the B team squad when they’ve played at Ibrox and Parkhead with large numbers of fans, they always come back and speak about it in different ways.
“If you look at the first game at Ibrox and it was all Rangers fans, there was a lot of them that turned out in force – they buzzed off it in terms of bringing that extra element of intensity and energy to the game.
“It was similar but different when they played in front of away fans at Parkhead, that negative atmosphere that they tried to create when we were on the ball, it’s about learning to deal with those different circumstances and how it affects you on the pitch as a player.
“We can’t ever determine when a player will get the opportunity to go to a first team; for some players that might happen quite quickly and for others it’s slightly longer.
"If we know that to play in a Rangers first team, they need to be able to cope with playing in front of 50,000 fans that are very demanding – we need to try and prepare our players as best as possible to do that.”
The U18s coach reflected on the club’s relationship with the tournament and emphasised the players should use previous finals to strive for success and emulate next Wednesday evening.
He added: “In youth development, this is almost an individual sport, and everyone is on their own individual journey, which is really exciting. Especially as staff, we get to work with them through their journeys.
“It all means something slightly different to all of them, some of them have been at the club for eight years and this is the pinnacle that they’ve dreamt of and seeing when Nathan Patterson, Billy Gilmour and Leon King have gone on to win.
“They want to go and replicate that and have their own success stories; you’ve then got kids that have come in slightly later into that Academy and are just starting to learn what it’s like to play for Rangers – of course there’s no getting away from it, it’s the most successful club in the world, you have to win trophies. This is probably the first time in their career where there’s been some expectation on them to go and win it, hopefully they can go and do that.”
Cameron also reflected on the squad’s last game in the competition when they knocked out Hibernian despite falling behind twice during the match, and he outlined the resilience shown by the players to rectify the score and secure a place in the final.
He said: “I think if we look at player development, we look at them as a whole. If you look at them on the pitch, we’re talking about the ball and the game, but we’re also talking about the mind.
“In that game [Hibernian] we went 1-0 down then 2-0 down, the boys showed great resilience to get keep their focus and calm to maintain the fact that we are a Rangers team and not change how we played or the score line influence us.
“Everything that we do is all about us, that’s how we’ll lead into it to and make sure that the boys are fully focussed on what we’re going to do. It’s about allowing the boys to be put in a position where we can go and influence and impact it, but more to just showcase the best version of them.
“We’ll always tell every single player that when they step on the pitch, they play for Rangers – no matter what position you play in, you need to go and impact the game.”
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