Mulholland believes having supporters in the ground helps add to the development of the young players as they experience the pressure of playing in front of a crowd. With restrictions easing across the country, Saturday’s home fixture against Gretna is set to be the first Lowland League match with full capacity.
The Head of Academy sat down exclusively with RangersTV this week to discuss the start to the campaign and the impact of supporters. He said: “The support has been huge for us and we want to keep increasing that fan base.
“The boys have won four out of five Lowland League games so far but the game we lost we were 3-0 down early in the game and they had never played in front of a crowd and the pressure we saw on the young players was tremendous in terms of giving that experience and that resilience.
“The first game we were restricted to 300 supporters by the Government and we sold that out, next game was 600 and sold out, the other night we were still at 600 supporters and we were just below that.
“This weekend against Gretna is the first one where the stadium actually opens up and we can fill that stadium so the fact that it is 3pm on a Saturday and the first-team are playing on Friday night we really hope we will get a big Rangers support along.
“Not only will they hopefully enjoy seeing some of the exciting talent that is coming through the Academy, but from our point of view their contribution to developing our young players is absolutely massive.”
Ahead of the Gretna match on Saturday, the B Team face League One side Dumbarton in the SPFL Trust Trophy this evening.
Mulholland added: “That competition is massive, if you think about the run we had a couple of years ago, we were the first Colts team to get to the semi-final up at Inverness and that journey for the players was important.
“It is more exposure to men's first team football early and all of the research tells us that the earlier we get our players playing men's first team football the better.
“The good thing about the Challenge Cup as well is that not only are we playing against men there are a couple over-age players that can come from the first-team to help guide our young players so the Challenge Cup is important and something we are looking forward to taking part in.”
Tickets for Saturday’s match against Gretna are on sale now priced at £7 for adults and £3 for concessions/children. Buy your ticket HERE.