Graeme Murty Proud of Young Players

HEAD of Academy Elite Development Graeme Murty could ‘not be prouder’ of the resilience and relentlessness shown by the young players in Rangers Schoolboy Academy.

With squad and educational webinars, online challenges and a masterclass series with first-team staff and players, the programme has been designed to help engage the youngsters while they are away from the training centre.

Speaking to RangersTV this week, he said: “We have to commend the players as they've been relentless in their desire to get better, relentless in their work ethic, their hunger actually to learn and improve and be included in our programme.

“They are online with us at least four times a week so we will send out challenges to them on a Monday, we will have a squad webinar where we talk about our game model and how we play and ask them questions and I’ve got to say their answers are excellent and very very innovative.

“Something that's been really really popular is our masterclass series and I have to say it's been really well received but the quality of guests that we've had on has been great.

“We had Scott Arfield, Steven Gerrard and last week's was Ianis Hagi. Ianis has such a mature well-rounded attitude to improvement and he basically reinforced all the messages we would love our young players to take away about self-improvement and getting better everyday.

“It just goes to show how resilient they are and how aspirational they are even though we're going through a challenging time at the moment they still want to improve they still want to get better.

“Our staff have supported them as well as they can but unfortunately a lot of it is landing on the shoulders of the players which has shown us levels of resilience and relentlessness that potentially we take for granted when we can see them everyday.

“They are showing that in bucket loads at the moment and I have to give him credit for that but they are truly making this time their own. We could not be prouder of them than we are now.”

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Murty also praised the work of staff behind the scenes as they find new ways to interact with the young players.

He continued: “We try to be as diverse as we can in what we offer them, our staff have taken to this challenge once again in a brilliant fashion.

“It's not easy, it's very very difficult to be innovative and creative with our young players without actually getting to see them as often as we would like. The staff have got on with not only engaging with young players but trying to bring them something new and I can't give him enough credit.

"We are trying to find as many different ways as we can to relate to the players and interact with them.

“It would be really easy right now to shut down a little bit because it's hard and it's challenging but our staff have been relentless in our desire to support our players.

As well as support with their football activity, Murty says it has been vital to have the player care team on hand to help with many different challenges brought up by lockdown.

He said: "It is incredible the work that has been done there. All of our players know that at the end of a phone there is someone they can talk to when they are going through any challenge.

"In addition to their technical content each player has a phone call either individually or in a group with their age group coach to make sure that we're in contact with them every week and make sure we keep that consistency of approach. They've always got a touch point with the club and we are always reinforcing the fact that we are there to support them and help them through this time.

“We understand our young players might be going through a challenge that has got nothing to do with football, they might be having a hard time at school, they might be having a hard time dealing with lockdown situations - we can help and they know that and we are very keen to push that message all the time that we are here to listen.

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Looking ahead, Murty says there are a number of positives to take forward when training can return to normal.

He concluded: “There are a lot of things that we do now in the way we support our players and the way we pre-frame sessions.

"A lot of the players have said that they really enjoy the game model video that emphasises the topic that we are going to work on in that week and asked can we continue to do it when we actually come back into training and that that's really really good thing - we kind of wish we had done it sooner.

“Showing that pathway to our Academy is really important and we're learning as well and I think that is one thing we've taken from this is our staff openness to new methods.

"Even though we think we're doing a good job we're out there researching and we're out there looking at other clubs and seeing what they're doing seeing if there is something better than what we offer and see if we can push our provision to the next level.”