boabie 230 Posted June 28, 2016 Share Posted June 28, 2016 CHANGES TO FOOTBALL STRUCTURES Most of the questions I received were detailed in nature and I have consolidated them into common themes for the purpose of my responses. However, a few questions were directed at gaining a better understanding of the “bigger picture” and what has been put in place over the last year to ensure the football structures are solid and not dependent on key individuals within the football management team or the Board. These are important considerations because the Club’s football department has undergone the biggest changes since the current board took over. A ‘Technical Board,’ consisting of the Manager, Assistant Manager, Head of Academy, Head of Goalkeeping, Head of Recruitment, Managing Director and Director of Finance and Administration, has been established to oversee our whole football philosophy from the top of the Club to the bottom. This is in place to ensure the implementation of a Club-wide playing style, football philosophy and culture and to evaluate our progress in becoming a modern, progressive football club by measuring progress against set targets. The Technical Board also works with a player-succession planning model from our Academy through to the first team and this drives our recruitment and development needs of our most talented younger players as they move towards the first team. Evidence of our playing style can now be seen throughout all of the Rangers teams. The Manager deliberately has a relatively lean first-team squad to create aspiration and to ensure a pathway for young players and that all players at the Club can ‘see the first team.’ Developing young players is a fundamental part of our business plan. Not only are there obvious financial benefits to development, but there is greater affinity between the player and the Club and from the supporters towards the player. It is difficult to replicate this with a player recruited externally. All of the clubs who have success in this area have youth development within their DNA and it is genuinely supported throughout the Club from the board down. Only with this level of commitment will we achieve success. We recognise that this is an area where the Club has had only sporadic success in the past, but to really be considered among the top European clubs we were required to radically change our Academy. This change has commenced. We are very early in the project and we acknowledge that youth development takes time for us to see the outcomes. However, a number of positive changes are already evident. There have also been staff changes throughout the Academy ensuring we have the best qualified staff in all areas to create the best environment for the young players. For example, we are currently recruiting for a Head Development Squad Coach to work in the Academy to replace Ian Durrant, who recently moved on from the Club. Moving away from traditional football recruitment methods, we decided to advertise to ensure that we get the best individual for the post. Each candidate will be put through a rigorous series of interviews, presentations and checks to ensure we get the correct person who will fit into our culture and who has the necessary skill set to help our players make the jump from the Academy to the first team. It is important that we develop our staff as well as our players and that we have experts in all of the disciplines. We are creating a ‘best v best’ culture whereby we maximise the challenge for our Academy players. This may be via top tournaments abroad, fixtures in England, playing against older players and putting players on loan to best prepare them for the first team. Each player is an individual project. We must ensure that the challenges our players face are at the correct level at the correct time in order to change the normal pathway experienced by young Scottish players. By making decisions in the interests of the player we may negatively impact on the results of some of our Academy teams. That does not matter – producing players for the first team is the only objective of the Academy. The only team that must win is the first team. We have the ambition to become one of the top 15 Academies in Europe and are creating an environment with our coaches sports scientists, medical, welfare and education, operations and analyst teams within the Academy to achieve this goal. We recently launched a partnership with Boclair Academy that will result in 24 of our best young Academy players between ages 11 and 15 leaving their own schools to attend Boclair. This will allow them to concentrate on their academic study while achieving 16 hours per week of football activity. Only with this level of contact time can we produce a much higher standard of player. This is an important initiative. The Academy is now split into four key sections; Children’s, Intermediate, Senior and Development squads. Each of these has a manager tasked with developing the staff and new separate age-specific curriculums. We have also become a Coerver Coaching partner club and this influences our curriculum design. Academy players have individual websites where they complete well-being questionnaires, receive all of their video analyses and clips and can view all of the educational presentations on areas such as diet and nutrition, etc. We have recently achieved ‘Investors in Young Peoples Status’ for our Academy as a result of the way we look after the young players and the learning environment we are creating. Developing good people with specific behavioural characteristics, growth mind sets, drive to succeed, and humility is important to us and fits well with the traditional values of our club. We are also increasing our representation and influence on key committees to ensure Rangers are at the heart of shaping any changes made within the Scottish game – changes which everyone must acknowledge are required if we are to produce a better quality and different type of player for our country and, in our case, at Rangers. LADIES TEAM The Club has demonstrated our commitment to the Ladies first team and Academy since we created our first squad back in 2007. Since then the Academy has grown and now boasts more than seven squads from under 12s to the first team. We have 122 Academy to first-team players with 16 girls in our elite centre. The squads train at Auchenhowie and have played games at Ibrox Stadium, which further demonstrates the Club’s commitment to investing in our female football talent. In March this year, we recruited our first full-time employee, Kevin Murphy, to work as the ladies first-team manager and oversee the girls’ Academy. This Academy mirrors the work that has been implemented within the boys’ Academy and we hope our talented young female players can progress through the ranks to help achieve their potential. There have been several players in the past few seasons that have progressed from the Academy to the first team and this remains a priority for the staff involved. We are fully committed to continuing our support and aid for the ladies’ programme and not simply because by having a fully supported female section we are recognising our social and corporate responsibility. Perhaps more importantly, we recognise the growth in the women’s game on its own merits and we will continue to support the development of our female teams and ensure our first team keep competing in the Women’s Premier League. http://rangers.co.uk/news/headlines/dave-king-response-10/? 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
buster. 4,808 Posted June 28, 2016 Share Posted June 28, 2016 Infrastructure is hugely important and it is certainly now being treated accordingly. This may not be popular or PC but unless self-financing / sustainable, I'd drop the Ladies team from RIFC responsibility. They could set-up independently and reach the level they reach but at the end of the day, very few are interested and IMO it's next to unwatchable for more than 10 minutes. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveC 150 Posted June 28, 2016 Share Posted June 28, 2016 Infrastructure is hugely important and it is certainly now being treated accordingly. This may not be popular or PC but unless self-financing / sustainable, I'd drop the Ladies team from RIFC responsibility. They could set-up independently and reach the level they reach but at the end of the day, very few are interested and IMO it's next to unwatchable for more than 10 minutes. "IMO it's next to unwatchable for more than 10 minutes" that's true of most men's football too, especially in Scotland 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
buster. 4,808 Posted June 28, 2016 Share Posted June 28, 2016 "IMO it's next to unwatchable for more than 10 minutes" that's true of most men's football too, especially in Scotland Fair enough --------------------------------- I have went on about the infastructure so much over the past months that I hardly touched upon it in that post.... but that is the important aspect of answer#10 and one where the board deserve an awful lot of credit. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
der Berliner 3,263 Posted June 28, 2016 Share Posted June 28, 2016 (edited) Infrastructure is hugely important and it is certainly now being treated accordingly. This may not be popular or PC but unless self-financing / sustainable, I'd drop the Ladies team from RIFC responsibility. They could set-up independently and reach the level they reach but at the end of the day, very few are interested and IMO it's next to unwatchable for more than 10 minutes. Not sure how it is nowadays, but an insider told me that a few years back the Ladies were paying for the privilege to play for us, had to travel to the games themselves etc.. If it is half-decently run - and this would be on rather minimal costs at that - compared to the men's game, the Ladies are a very short step away from Champions League football. Footie that will be live on Eurosport et al. Glasgow City is being run rather well, acquires the best talent and binds them for longer spells, which we are hardly able to do. Hence they run away with the title each season and end up playing the best in Europe. Women's football (even at 2nd tier level) is present at the BBC fixture lists amongst "other things" ... http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/fixtures ... it is mainly a summer game, so the males won't lose any valuable game or watching time themselves AND can ensure that their weans do something more worthwhile than going Justin Bieber mad, turn Goth, testing drugs or trying out 4 clubs in 3 days. IMHO, there is quite some potential there, and not just for the women's game as such, but also for the club's profile and standing. NB: A fair amount of our playeresses are actually Bluenoses themselves and enjoy the Ibrox atmosphere right after their games. Edited June 28, 2016 by der Berliner 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
colinstein 294 Posted June 28, 2016 Share Posted June 28, 2016 I think it would be an own goal to drop the ladies team. Women's football has a great future, we need to be part of that. In the longer term I would envisage mixed teams consisting of the best players regardless of gender 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
buster. 4,808 Posted June 28, 2016 Share Posted June 28, 2016 (edited) Not sure how it is nowadays, but an insider told me that a few years back the Ladies were paying for the privilege to play for us, had to travel to the games themselves etc.. If it is half-decently run - and this would be on rather minimal costs at that - compared to the men's game, the Ladies are a very short step away from Champions League football. Footie that will be live on Eurosport et al. Glasgow City is being run rather well, acquires the best talent and binds them for longer spells, which we are hardly able to do. Hence they run away with the title each season and end up playing the best in Europe. Women's football (even at 2nd tier level) is present at the BBC fixture lists amongst "other things" ... http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/fixtures ... it is mainly a summer game, so the males won't lose any valuable game or watching time themselves AND can ensure that their weans do something more worthwhile than going Justin Bieber mad, turn Goth, testing drugs or trying out 4 clubs in 3 days. IMHO, there is quite some potential there, and not just for the women's game as such, but also for the club's profile and standing. NB: A fair amount of our playeresses are actually Bluenoses themselves and enjoy the Ibrox atmosphere right after their games. If self-financing/sustainable then it makes sense but that would probably mean limited ambtions. Limited ambitions on a womens football level would make sense for me as I envisage taking part as being enough. However I'm sure the Ladies will have competitive ambitions which would need funding. This is where I don't think it would work wrt RIFC who need to channel scarce resources to the mens game. If Glasgow City Ladies can be successful without an apparent parent senior football club, then I see no reason why Rangers Ladies couldn't become in the main, independent from RIFC with perhaps occasional links/provison of X or Y. --------------- Regard the BBC coverage They seemed to take a decision to promote/basically force feed their viewers with womens football coverage whether they liked it or not. This didn't relate to a sudden increased interest in the game but was more a decision based on political correctness/promotion. Prior to that they had decided to cover 'foreign football' a lot more. However this decision had more of a valid representative reason behind it based on actual trends. Edited June 28, 2016 by buster. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
calscot 0 Posted June 28, 2016 Share Posted June 28, 2016 Since women's tennis gained the same prize money as the men's, I've lost all respect for women's sport as I abhor sexism including that against men. For me sport is meritorious and to be non-sexist I think you have to be gender agnostic. I don't want to choose to watch men and women's sport, I just want to watch sport, with the best people. At a lower level I can see the need for perhaps separating the genders for participation purposes but even then, why not just put the same level against the same level, no matter the gender? Many boys and men miss out on participation on sport due to only the best being allowed to play, while women and girls of a low standard are indulged. For me, everyone should be able to participate, no matter how bad you are or what handicap or disability you have. There's maybe more of a point in very physical games but then I think the top levels need to be self funding. Women will always find it hard to compete with men but as people that's just life - like a short guy will find it hard to get to the NBA due to his genetics - doesn't mean we should have an equal pay basket ball league for short guys. And you never hear many women campaigning for top male models to get equal pay to their female counterparts even thought the difference is astronomical. But one of the reasons that women can be so bad at sport is the lack of participation - which I would reckon is about 20:1 men to women. A remember seeing a women friend receive a 7th place trophy on a Strava hill segment and thinking that's good; however, I looked at it and although there had been about 150 people through that segment and she was dead last, but only 7 women had tried it. To get 7th in the men's or overall would mean you have to be in the top 5%, which isn't very easy even with weekend riders. And that's another reason that the tennis "equality" is so unequal. For me it should be equal opportunity and equal pay for equal work, everywhere. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big Jaws 570 Posted June 28, 2016 Share Posted June 28, 2016 Infrastructure is hugely important and it is certainly now being treated accordingly. This may not be popular or PC but unless self-financing / sustainable, I'd drop the Ladies team from RIFC responsibility. They could set-up independently and reach the level they reach but at the end of the day, very few are interested and IMO it's next to unwatchable for more than 10 minutes. Way tae cut yer nose aff tae spite yer face. The profile of the women's game in the last few years has sky rocketed and quite rightly too. Granted its not as fast or physical as the men's game although they're no shirkers and it can get quite tousy now and then. It is however filled with skill based players, some of the players have fantastic skill and I'm not just talking about wee Kim Little here. Secondly and perhaps more importantly its an emerging market and a huge one at that. Rangers would be boxing clever to throw a loss leader or two in at the moment setting the ground work to tap that market as the profile rises. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
buster. 4,808 Posted June 28, 2016 Share Posted June 28, 2016 (edited) Way tae cut yer nose aff tae spite yer face. The profile of the women's game in the last few years has sky rocketed and quite rightly too. Granted its not as fast or physical as the men's game although they're no shirkers and it can get quite tousy now and then. It is however filled with skill based players, some of the players have fantastic skill and I'm not just talking about wee Kim Little here. Secondly and perhaps more importantly its an emerging market and a huge one at that. Rangers would be boxing clever to throw a loss leader or two in at the moment setting the ground work to tap that market as the profile rises. Scottish womens football may be an emerging participative sport and if it is then great. However SWF will not be an emerging market in terms of making money...... edit ........at least not for football clubs. Edited June 28, 2016 by buster. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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