mdingwall
Administrator
angers FC Unveil New ‘Rangers READY’ Concept
RANGERS Football Club are today thrilled to unveil ‘Rangers READY’ – an all-new nationwide concept in children’s football development in Scotland.
Rangers READY will further enhance our Academy’s offering to young people not only in the Glasgow area, but right across Scotland. Seven new centres will open across the country including cities such as Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and Dundee.
This innovative, exciting offering for young, primary-aged kids allows them to learn, grow and explore in a fun and engaging environment that supports and challenges young people who desire to learn and develop in a playful and creative way. In addition, it will see Rangers build strong relationships with the grassroots football community. This, however, is not a ‘community programme’ as driven by our Academy, Rangers READY is free for the selected kids and a genuine attempt to change how we develop young footballers in their earliest years experiencing the game. Those selected kids will be chosen by Rangers’ extensive scouting network to come and experience the Rangers READY programme.
Rangers READY is designed to allow children to develop a love for the game and, perhaps most importantly, the ball. As such, Academy Head of Coaching, Zeb Jacobs, has designed a unique, evidence-based play programme, taking his own experiences in Belgium and combing them with lots of research from countries such as Germany, that is exciting, fun and will stimulate curiosity.
All of the team delivering Rangers READY will offer a unique and different programme full of playfulness, movement skills and lots of competitive 1v1 to 3v3 practice designed to create a strong long-term love of the sport.
Rangers READY is an all-new concept, which young people and their parents will feel from the moment they arrive at the venue, different from any Academy model previously implemented. There is no retention or release for kids this young, only fun and games, and that is why every block will see all players leave the centre at the end of the term and new invites issued for the following school term. We don’t believe in the existing model of labelling six, seven and eight-year-olds ‘elite’ and adding pressure to an already challenging childhood. We want to offer parents and their kids a new alternative and hopefully create an affinity with the club that will make Rangers their preferred choice when selection occurs at an older age.
Rangers Academy Director, Craig Mulholland, commented: “Our team have worked on developing the new Rangers READY concept for almost a year. Our starting point was that we simply don’t believe in labelling kids who may only have been playing the game for less than 12 months ‘elite’.
“All of the research Zeb has led tells us we need to change how children learn. We must engage with them and create that love of the game in a playful way. We also spoke with many parents and didn’t like the pressure they felt when professional clubs became involved, so we decided to create a different offering which will benefit Rangers, Scottish football, and most importantly, the parents and the child. So, whether you are attending the Rangers READY in Aberdeen or the Ayrshire, the feeling, the environment and the research-based content will be the same. We looked at what they do in Portugal, France, Germany, Belgium and many other countries and are now really clear on what we want engagement with Rangers to feel like when the kids are so young. We are really excited by this new concept which we believe will change the pre-Academy space in our country.
Rangers Head of Coaching, Zeb Jacobs, added: “We looked closely to research about optimal learning environments and tried to understand how a child learns. Based on the outcomes, we saw that ‘play’ needs to be at the heart of Rangers READY. So, together as a team, we have designed an exciting ‘play programme’ based on research, best practice and experience that allows children to explore and develop in a unique and playful environment. This is why we speak about a ‘play programme’ and not a curriculum, a child and not a player and an experience and not a pathway.”
