Rangers 12s v Academy 12s
Ayr United 12s travelled to Glasgow to play Rangers at Murray Park on Saturday afternoon. It was a fantastic experience for the boys to play in top class facilities. As soon as you drive through the gates of Murray Park you get this sense of amazement of how great the facility is. Once the players got changed they ran out to what looked like a sea of football pitches. From the changing room to the pitches you could feel the excitement that Murray Park brings and the players looked ready for the challenge that lay ahead.
The Ayr United players were wearing their new home strips and looked the part as the games kicked off. Right from kick off it was apparent that playing against Rangers was going to be a tough challenge for the players. Ayr started slowly and they lacked that sparkle that they had been showing in previous games.
In all the games, Rangers scored quickly and this gave them the momentum which led to them scoring a cluster of goals in a relatively short period of time. However Ayr got back into the games as they didn’t let the heads go down and through hard work and effort they created chances and made it harder for Rangers to score further goals.
The last two games showed the Rangers players, coaches and the crowd watching what Ayr were all about. The players continued to make it hard for Rangers to get to goal and there was some first class defending by Ayr. Throughout the games both teams got the ball down and passed it around well. In these games Ayr created numerous chances with Adam Mahoney, James Maxwell, Jordan Lusk and Aiden Bradford ( pictured ) all coming close. However the stand out performance for Ayr was from Adam Mahoney who showed great understanding of the game throughout which allowed him to break up play and burst forward and create chances for team mates. Adam took a few hard tackles but every time he got up and carried on. Adam was a great example to all the other Ayr players as he never gave up, continued to play football and from doing this was a stand out from both sets of players.
After the matches Ayr Coach Shaun Ferrie said “We knew coming here against Rangers was going to be a hard task. I was slightly disappointed at the boy’s performance in the first two games as we made it far too easy for Rangers and gave them too much respect. However, I was pleased with the effort and performance in last two games. Although we were still off the pace a little, the players showed great character with a never say die attitude. We were rewarded with some chances that could have easily been goals. I’m hoping the players use this experience to kick on and to try and get to the level Rangers are at. I strongly believe these Ayr players will keep improving and games like Saturdays will make us stronger individually, as a team and also as an academy.”
