Rangers announcement this week that they secured Ashton Scally on a professional contract goes beyond the 16-year-old.
It is a continuation of Danny Rohl building the club in his image.
At today’s press conference, Rohl commented that it was “great to see” the youngster, who turned 16 last Saturday, commit his future to the club until 2029.
The German then went on to say that he believes that it is his “job to develop them [the Academy players] and give them opportunities.”
Will the academy squad being involved in pre-season see more further youth integration?
Rohl also revealed that “all the academy players have been great, from training and looking ahead to pre-season.”
This seems to hint that the German is looking to get more youngsters integrated into the squad and it would not be a surprise to witness other exciting prospects like Scally pictured at future training camps.
It also suggests that we are seeing the first green shoots of a strategy at the club where youth development is a key criteria and as time goes by, increasingly more central to the squad.
There is the argument that not enough young players have been allowed to get their foot in the door and the evidence states Rohl does not want that to be the case at Rangers.
Does this mean that Danny Rohl is following the path of a Rangers great?
Rangers have a proud history of academy graduates, and as much as some like Billy Gilmour have impressed, he left the academy and did not sign a professional contract.
However, Barry Ferguson did.
Ferguson was promoted to the first-team squad by Walter Smith and went on to have glittering career for Rangers.
Signing professionally is the one thing he has in common with Scally and his career should motivate the teenager.
The Ferguson success story is a part of Walter Smith’s legacy at Rangers and the hope is, when the time comes that Scally will be included in Rohl’s too.
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No-one could eclipse the legend that is Walter Smith and it is hard to imagine we will ever see his like again.
But it cannot do the incumbent Rangers manager any harm by learning from him.
And it seems, certainly by opening a pathway for academy players to gain experience in the first-team, that Danny Rohl is doing just that.
