Arniston Rangers
Images courtesy of Phoenix Photography Scotland
At the end of last season our
manager left the club and as players
are only signed for the season we lost
all our squad as well so we had a major
rebuilding job. We took a chance on
a young, inexperienced manager and
although things never worked out for
him and he left after about ten games
we were grateful for the job he did as
without him we may have not started
the season.
We won our first two league games
but then went a losing streak and took
a few heavy losses along the way so
the mood around the club was pretty
despondent. We then appointed two
co-managers in Conan Mcdiarmid and
Martin Power who have been a breath of
fresh air.
They have brought in a lot of new
players, indeed only four players from
the original squad remain and we have
started to improve week on week and
have started to turn the corner regarding
results so the atmosphere around the
club is very good and the players and
the supporters are enjoying their football
again. The aims for the season now are to
finish as high up the league as possible
and lay foundations for next season.
We are in the early stages of hopefully
relocating to a brand-new, purpose-
built stadium with an all-weather pitch
which will secure the long-term future of
the club. Although there is an Arniston
Rangers youth football club who have
both boys and girls teams across all age
groups we are not as closely affiliated
as we would like but it is something we
would like to look into when we have
the new facilities.
We are also looking to have an under
20’s team playing in the development
next season which will provide a
pathway from very young players all the
way up to our first team. We consider
ourselves very much a community club
and we hope with bringing the youth
teams and us under one umbrella that
will grow the sense of community spirit
and produce teams full of local talent the
village can be proud of.
The biggest challenges we will have
over the next few years is keeping the
club going and competing at as a high a
level as we can. Gorebridge is like a lot of
other villages around the country in that
it is growing constantly with hundreds
of new houses going up all around.
Although it’s good for the village most
of the people moving into the area don’t
have the local connections that a lot of
our long-time supporters have and we
are going to have to work hard to try
and encourage them to come along to
games and create the next generations of
supporters.
Article provided by Allan Hares
www.footballfocusmag.com
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