STEVEN Boyack’s Rangers career may have only amounted to a solitary 16-minute substitute appearance before it was cruelly sabotaged by injury but he’s far from bitter about his nine years spent at Ibrox.

Instead, the 45-year-old says his upbringing in one of the greatest eras in the club’s history supplied him with important life lessons he holds dear to this day.

Boyack would join as a fresh-faced 14-year-old after being scouted playing for his local Stirling Boys Club in 1990.

For a dyed-in-the-wool Bluenose, signing for his boyhood heroes was every inch the dream come true.

He said: “My family are all Dundee supporters which is fine but I supported Rangers.

“I followed them from a young age. We moved to Stirling when I was about 10 and all my pals supported Rangers so we would go to Ibrox sometimes.

“I just remember going when Graeme Souness first came in which would be four or five years before I signed for Rangers.

“I signed an S-form when I was 14 and there were a lot of boys who were different shapes and sizes. Some fell by the wayside but it was brilliant to sign.

“I left school when I was 16 and you went to Ibrox every day which you get used to but it was quite a big thing when you think about it.”

Boyack would be one of countless youngsters pitching up on Edmiston Drive dreaming of stardom and a break alongside the stars of the day in the starting XI.

In truth, only a handful would complete the long and arduous journey to the first team.

He explained: “The idea when you signed the schoolboy form is that you’d go on to a two-year apprenticeship.

“When I signed an apprenticeship, there must’ve been 12 to 14 of us which is a lot in just one year. By the time the second year comes round, you’re probably lucky if half of them are left.

“We’d have boys from Ireland, boys from up north who didn’t like being away from home, a lot of guys had growing pains. Going from boys football to playing men’s football, your body has to be able to handle it so there’s definitely a lot of wastage.”

For a teenage Boyack, he admitted it wouldn’t be long before he was made aware of the demands expected of him.

He recalled: “What they did quite cleverly was they had the old Reserve League West at the time which was the third team.

“You would have the first-team, the reserves and the Reserve League West and at a young age, they would integrate you into the Reserve League West so I would quite often play in that even though I was still at school. So you kind start to get the gist and it was hard.

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“Men’s football under John MacGregor, Billy Kirkwood and Archie Knox can be quite tough!

“But it’s a good grounding. I have a Labour Agency now and I employ a lot of people. My staff are all 20-odd and I wonder if some of them would be able to handle the apprenticeship that we went through. I’m not sure it would be allowed these days but, as you can imagine, it was old school.

“My first job was cleaning the changing rooms. You were cleaning the away changing room and you were cleaning up after your mates who were deliberately making a mess then they handed out the kit and you cleaned the boots.

“You did a bit of everything, it was good for you. It wasn’t much fun at the time and I didn’t understand why they would make me do it as I didn’t understand how it made me a better footballer. But it gave me a better attitude, that’s for sure.

"You do remember it fondly but it was tough times as well. You’re trying to break into a first team that was very strong that had a lot of players and a lot of competition.

“You’ve got to remember you were there for nine o’clock in the morning which means public transport from where I lived so you were on the go from say seven o’clock in the morning.

“We didn’t leave till four o’clock but we didn’t often do stuff in the afternoon, we just tidied up.

“So you were in Ibrox Stadium for a lot of time. There was no training complex, no canteen, no fancy stuff. We were in the changing room or we were cleaning or doing daft things. It’s just what it was, it was what we were used to, it’s what being a young footballer was.

“The people before us cleaned the goalposts and cleaned the stands. We only cleaned the stands when we got beat but that was all part of it, now I know it was a good grounding.

“Now I know Archie Knox maybe wasn’t as daft as he seemed at the time. We kept thinking, ‘Why is he making us do this?’ but that’s what he did.

“They just wanted effort and determination. Obviously, to get through the front door at Rangers you’ve got to have some sort of ability but they were all from the same school.

“Remember Archie, Walter, Billy Kirkwood, they came from the old Jim McLean and Alex Ferguson school so they were teaching the same message. It’s only as you got older you thought, ‘Do you know what, he’s right.’”

The midfielder would be on the fringes of Walter Smith’s all-conquering Nine In A Row side which would often involve coming up against the likes of Brian Laudrup and Paul Gascoigne in training.

Boyack says they were simply a level above: “You were actually training with the first team most days and you were playing against these guys. Sometimes they were just too good and when I say sometimes I mean most days.

“If the three of us were standing in front of a microwave in my kitchen and Gazza had the ball, he’d still manage to put the ball in the microwave, I don’t know how he would do it but he would. He just had an incredible talent for football.

“One day, we played a possession game but we had to stop training because nobody could get the ball off Laudrup and when I say nobody could get the ball I mean nobody.

“You weren’t allowed to kick Brian Laudrup. In a game somebody would’ve kicked him but you have to be a good player for somebody to talk about you like that. And they were, they were amazing. Different characters for loads of different reasons but they were amazing.”

Boyack’s big opportunity would arrive at Easter Road in October 1996 when he would come on for the closing stages of a dramatic league encounter that would see Walter Smith’s men lose 2-1 with Brian Laudrup missing two penalties in quick succession.

It was an unforgettable occasion for the 20-year-old Boyack although the highs of making his first-team breakthrough wouldn’t last long. He recalled: “I’ll not forget my debut in a hurry.

“I’d been so near it a few times but I don’t mean this to sound in any way disparaging in any way, Walter didn’t need to use me.

“We had a good youth team, there were a lot of good young players kicking about. There was a big squad in front of you, I think I scored a few goals in the reserves and ended up on the bench and came on.

“I knew I had a chance, I think to play your first game they must think something of you.

“I played a full 16 minutes then managed to break my leg the week after and that was the end.

“On the back off that I went home on the Saturday, it was Bomber [John Brown] who phoned me on the Sunday and said, ‘You’ve been called into the Scotland Under 21 team’, so I played for the Scotland Under 21s the next Saturday. Then I played a reserve game at Ibrox on the Tuesday or Wednesday and broke my leg quite badly.

“The problem was, at that time, the under 21 rule came in, I was just turning 21, Rangers had a lot of players and you are just so far down the pecking order it’s unbelievable. That’s not through anybody’s fault, that’s just life, that’s football. I can say that now I’m 45.

“It takes a long time to get back to the level you were at after that and, for me, it was time to move on.

“The club were good. I had to get an operation down in London which was pretty foreign because you go down on the train and you come back on the train because you can’t fly.

“I remember leaving Harley Street Hospital which is a very fancy hospital, got to Kings Cross and you end up in an invalidity mobile because your leg's all in plaster and I remember thinking, ‘You’re about as far from Rangers first team as you ever could be, it’s a long way back from here!’

“You do your best to support your teammates as do your teammates do their best to support you in your rehab. That’s what you do, you just crack on.

“Dick Advocaat was there by the time I got back fit. I didn’t even make his first training session because I was still injured so he’s hardly thinking about me.

“Before he came in he watched videos of all the reserve and youth games. I believe that’s where he took a shine to Barry Ferguson because he wouldn’t have seen Barry play before. He wouldn’t have seen me play because I wasn’t playing in any of these games because I was still injured.

“Would I have worked hard at it? Of course, but it’s ok and remember, even when Advocaat came in he spent even more money. Barry came in and did great, he went on to captain the club but there weren’t too many others at that time that had proper long spells in the team.

“One of my first games against Rangers was for Dundee and the midfield that night was Claudio Reyna, Tugay, Ferguson, Giovanni van Bronckhorst, Jorg Albertz and Neil McCann would’ve come on as a sub. You’re talking about a proper midfield.”

Boyack’s long-awaited return to action would see him team up with former reserve team boss Billy Kirkwood and Ibrox hero Mark Hateley at Hull City.

His loan spell at the Tigers was to be an education. 

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He said: “I came back from that injury and obviously it takes you a while to get fit. Billy Kirkwood was the assistant down there at that time and big H was the manager.

“They were fighting relegation in the proper old Third Division. He pulled me and said, ‘Look, we’ve got 12 games, do you want to come down and put yourself in the shop window a wee bit and help us?’

“So that’s what I did, it was probably one of the best things I did because it was proper men’s football. It was one big guy at the back, one big striker and the ball went long and you played off it - things that you didn’t really do in reserve football.

"I had only played 16 minutes of first-team football before I went down there so it was my first introduction to playing Tuesday-Saturday-Tuesday-Saturday.

“I enjoyed it but I remember thinking I could do a wee bit better than that and thankfully I did but it was a good learning curve because that was a hard league full of hard people.”

When the time came to leave Ibrox for good, the timing was right for Boyack.

He said: “I knew I needed to move. I needed to go and play football. I didn’t play regular first-team football until I was at Dundee when I was 21/22. I had been out injured for a couple of years but I knew at that age I needed to be playing.

“With due respect to Rangers reserves, playing for Dundee, who were a mid-table Premier League side, was a step up. It was exactly where you wanted to be.

“I wanted to go. I was disappointed that things didn’t pan out how I’d liked but there are a million players who could say that about Glasgow Rangers.

“I’m sure the club’s changed a million times since I was there but it’s a brilliant club and support.

“It’s also helped me in my business life now because people want to speak about the club and I've met people through people I met at Rangers.

“One of my biggest clients, I met on one of my first European trip with the squad. He's now a big customer with the business I do because we kept in touch.”

Spells at Dundee, Hearts and Livingston would follow which would often bring Boyack back to Ibrox, something he cherished more than most.

He said: “First of all, you knew it was going to be hard work.

“I remember going back with Dundee in one of the first times I went back to Ibrox and a few of the boys were fucking terrified on the bus whereas I was saying, ‘Let’s go and show you can still play.’

“I did get a couple of tankings but I just liked going back and playing in front of a big crowd.“