Rae: Thistle wunderkind will have gained a lot from senior experience
PLAYING competitive games and getting minutes under your belt is the best way for any up-and-coming player to really kick on and start realising their potential. But training alongside the best your country has to offer? That can offer a helpful yardstick of where your level is – and provide a promising prospect with a new standard to aspire to.
Alex Rae certainly knows all about that. The Partick Thistle assistant, who joined the club as Mark Wilson’s No.2 in the summer, was dipping his toes into international waters as a fresh-faced youngster during the early ’90s as his own burgeoning career was beginning to gather momentum.
After being called up to the Scotland Under-21 side in May
1991, the midfielder was then promoted into the senior squad where he found himself training alongside Scottish football royalty such as Alex Mcleish, Gordon Strachan and John Robertson.
Ben Mcpherson finds himself in a not-too-dissimilar situation in the present day. Having retained his place in Scot Gemmill’s under-21s set-up, the on-loan Celtic full-back was then drafted into the senior team – alongside Hearts goalkeeper Liam Mcfarlane and Dunfermline centre-half Jeremiah Chilokoamullen – at the beginning of the week to flesh out Steve Clarke’s training squad.
Rae is convinced Mcpherson will have learned a lot from facing the likes of Scott Mctominay, Ben Gannon-doak and Andy Robertson – and he believes Thistle will feel the benefits once the 21-year-old joins back up with his Jags team-mates.
“Without a doubt,” Rae said. “I had a similar situation myself when I was with the 21s when I went over to San Marino with Scotland.
“Being around all the senior players really does you the world of good and it also gives you a yardstick on where you need to get to. It’s a real boost for him and then he can obviously come back here with plenty of confidence.
“I loved it, it was great. Some of the guys at the time like Mcleish, Strachan and all these type of guys were all bowling about. Big Alex was walking about with a t-shirt on and it had Rambo’s body and Mcleish’s head. He’s like, ‘You want one of these t-shirts?’ and I was like, ‘No, you’re all right big yin’!
“So they made it very inclusive and it was a beautiful hotel in Rimini, which I think was about half-an-hour away. So it was a real boost to go to, I suppose, that level of hotel and being around about these guys. It just gives you confidence coming back into your club. I was at Millwall at that time, so I know exactly how Ben is feeling at this moment.”
Mcpherson featured for the Under-21s during their thumping 12-0 victory over Gibraltar at Dens Park on Thursday evening, replacing Colby Donovan for the second half of the Under-21 European Championship qualifier.
It should be pointed out that the match was already all but over by then – the young Scots went in 7-0 up at the break – but you can only play the opposition in front of you, and Mcpherson put in a confident and assured performance nonetheless. Perhaps the greatest compliment he could be given was that Donovan had been arguably Scotland’s top performer during the first half, and Mcpherson’s display meant he was essentially a like-for-like replacement for the Celtic teenager. He certainly did his chances of starting away to Azerbaijan on Tuesday evening no harm.
That Mcpherson took the second half so seriously is an indication of the youngster’s professionalism, but that does not surprise Rae. The Jags assistant has worked with his fair share of players to have come from either half of the Old Firm (one side a tad more than the other, admittedly), where precocious talents can sometimes feel like a big fish in a small pond when they are sent out on loan. Nothing, Rae insists, could be further from the truth in Mcpherson’s case.
“He’s been brilliant,” Rae added. “He comes in here every day and I’ve seen this where someone – and I mean this as respectfully as possible – comes from the Old Firm and then they drop down a division and they think, ‘I’m big...’.
“But he hasn’t. He’s actually buckled down and integrated very well into the group. His performances have been brilliant so far, so it’s just been great working with the boy.”