McMillan is hit with a two-year drugs ban
SACKED Partick Thistle defender Jordan McMillan has been banned from football for two years after failing a drugs test. The Scottish FA received confirmation of the penalty from UK Anti-Doping (UKAD) that the 26-year-old tested positive for benzoylecgonine, a metabolite of cocaine, following an SPFL Premiership clash with Celtic on December 3, 2014. Hammered with a two-year ban by the National Anti-Doping Panel (NADP), McMillan launched an appeal, claiming his drink had been spiked and has repeatedly denied his guilt. Those claims have been thrown out, however, resulting in a careerthreatening ban from competitive sport until December 17, 2016. UKAD’s chief executive, Nicole Sapstead confirmed the news in a statement, which said: ‘UKAD’s role is to protect the integrity and spirit of sport, and athletes at all levels need to understand the importance
IAN DURRANT compares the humiliation of his Rangers demotion to being kicked in the nether regions. The act itself was brutal; the way it was done eye-watering. A first-team coach under Walter Smith, then Ally McCoist, the Ibrox legend received the news by phone last Christmas.
McCoist, the former manager, had gone on gardening leave. Assistant Kenny McDowall was placed in charge on an interim basis. And one of his first jobs was to phone Durrant and inform him the board of directors had shuffled the pecking order.
He would move down to coach the Under-20s, with Gordon Durie going the other way.
Durrant made 347 appearances for Rangers, scoring 45 goals, winning three championships, three Scottish Cups and three League Cups. Asked what hurt most about how the old Rangers regime chose to repay his service, he is blunt.
‘The way it was done,’ he admitted. ‘Kenny was told by certain board members that I was to be demoted and he phoned me.
‘Someone from the club should have told me face to face. If they were going to do it the Rangers way it wouldn’t have taken much. That was a boot in the b****. But you get on with it, don’t you?’
The perception was of a crude, naked attempt to force his resignation. McCoist, his closest friend, had tendered 12 months notice.
McDowall was the most reluctant and uncomfortable of stand-ins. What happened to Durrant reeked of a purge.
‘I was disappointed at the time by the manner of how it happened,’ he went on. ‘For what I’d given the club, I’d have thought they could have taken five minutes to come and tell me I was being demoted, rather than getting a phone call telling me that I was going to be doing this.
‘But I was still in a job and I couldn’t walk about with my head down. This is another project with the kids and if they’d seen me moping about it wouldn’t help them.
‘So I came in and got on with it. I love it. I did it at Kilmarnock and I did it here when I first came back.
‘It gave me a wee jolt and working with them gave me a boost when I needed it because it was hard.’
Durrant, a gifted midfielder whose playing career was blighted by an infamous injury, has proven himself a survivor. Of the old managerial team, he and Jim Stewart are the most highprofile of those who remain.
When Mark Warburton and David Weir arrived in the summer, he braced himself once more. He went back a long way with McCoist. Rangers were looking for a new direction and it was natural to fear his time was up.
‘The manager could have wanted his own staff but at the first meeting with him and Davie, they asked me what I wanted to do and I told them I was enjoying working with the Under-20s. ‘They just told me that was my job. ‘He’s the captain of the ship now and I stay out his way as much as I can. But, if he needs help, I am there to do that.’
Last week McCoist, Durrant’s old partner-in-crime, settled his outstanding contractual issues with Rangers.
He can’t — won’t — say much about what happened at Rangers. Not yet. Silence is usually the price to be paid for a pay-off.
In contrast with the days when humiliations and mismanagement had to be suffered in silence, Durrant now feels secure enough to say what he likes.
Rangers feel like a football club once again. The circus hasn’t left town exactly, but the clowns have jumped ship.
‘It’s like night and day,’ said the former midfielder. ‘You have people who care about the football club now.
‘ You s ee t he t hi ngs t hat are happening. There’s a new indoor facility here, through the Rangers Lotto, there’s extra groundstaff and they maintain the pitches better — everything.
‘John Gilligan, Paul Murray and Mr King have come in and everything they’ve promised, they are producing.
‘There’s a brightness. The team is playing well and it is filtering down through everyone. Every comes in bright and breezy every day rather than looking over their shoulder every couple of minutes.’
That wasn’t always the case towards the end of the McCoist tenure. The former manager left under a cloud as results and performances suffered. Until last week his reluctance to sacrifice a severance payment for the good of Rangers also grated with supporters.
King has invited McCoist, the club’s highest goalscorer, back to the club as a guest. Durrant hopes, in time, the wounds can be healed.
‘That will be down to Ally. I haven’t had the chance to talk to him yet,’ he said. ‘I read that when he spoke to Mr King last week it was all done in a minute. That’s two proper men coming together to come to an agreement.’
Durrant is more bullish about his own future now as well. For long enough, there was a perception that Murray Park was a white elephant. That young players could train there in the best conditions possible then suffer careerending injuries banging their heads off the glass ceiling encasing the first team. Durrant says that’s unfair.
‘ We’ve brought through Scottish internationals — Allan McGregor, Alan Hutton, Charlie Adam. There is a lot misconstrued about this place. It was a training facility to start with and nobody ever said we’d produce what Man Utd produced. They had a burst that will be produced just once in 50 years.
‘At the Raith Rovers game the other week, of the 18 players in the squad there were eight graduates from the Academy. They will get the chance and when they get it they have to catch the manager’s eye.’
Rangers legend Ian Durrant was promoting the Rangers Youth Development Company and their official, weekly Rangers Lotto game at Murray Park.