Raith Rovers boss and one-time Rangers player Ian Murray declared his pride in his team after the Scottish Cup tie at Ibrox.
Despite going down 3-0, the Championship team can take merit from their efforts with the pattern of the game following many that we see in the Premiership.
The Kirkcaldy team managed to get forward on a few occasions and came particularly close in the second half to make it 2-1, but they couldn’t quite force Rangers into the type of danger required to seriously take control of the quarter-final.
Murray will hope this experience can spur them on for the rest of their league campaign, with plenty of positives from his perspective:
“We are disappointed to be out of the Scottish Cup. We wanted to go further obviously but my emotion right now is pride in the football players, I thought they were excellent.”
“I thought the discipline and the shape and structure they carried out was great – also pride in the supporters we brought today and the appreciation they showed us towards the end.”
“It’s been a tough season, we had to rebuild a little bit. We all know what happened last season at Raith Rovers and we are trying to rebuild the football club.”
He went on to praise individuals with the message that they need to take encouragement from the Ibrox encounter.
Murray made 43 appearances for Rangers between 2005-07 which included significant Champions League exposure. The Edinburgh man started at left-back in the Last 16 second leg tie in Villarreal in March 2006 which ended 1-1, meaning an agonising 3-3 aggregate loss for Alex McLeish’s team.
Raith currently sit in 7th place in the Championship table, with only an outside chance of vying for promotion or to escape relegation in the coming weeks.