Steven Naismith, thinking back to his days at Rangers, can recall the buzz surrounding an exciting young forward who was seen within Scottish football as ‘the next big prospect’ at the time.
A striker who had made the move to his boyhood club amid lofty expectations, and the hope of a bright future which would see him lead the line and become something of an Ally McCoist figure for the new generation.
That the very same player would leave Rangers via the back door four years later – following a grand total of two senior appearances and zero goals – makes Rory Loy something of a cautionary tale for all young Scots attracting admiring glances from the Old Firm.
Take Lennon Miller, for instance.
The Motherwell wonderkid has stuck around at the Fir Park outfit, so far. Despite both Celtic and Rangers showing interest in 18-year-old Lennon Miller, that he has nearly 70 first-team appearances under his belt, while captaining Motherwell and earning a first senior Scotland call-up, is a reward for his loyalty.
Rory Loy, who admits to being a ‘good friend’ of Lennon Miller’s father, can only wish he could turn back the clock to the summer of 2006.
Because while Miller is living proof of the benefit of developing your talents away from the Glasgow goldfish bowl, Loy is precisely the opposite.
Rory Loy shares regrets about leaving Kilmarnock for Rangers
To quote former Kilmarnock assistant coach Billy Brown, speaking to the Daily Record 19 years ago, the Ayrshire outfit were massively frustrated – and that is ‘an understatement’ – when Loy opted to swap Rugby Park for Ibrox before he had even made his first-team debut.
Loy ‘wanted to go’, Brown said, even though he would have reached the Killie XI ‘a whole lot quicker than at Ibrox’.
In the end, the closest Loy would ever come to a starting spot at Rangers was two brief cameo appearances against Inverness and Motherwell over a five-year stretch.
“I had a meeting with [Kilmarnock manager] Jim Jefferies and my agent. I was so easily influenced. I was 18,” Loy recalls. “My agent was in my ear saying, ‘Go to Rangers’.
“My family don’t have a footballing background. I look at Lennon [Miller]. I’m good friends with his dad. It must be amazing having a dad who can handle these situations because I didn’t have that.
“I’ll be honest, looking back at my full career, looking at the likes of Scott Arfield – I’m not saying I would have got to the levels Scott Arfield got to – but I certainly think, if I was at a Kilmarnock or a Falkirk, I probably would have racked up 100 appearances before I was maybe 20, 21.”
Loy wishes he had taken the same path as Scott Arfield
Arfield would make a century of Falkirk appearances before heading south of the border with Huddersfield Town. His career comnig full circle, Arfield is now back at Falkirk in his trademark number 37 shirt.
Loy, meanwhile, feels he became more of a number than a man when chucked in alongside some of the brightest young talent in the country for Rangers’ reserves.
“I go to Rangers and I’m number 59,” Loy adds. “So many promises are made and you go in and the [rest of the] Under-19s are given the same promises. So, if I could go back to one moment in my career, I would go back to that moment and see how it would have turned out if I had stayed at Kilmarnock.
“I will be honest, mentally, I probably wasn’t strong enough at that point. Whereas, if I’d had 100 appearances for Kilmarnock…
“I just think I was a victim of the system, like a lot of boys are.”
Now 37 and long-since retired, a striker who would go on to enjoy his most prolific spell at the arfield’s old stomping ground Falkirk works as a pundit in the Scottish media.
Rory Loy is backing Barry Ferguson to turn Rangers around. And he should know. Ferguson was his skipper as a young man at Ibrox, after all.
