Rangers F.C. - Stadium and Training Facility

Stadium and Training Facility

The club used a variety of grounds in Glasgow as a venue for home matches in the years between 1872 and 1899. The first was Flesher's Haugh, situated on Glasgow Green, followed by Burnbank in the Kelvinbridge area of the city, and then Kinning Park for ten years from the mid-1870s to the mid-1880s. From February of the 1886–87 season, Cathkin Park was used until the first Ibrox Park, in the Ibrox area of south-west Glasgow, was inaugurated for the following season. Ibrox Stadium in its current incarnation was originally designed by the architect Archibald Leitch, a Rangers fan who also played a part in the design of, among others, Old Trafford in Manchester and Highbury in London. The stadium was inaugurated on 30 December 1899, and Rangers defeated Hearts 3–1 in the first match held there.

Rangers' training facility is located in Auchenhowie, Glasgow. The facility is known as Murray Park after former chairman and owner Sir David Murray. It was proposed by then-manager Dick Advocaat upon his arrival at the club in 1998. It was completed in 2001 at a cost of £14 million. Murray Park was the first purpose-built facility of its kind in Scotland, and incorporates features including nine football pitches, a state of the art gym, a hydrotherapy pool, and a video-editing suite. Rangers' youth teams are also accommodated at Murray Park, with around 140 players between under-10 and under-19 age groups using the training centre. Various first-team players have come through the ranks at Murray Park, including Alan Hutton, Chris Burke, Stevie Smith, John Fleck and Charlie Adam. International club teams playing in Scotland, as well as national sides, have previously used Murray Park for training, and Advocaat's South Korea team used it for training prior to the 2006 World Cup.