GENIUS OR GIMMICK? WE'LL SEE IN CUP TIE

Gers' team-bonding day could backfire

- By Fraser Wilson

RUSSELL MARTIN took his Rangers players for a swim in freezing Loch Lomond and a two-hour hike up Conic Hill in a drastic bid to dodge the bullet.

But ex-Ibrox keeper Cammy Bell has warned there’s no guarantees that extreme team-bonding sessions will suddenly turn bad results into good ones.

Seven years ago, Bell and his Partick Thistle colleagues were sent to a British Army training base for their own alternative activity day in an attempt to arrest their league slump.

If Martin’s troops thought their wake-up call by the Bonnie Banks was brutal then what Gary Caldwell had in store for his shellshocked Jags squad was borderline barbarous.

An exercise at the MOD camp at Garelochhead reduced one player to tears, another attempted to escape and the Jags kitman ended up “kidknapped”.

Bell could see the logic in the Jags’ thinking by shaking up their normal training routine, but it failed to turn their results.

And should that also be the case for a Gers side gearing up for Saturday’s Premier Sports Cup quarterfinal against Hibs, he fears the worst for Martin.