FINDLAY'S HIT & RUN

Gers kid was shattered but new gaffer Martin's intensity gave Curtis the drive for last charge

- BY SCOTT MCDERMOTT

HIS body was telling him he had nothing left in the tank.

With just a minute to go at Ibrox on Sunday, young Findlay Curtis was the only Rangers player going to last the full 90.

No one could have said he hadn't put a shift in against Club Brugge. And in Russell Martin's first friendly the kid had impressed his new gaffer.

So when Nedim Bajrami broke through on goal it would have been easy for Curtis just to let the Albanian get on with it.

After all, a few minutes before, he was struggling to walk as his legs cramped up.

But his head told him there was one last, lung-bursting sprint left in him.

Somehow, he summoned up the energy, not just to get in the box and offer himself to Bajrami, but to collect a pass, compose himself and produce a clinical finish beyond the Brugge keeper for a goal that earned Rangers a 2-2 draw and saw Curtis turn a dream of scoring for his boyhood club at Ibrox into reality.

The bounce game against Brugge might not matter too much in the grand scheme of things. But for Curtis it could be vital as he tries to make a lasting impression on his manager that - amid an influx of new players - keeps him in the first-team squad for the foreseeable future.

He's not the finished article, by any stretch. But when Martin arrived this summer, he revealed his first nonnegotiable as a boss was that players had to run.