THE NATURAL assumption is that Maurice Ross's epiphany can be attributed to the four hours a day he is required to take in the right nutrients and rest up at the training centre of his Turkish club Kocaelispor.
THE NATURAL assumption is that Maurice Ross's epiphany can be attributed to the four hours a day he is required to take in the right nutrients and rest up at the training centre of his Turkish club Kocaelispor. Or traced to the heavy-duty thinking ti
me afforded by the three nights a week he must board at the complex. But the 28-year-old's conversion to a lifestyle that has seen him "cut out all the crap, cut out all the nonsense" took place even before he arrived in the city of Izmit two months ago.
If the super-swallying session at Cameron House the other week had happened when Ross was a Scotland regular six years ago, he probably would have been the third man in that particular high noon. He's been in those movies, just in different contexts. The defender is nothing other than fiercely protective of his former team-mates Barry Ferguson and Allan McGregor, and speaks about the Rangers that reared all of them with real reverence. But, though anything but puritanical or pious on the subject, he now distances himself from the sort of refuelling habits that would seem to retain a hold over his former colleagues.
"It was about the turn of the year I thought it was time I started looking after myself, time I stopped blaming other people for the way my career had gone and looked at my part in it," says a player who, by his own admission, always had a good conceit of himself. After he left Rangers in 2005, there followed suspiciously brief spells with Sheffield Wednesday and Wolves, before he found himself at Millwall "playing at a level I didn't enjoy and one I thought I could do better than". Only courtesy of a sideways move, though, with two years at Viking Stavanger ending in the winter.
"Norway was good but I felt a little out of it, and did so big time at Millwall. I said to myself there must be a reason why this keeps happening, it can't just be coincidence or bad luck. I thought I had to start living more like a professional. I took the conscious decision at the new year not to carry on the way I had been, and the difference it has made to me has been dramatic.
"I've always been a naturally fit boy, or so I thought. But now I feel fit, strong and sharp in a way I never even did at 21. I'm not saying I'm a monk or anything, but I treat my body right and wish I had realised in my early 20s how much you can tune it up by doing that. I don't think it is too late for me, I'm still ambitious to play for my country and at big clubs, but you need the chance again."
Ross is looking at his short-term contract as offering him the chance to win a move to one of the country's big hitters if he cannot help extend Kocaelispor's stay in the Turkish top flight beyond one season. With the promoted team lying 17th out of 18 teams, there is little prospect of their survival. Yet despite their lowly position he feels "in amongst it again" playing against "high calibre" teams such as Galatasaray, Fenerbahce, Besiktas and Trabzonspor.
"I was up against Roberto Carlos the other week when we played Fenerbahce," Ross relates gleefully. "I'm like one of those guys at Hibs, Dundee United or Motherwell in Scotland who hope to impress enough to get the Old Firm wanting to sign them."
The cultural experience of living in Turkey has impressed Ross sufficiently for him to want to make more of it. He found the Norwegians a little too buttoned-up, too reserved. The rare occasions he has free time to socialise in Izmit, or make the 40-minute trip to Istanbul, enable encounters with a "laid-back" populace whose warmth and "welcoming" nature have delighted the Dundonian. It has been humbling, even, seeing how much football means to the locals. "And humble is never a word people would associate with me or something I would tend to feel," he says.
His football club are welcoming to the point that they seem to hate seeing the back of him and his fellow pros on any given day. He must report at noon every day for lunch. Then comes four hours of rest and relaxation before training at 5pm, followed by dinner at 7.30pm. On Mondays and Tuesdays these nine-hour days are extended to close on 12 hours with double sessions that require him to report at 9am. In addition, for a full 48 hours before each game the players are confined to their training camp, and must return for a further 24 hours immediately after they play.
"I have pals at home who are painters and decorators and they joke I now work longer hours than them," he says. "I don't mind any of it, apart from the overnights post-match. I think that is overkill and it is hard on the guys that they can't return to their families. The sports science behind it is that 24 hours after you have really pushed your body is when it is most vulnerable to strains and niggles. The time in the camp allows the club's medics to assess the condition of the players as thoroughly as possible."
Such reasoning places the events at Cameron House in the immediate aftermath of Scotland's Amsterdam defeat in an even more grizzly light. Ross, who keeps abreast of all goings-on at his beloved Rangers by reading papers and listening to phone-ins online, portrays Ferguson and McGregor as victims of sorts, however.
"If Scotland had won and Rangers were five points ahead in the title race, there wouldn't have been the same outcry. It always seems to be that whichever of the Old Firm sides is trailing the other, their players will get it in the neck.
"I know Barry and Allan will be feeling 100% remorseful over what has happened. They will know they have been out of order, but I still think the reaction to the drinking and the gestures has been over-the-top. If they get to play again for the club, as I hope they do, I am sure they will make amends. I don't understand the country's attitude to a great player like Barry. He should be celebrated, not condemned."
Ross is unwilling to condemn the drink culture that inescapably exists within Scottish football and Scottish life. Even in a Muslim country like Turkey, wherein he is only now becoming accustomed to the 5am call to prayer, he says the attitude to alcohol is not so different.
"You would be surprised," he says. "Foreigners really kid us on and we fall for it. We see ourselves as the only hard drinkers and paint a halo above their heads. But it is not that simple."
Ross doesn't feel a victim of circumstances that were of either his or other people's making in his Ibrox career ending prematurely. He would have felt it even if it took in his whole playing days, and didn't just cover eight years, 100-odd appearances, two championships, two Scottish Cups and League Cup and 13 full caps. With his athleticism and belief, Ross wasn't so far removed from Alan Hutton as a dynamic overlapping full-back. His career trajectory has been well removed however, which he puts down to Hutton coming under the influence of a manager who truly believed in him in the form of Walter Smith.
"I don't feel unlucky, I know I'm lucky," he says. "I am playing football in a great country and earning good money, and was the best part of a decade with a great club like Rangers. In that time, I held my own in the club's most talented squad in 20 years. That's not bad."
It's good, as Ross himself is trying to be.
