David Templeton on time Stuart McCall ‘hung him out to dry’ at Rangers

David Templeton believes comments to the media about ex-boss Ally McCoist had something to do with Stuart McCall ostracising him from the Rangers first-team.

The former Ibrox midfielder signed from Hearts in 2012 and made 28 appearances under three different managers in the 2014/15 campaign as Rangers battled his former club and Hibs in the Scottish Championship.

However, after a 3-0 defeat to Queen of the South in early April he wouldn’t appear again under McCall for the remainder of the campaign. The former Motherwell manager had taken over as caretaker from Kenny McDowall after McCoist was placed on gardening leave in December.

Former Rangers midfielder David Templeton. Picture: Robert Perry

He believes a misquoted article in the press had something to do with it, while he also perceives McCall to have made an example of him in a game.

He told Simon Ferry on Open Goal: “It was a weird one with McCall. I started well, I was enjoying playing under him, and then I did this interview. It was about McCoist and McCall and I kind of got stitched up. I said it was good under McCall because he’d been working on different shapes. [The press] had asked if the previous manager did that, and he didn’t because he stuck to the same formation so we always knew what they were doing. But they made it out as if I’d slaughtered McCoist.

“After that we played Queen of the South and McCall told me to play quite high on the left and not come back, just to stay there and cheat basically. The two goals came down that side and I got hung out to dry, taken off and never got back into the squad again.”