Rangers summer signing Matt Gilks recalls incident that led him to temporarily quit football

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The goalkeeper recently agreed to become part of Mark Warburton’s Glasgow Rangers side.

Matt Gilks, left, admitted that he nearly quit the game during his time with Blackpool

Rangers’ summer signing Matt Gilks has told the Daily Record about an incident during his days with Blackpool which led him to temporarily quit football, only for his mum to talk him out of the decision.

The 34-year-old signed a two-year deal with the Gers earlier this summer, the Record reports, but he has disclosed how he could have been pursuing a completely different career path by this stage after the frustration at the initial lack of opportunities following his move to the Tangerines – which was compounded by the disappointment of leaving Norwich for Bloomfield Road – boiled over on the training ground one day.

Paul Rachubka was the man keeping Gilks out of the Blackpool first-team

“It didn’t seem to matter what I did, I couldn’t make an impact and one day, when we were training on the coast in horizontal rain and with winds of 90 miles an hour, I’d had enough,” he told the Record.

“I walked off, fed up of fighting for my place, all to no avail. I called my mum, Susan, and she talked sense into me. She asked, ‘What else are you going to do? You’ve been doing this so long, why are you going to chuck it in?’

Gilks would go on to play for Blackpool in the Premier League

“It doesn’t matter your age, you can always get that kind of advice from your mother. I got back at it a few days later. She told me it would come good again for me and, the following year, it did.”

With the veteran now around the age when goalkeepers tend to enjoy some of their best years, he will be hoping to do more than just be Wes Foderingham’s understudy at the club.

Wes Foderingham did well during his first season with Rangers

Though the former Swindon man impressed at Ibrox last season, the Light Blues’ promotion to the Scottish Premiership makes it more likely that he will be tested on a more regular basis next term.

And if he is unable to rise to that challenge, Gilks will be hoping that he can, this time, use his work on the training ground to prove to Mark Warburton that he is more than capable of being the side’s number one.