Steven Pressley's pledge means Mark Millar's time is now Published on Sunday 29 January 2012 01:36 ONE was a youngster still striving to make the breakthrough, the other was a veteran coming to the end of his playing career. One showed promise, the other made one. This afternoon they will team up at Hampden to try to help Falkirk beat their former employers and reach the final of the League Cup. Mark Millar came through the Celtic Academy but, by the time he crossed paths with Steven Pressley in the Parkhead club's reserve squad, he had become frustrated and disillusioned. The elder statesman still saw something worth encouraging and warned the young midfielder to stick in long enough so he could come back and sign him when he got his first manager's job. Lack of first team opportunities meant Millar was training every day, often without even a bounce match to look forward to come the weekend. "You'd be working hard every day in training for nothing, basically," explains the 21-year-old, who displays creativity and competitiveness in the middle. It's the most frustrating thing about being a young player at a big club. There were times when you think to yourself you might get a chance, when certain players maybe weren't doing enough to be playing - but I don't pick the team, do I? It's scary to think how many guys have been lost to the system because they never got the chance. There are guys I played with at Celtic who were good enough to play in the first team who don't even play the game any more. They got to the stage where they didn't enjoy it and they just don't want to play football any more. "I sometimes found myself saying "I don't want to go into training - what's the point?" You're working hard for nothing. But when the gaffer [Pressley] was at Celtic, he said that if he ever got a [managerial] job, he would come for me - and he was true to his word. In his second season at Celtic he played and trained quite a lot with the reserves and he's obviously seen something in training to make him believe I'd be worth it if he got a job. Millar could have seen out his contract at Celtic but, too old to even make it onto the bench to satisfy the under-21 rule, he knew he would have to look elsewhere if his career was to take off. It is, he says, a familiar story. He was just one of several promising players battering their head off the glass ceiling that exists at the Old Firm clubs and prevents the majority of youngsters making the breakthrough into the first team. It is as far removed from the current situation at Falkirk as it possibly could be. Now he is one of the oldest in a squad where young potential is allowed to flourish. Such is the youthfulness of the Falkirk squad, only a dozen of the first team were allowed on the Christmas night out. The rest were too young to hit the pubs and clubs. Half the team went to soft play or Laser Quest instead! Seriously, I think it was actually go-karting. But youth can prosper when given the chance. You just need to trust in their abilities, says Pressley. I understand with managers the fear factor and that's why I have been an advocate of the larger league. I do think [smaller leagues] bring a pressure to managers and they are forced, at times, to play a little more cautiously. In terms of our young players, we have to believe in them and ask them to play. Some of our young players are probably playing and passing the ball in a manner they themselves didn't believe they possibly could. With persistence, trust and belief they can actually play. I am telling you right now our country has got really good young players. I think we need to trust our own players more. I look at Mark Millar and he never got the opportunity to play at Celtic and I think he was more than capable of playing in the first-team. That's my genuine opinion but, if you are denied the opportunity, then you never can show your talent. At the time I was at the club they brought in the Barcelona player [Marc] Crosas who obviously denies Mark's pathway yet never became a regular himself. It was another player blocking the pathway of young players. Pressley refutes portrayals of himself as a man who believes he has all the answers, admitting that, had he been given a bigger playing budget, it may have taken him longer to arrive at his conclusion. We always spoke about the future of this club being in the academy but this year has come a little bit quicker because of financial restraints but it has changed my whole idea and philosophy on the development of young players and putting them into your team. Which is why a clutch of Falkirk teenagers will be running out at Hampden this afternoon hoping to add victory over Celtic to their defeat of Rangers earlier in the cup run. Reaching the final would underline the club's philosophy that talent has no age restrictions. "A few of the lads are just kids," says Millar. Sibbs [Craig Sibbald] 16, Jay Fulton 17, Murray Wallace, Blair Alston, even Keiron Duffie, he's not even 20 yet and he's played more than 50 games, so it's scary to think how good this team can get and how far they can go. I was cleaning boots after games on a Saturday at their age. They're actually playing. Obviously a bit of that's financial and it had to happen but the manager believes in them. They want to play at the highest level and I can't see why they shouldn't. I've seen a lot of young talent in my time at Celtic but these guys would stand out anywhere. You see it every Saturday. I don't think there would be many boys who would come to Falkirk and think they'd get a game, even ahead of a 16-year-old, because of how well these guys are playing and that's testimony to the gaffer and to the lads. We've all got so much to offer the gaffer because obviously he's taken a risk on a lot of the boys. I want to repay him by helping him get to a final or winning a league. After a season where the players had to find their inner belief and a period of managerial development for Pressley, with only a few months of the campaign remaining, they are still in the hunt for promotion to the SPL and chasing silverware in three domestic cup competitions. "The truth is, of course, I got things wrong," says Pressley, assessing how he has grown into his role. I am not sitting here telling you I didn't. I would like to think I have matured as manager and a person because when I got involved in the coaching aspect two years ago I thought, as I tend to do, that I knew everything, and I didn't, I knew very little but I think that I have improved greatly, tactically and how we go about our business but there's a lot more to come. Pressley has forsaken the hairdryer treatment to embrace a more modern style of management, perhaps more conducive to a our pampered society. I think if you ask our 16-year-old boys they are treated with the utmost respect, they are treated properly they are never bullied, they are spoken to in the right manner and I wouldn't have it any other way. We work tirelessly on how we are going to play and aspects of the game. I demand certain standards. They are treated properly by every member of staff. In it together, Falkirk are the very essence of a team on and off the park. Keeping them all together may be the hardest part, though, if they can impress again, this time in the national stadium, in the biggest game of their fledgling careers. Weatherston ready for big stage WHETHER it was the Rolling Stones or Robbie Williams, bigger names than David Weatherston have commanded the attention of Hampden crowds. But, while he and his former team-mates at Queen's Park had no choice but to leave the stage clear for more famous faces, when he takes to the pitch with Falkirk today, he says he wants the First Division side to take star billing, writes Moira Gordon.