Samford Football Club has announced two marquee signings it hopes will guide the Rangers to the upper reaches of Brisbane soccer.

But the exciting developments at Harold Brown Park are happening off the field, not on it.

The club will kick on into 2009 with an imported Director of Football and a highly credentialed head coach.Last month the Rangers appointed Englishman Aiden Boxall and Albany Creek resident Steve Faulkner to guide the growing club into the next decade.

Boxall, who oversaw football academies and semi-professional clubs in England and the USA, will run the Rangers’ off-field activities, including coaching development and devising a long-term plan for the club.

The accredited sports trainer, who worked as a talent scout for US colleges, also lectured teenaged stars-in-waiting from English club Leyton Orient about life as a professional footballer.

Boxall, who hopes to create "the best development program in Queensland" while at Samford, said he was lured down under by the "honesty and enthusiasm" of Rangers club president Graham Lee.

"He told me it was a small club with a small budget and was seen as an underdog, but he wanted to build it properly from the ground up and put all the right structures in place," Boxall said.

"I love a challenge and the fact that I can have a big influence over the future of the club was too good an opportunity to turn down."

Boxall, who hopes to move from Essex to Australia by January, said increasing female player numbers, making sure players enjoyed themselves and ensuring that "all players that live in Samford play for Samford" were priorities.

Faulkner, who has coached at several of Brisbane’s leading clubs, including Mount Gravatt, North Star and Peninsula Power, is Samford’s new head coach.He replaces Steve Forsyth, who will undertake managerial duties of a side that hopes to make the finals of the Premier Division 2 competition next season.

Lee said appointing Boxall and Faulkner would help the Rangers "look towards its growth phase" and stop players being lured to larger city-based clubs.

"With the growth of the Samford Valley our player numbers have exploded over the past four or five years to a point now where we have nearly 700 players in the club," Lee said.

"We’re substantially a mum and dad coached club at the moment, and that can’t stay the same for too much longer. We’re now in a situation where we need to become a lot more professional in the way we do things.

"That has led to us looking to get the right coaching staff in place to make sure that everybody in the club gets the right amount of training, from the worst player to the best player."