Queens Park Rangers' assistant academy manager Marc Bircham has imposed a 'no colourful boots' rule on his youth team players in a bid to keep the club's youngsters on the straight and narrow.

The QPR legend, who played for the Hoops for five seasons between 2002 and 2007, insisted that the rule could be supported by science, but explained that he had made the decision in order to keep young players grounded.

It is an ironic stance for Canada international Bircham of all people to take given that during his playing days he would match his blue and white boots with streaks of the same colours in his hair when turning out for the Championship side.

The 31-year-old maintained that while he believes that wearing colourful boots gives any player a disadvantage as he is more easily detected, however the real reason behind the decision was to force players to earn their spurs.

"It has been proven that if a winger wears coloured football boots it is easier for a full-back to pick them up than if they are wearing black boots. [But] That’s not why we banned them. We just don’t want the players getting too flash!," Bircham is quoted as saying on footyboots.com.

Bircham affirmed that from Under 9 to Under 18 levels, players would have to earn the right to wear flashier footwear, and that he had also imposed some other old-school techniques in order to let the young stars know their place.

"The players have to do jobs like clean the senior pros’ boots - things that I had to do when I started as a youth player here, back in 1994.

"Academies have stopped doing that sort of thing, but we think it gives players a sense of discipline.

"We have some old-school ideas – like punishments for lateness and insisting they do jobs like cleaning – backed up with state of the art coaching techniques."