Life in the Third Division (2012-13)

Reader's Guide

With most senior players having refused to transfer to the new company, a much-changed team opened the league with a 5-1 home win over East Stirlingshire in front of 49,118, a world record crowd for a fourth-tier match. The away form was poor at first: a 2-2 draw at Peterhead rescued by a late Andrew Little goal, further draws at Annan Athletic and Berwick Rangers, and a 1-0 defeat at Stirling Albion, then the bottom club in the country. Rangers clinched the Third Division title and promotion to the Second Division on 30 March 2013, after a goalless draw at Montrose and a defeat for second-placed Queen's Park.

Off the field the season brought a criminal investigation into Craig Whyte's takeover, an SPL commission under Lord Nimmo Smith into undisclosed payments between 2001 and 2011 (which ended in a 250,000-pound fine on the old company rather than the stripping of titles), a first-tier tax tribunal verdict in the old company's favour on 20 November, a stock market flotation that raised over 22 million pounds, and the return of Walter Smith as a non-executive director in November 2012. Ally McCoist was manager.