The bigger they are the harder they fall and boy did Rangers fall. A unique case in Scottish football history which led to an entirely ridiculous situation with various votes about what the hell should happen to the club leading them to the Scottish Third Division.

I can never claim to be an expert in what happened to Rangers and the aim of this blog isn’t to pass comment on how the club ended up where it is. The aim is to highlight how the supporters of the club are mobilising to ensure that this never happens again.

The Rangers Supporters Trust (RST) was formed in 2003 and since its formation has tried to gain a supporters influence on the board. With the formation of the new company which owns the club the RST has looked to gain a larger influence on the board than merely attending the club’s AGM without much of a voting right. The RST are looking to have a major say in decisions at the club although they have not decided whether they will look to take over the club outright or launch a bid to buy the club with other investors.

This is a long way off however as Rangers are currently valued at just under £50million after their floatation on the stock exchange this week. Currently the RST has raised £250,000 (in four days!) through their BuyRangers scheme and has bought that amount of shares in the club to ensure they have a stake to begin with.

Whilst this is incredibly impressive, when you consider that 31.6million shares were issued yesterday with a value of 70p each the RST don’t have a large shareholding at the moment. In fact it is just 1.1% of the shares issued yesterday (excluding any held by the owners).

The RST do realise they are a long way off reaching the required levels of funds to force their way onto the board and are concentrating on getting as large an uptake as possible to ensure greater reach into the fanbase and they are also trying to create a working dialogue with the club to try to make the fans view known on all matters surrounding the club.

The RST have so far had over 2000 people put in a minimum of £125 (upper limit is £20,000) into the club with a few big names joining the cause such as Kris Boyd – the record SPL goalscorer – and whilst they have certainly had a good start to their fundraising there is a very long way to go before they have a major influence on board decisions.