Raith Rovers out to prove size doesn't matter as they fight for a Premiership place

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A football club is more than one generation in the making. And those who have gone before are, in good times and bad, never far from our thoughts.

As Raith Rovers attempt to pull off the kind of upset that inspires frozen terror among so many bigger and ‘better’ teams, then, there will be many at Stark’s Park who won’t be able to get through the experience without thinking of absent friends.

Raising a glass, even, to those who made much of this possible.

Raith Rovers celebrate after Louis Longridge opens the scoring in the 3-3 draw with Rangers last month

Stark's Park will play host to Raith's playoff quarter-final first leg against Hibernian on Wednesday

On Wendesday night, Ray McKinnon’s team welcome Hibernian in the first leg of a play-off quarter-final which promises to bring both a glimpse of glory and memories of happier times to a Kirkcaldy club doing its best not to feel out of place even being this close to promotion.

Raith are not the best supported team in the world. Factoring in the numbers of Rangers, Celtic, Man City, Leicester and even Barcelona fans scattered across the kingdom, they’re probably not even the most popular side in Fife.

They’ve got a budget which long-serving director Eric Drysdale, drawing on conversations in boardrooms across the country this season, estimates to be about a third of Falkirk’s outlay for the season, perhaps as little as a tenth of what Hibs are spending in their bid to reclaim Premiership status.

His calculator gives up when trying to guess the financial chasm separating his beloved Rovers with the Rangers team who waltzed off with the Championship title.

Ah, but size isn’t everything. Local businesses funded the January signings who have taken the club into the play-offs. Season-ticket sales for the current campaign totalled 1,200 — not only a tally that would be considered decent by some top-flight clubs, but also three times the number sold just a few years ago.

Small? Yes. But perfectly formed. And resilient enough to cope with some serious losses over the past year or so.

High-profile chairman Turnbull Hutton passed away last April, while Ally Gourlay — a much-loved club media officer who had become a sort of Mr Rovers for the many services, favours and skills he had contributed over his lifetime — died in February.

Ask anyone at the odd-shaped wee ground clinging to the side of a hill on Pratt Street, though, and they will testify that both men are still very much part of the club they helped to turn around.

Raith celebrate with the Coca Cola Cup in 1994 after beating Celtic in penalties in the final

‘Yeah, Jason Cummings blamed our pitch for missing the sitter a few weeks ago,’ Drysdale told Sportsmail, smiling as he added: ‘I reckon it was Ally going: “Boo!”

‘Of course, Turnbull did a huge amount for the club and me, personally. While I’ve been at the club, I’ve been involved with 11 managers and seven chairmen. Turnbull was a tremendous leader.

‘And we do miss him. Alan Young is doing a great job but Turnbull’s profile, obviously raised a few years ago, was a great asset to the club. He was able to inspire people to go the extra mile. Not just players but everybody, from the board down.

‘I think, absolutely, we would all want to remember them, to raise a glass to them. This year, just as there have been a lot of celebrities passing away, there have been quite a few Raith Rovers fans who have gone.

‘I’m glad the club is small enough for you to know a lot of the fans. You maybe don’t know all their names but you recognise them, you say hello as they pass.

‘Some of them have been going since they were kids. I used to travel on the supporters’ bus with a lot of them. It’s that feeling where we’re small enough to be able to have that kind of relationship with fans — but, equally, we’ re not that small that we can’t be taken seriously and get to the next level. If things go right.’

Rovers boss Ray McKinnon speaks to the media ahead of the quarter-final clash on Wednesday

That feeling of community was lost at Raith for a while, admitted Drysdale. A board reduced to crisis management — trying to clear up a financial disaster and sweep away the ruins of the disastrous Claude Anelka era (even now, that seems like a particularly bad nightmare) — simply had not time to connect with fans.

Back on a more than even keel, trying to expand a development squad whose modern apprenticeships have direct parallels with the famous YTS trio of Colin Cameron, Stevie Crawford and Jason Dair —who went on to play their part in the 1994 League Cup Final win over Celtic — this is a club unlikely to repeat those mistakes.

‘What keeps Raith Rovers going is we’re deeply rooted in the community,’ said Drysdale. ‘We’ve got an extremely loyal fan base, which we wish was larger.

‘We’re an established community club. For a number of years in the late 90s and early noughties, we were crisis managing, fire-fighting, following the mess created in the mid-90s.

‘To be honest, we neglected the community. We’ve recognised that. Gordon Brown got involved in the supporter buy-out in 2005 but still we had problems. We’ ve gradually worked our way through these things and we’re now out in the community, part of the community.

‘But Raith Rovers isn’t about Kirkcaldy. People move on from our town. There isn’t much industry, isn’t much commerce, so people move away.

James Craigen (right) jumps into the air after scoring against Rangers in the Scottish Championship clash

‘But they never lose their love of the club. So we do have quite an extensive global reach. It’s small compared to the big clubs but we do have a vibrant international community. You know what it’s like, you always meet somebody from Kirkcaldy.

‘As a supporter, there were two bad times. The first one was back in 97-98, when from the outside looking in, as a shareholder, we saw the club was being financially taken in the wrong direction. Wanting to be able to do something about that was what got me involved.

‘But, as a fan, undoubtedly the Claude Anelka year was disastrous. It took so many years to recover from that quite unbelievable time. It really set the club back. We had made progress but that took us back, because we lost a lot of our core support.

‘It’s one thing to have a successful team. To have a successful club, you need a feeling that everything is heading in the right direction.

‘To be where we are, having a lower budget than even some of the Championship clubs below us, you can argue that this is as good as it gets. But, with the right players and right manager, with the support of the local community, there is no reason why we can’t take the next step.

‘It sounds daft. But there are only six games standing between our club and the Premiership — and the difference that would make, were we to get there, would resolve our financial problems, allow us to invest in the stadium and, hopefully, help us get to the next platform.’

There is an acceptance that Raith would not be ready for the top flight right now. Especially not if the cards at Tannadice fall in such a way that McKinnon is snatched away this summer.

Louis Longridge (left) wheels away with Lewis Toshney during Raith's 3-3 draw with Rangers

Among Rovers fans, moreover, there is a strong feeling that the Premiership — like the SPL before it — doesn’t really want them. Any visitor to what locals call the ‘San Starko’ is reminded of the hubris that once ruled our game, with a club like Raith forced to build two enormous stands in order to meet ridiculous membership requirements of 10,000 covered seats.

The need to build these gigantic follies wiped out the money brought in from a famous UEFA Cup run all the way to Bayern Munich’s old Olympiastadion, not to mention nearly a million pounds in transfer fees for players sold on — and it created a great deal of the debt responsible for so many lean years at Stark’s Park.

‘Had we not been forced to build those stands, we could have had a better go at maintaining our Premier League status,’ said Drysdale rather wistfully, pondering on what might have been.

‘As it is, we have a main stand built in the Victorian era, a ground surrounded by a row of Victorian houses on one side and the East Coast main line on the other. It’s a triangular site and it’s on a hill. Apart from that…’

Ah, it’s just as well Raith Rovers fans can laugh, given some of the experiences they’ve been through; relegation to the third tier is within the living memory of all but the youngest supporters, after all.

Still, if it’s your lot in life to follow one of the more modest provincial clubs, you’re best to focus on the good times. The cup wins, the promotion seasons… maybe even the year you came up through the play-offs?

That would be a tale to hand down the generations, certainly.