Rangers’ Brechin win ‘sent message to League One’

Nicky Law scored one of Rangers' four goals on Saturday. Picture: SNS

The Glasgow giants will hope to complete the second stage of their journey back to Scotland’s top flight by winning the third-tier title and they got off to the perfect start with a comfortable win over the Hedgemen.

Hegarty, who turns 21 tomorrow, handed himself an early present with his first senior goal after just 64 seconds while further strikes from Nicky Law, Ian Black and Dean Shiels wrapped up the victory.

Now the Northern Ireland Under-21 cap believes the other clubs in League One will be fully aware of Rangers’ attacking capabilities.

He told the club’s official website: “It was brilliant to score and I couldn’t believe the ball just landed there for me.

“I just knocked it into the net and it was the best thing ever. The atmosphere was great and it was good to get the early goal.

“As an early birthday present, it couldn’t have sat up any better for me and it was a great feeling to get the opener.

“The gaffer asked us to press Brechin, pass the ball quickly and play with a high tempo. In the first half, we did that and could have been six up going into the second half.

“We always want to do better and we can improve all the time but things were positive for us at the weekend.

“We wanted to send out a message to the rest of the teams in the league that we’re going to hit the ground running from the start and Ibrox is going to be a den this year.”

• A new twist in the battle for control of Rangers emerged this afternoon when the Stock Exchange confirmed a tranche of more than two million shares was traded in a deal worth almost £840,000.

A spokesman for the club said they were unaware of the identity of the buyer.

The fallen Ibrox side are in the grip of a bitter boardroom battle after former oldco director Paul Murray and accountant Frank Blin, who is believed to be close to billionaire buisness man Jim McColl, made a bid for power at the club.

A requisition for a general meeting aims to see the removal of Brian Stockbridge and Bryan Smart from the board, along with chief executive Craig Mather.

But Mather confirmed last week that the current board will meet this week to consider sacking former CEO Charles Green from his new role as a paid consultant after he warned boss Ally McCoist would have “a problem” if he failed to land a cup victory on top of the League One title.