Updated with league cup draw: Old rivals await Gala Fairydean Rovers in challenge cup
Gala Fairydean Rovers now know the opposition they’ll be up against during their inaugural KDM Evolution Trophy campaign and three of the six teams they face during the competition’s league phase are familiar faces from the old cross-country Scottish Lowland Football League.
Those former fifth-tier rivals are Rangers and Heart of Midlothian’s under-19s and Edinburgh’s Spartans, and manager Martin Scott’s side will also play William Hill League One’s Alloa Athletic and Hamilton Academical and Spartans’ fourth-tier adversaries Stranraer.
Their four opening fixtures in the Scottish Professional Football League Challenge Cup, known as the KDM Evolution Trophy since last year, are all Tuesday night games with kick-off at 7.45pm, as is their last one, the odd man out being a trip to Clackmannanshire to play Alloa on Saturday, September 26, with a 3pm start.
Rangers B are first up, at home at Galashiels’ Netherdale Stadium on August 11.
Next up, they go west to Dumfries and Galloway to take on a Stranraer side reinforced by the arrivals this month of Galashiels’ Lewis Gillie and Coldstream’s Zach Bruce on loan from Hibernian’s academy on August 25, and that’s followed by visits from Hearts B on September 8 and Spartans on September 22.
The Borderers’ league-phase fixtures conclude with South Lanarkshire’s Accies coming calling on October 13.
Fairydean are one of ten fifth-tier guest clubs among a field of 40 contesting the trophy’s league phase, along with all 20 teams in Scotland’s third and fourth tiers and ten top-tier development squads.
The top 22 of them will go on to the cup’s knockout phases, joining all ten William Hill Championship clubs for a round of 32 at the start of November, with payouts of at least £30,000 on offer for those still standing after the first half-dozen match-days.
A round of 16 follows at the end of November, quarter-finals in January, semis in February and 2027’s final in either March or April.
Fairydean were Lowland league rivals of Rangers’ colts for two seasons prior to the Glaswegians’ withdrawal from tier five, beating them 2-1 at home twice, in September 2021 and October 2022, and losing twice to them away, by 5-2 in April 2022 and 4-1 in February 2023.
The last of those campaigns overlapped with three featuring Hearts’ colts as rivals, again ending up with honours even, having beaten the Edinburgh outfit and lost to them three times apiece and drawn with them twice.
Their wins were by 4-0 in February last year and 2-0 that August away and 3-1 at home last November; their losses by 3-0 in April 2023 and 3-1 in December of that year away and 5-1 at home in August 2024; and their draws, both at home, in October 2022 and July the year after, with scorelines of 3-3 and 1-1 respectively.
Fairydean were rivals of Spartans in the Lowland league from its foundation in 2013 to the capital city side’s promotion to the SPFL as champions in 2023 and they’ll be reunited with them on the back of three defeats on the bounce – by 3-1 in December 2022 at home and 4-1 in August of that year and 2-1 in April 2022 away.
The Borderers have only met Stranraer twice before, in round one of the Scottish Cup in December 1984, drawing 2-2 on the road but losing a replay at home a week later 1-0.
Much the same applies to Alloa, Fairydean having met them once on second-round Scottish Cup duty in January 1994, losing 4-0 away.
Accies are a relatively unknown quantity, however, as Rovers’ current incarnation have never played them competitively, though a previous version lost 9-0 away to them in round one of the Scottish Cup in January 1922 and their present edition lost a pre-season friendly to them 2-0 in June 2024, also on the road.
Scott, 40, is looking forward to taking on an extra challenge this season and going up against higher-level opponents, saying: “It’s really exciting for the club to be involved in that cup competition.
“It’s exciting for the players as we’ll face a different challenge and it’s challenges you want as a player – you want to challenge yourself against league sides and full-time B teams.
“We’re really looking forward to it, and it’ll be different for the town as well and hopefully we’ll get full backing from our fans.”
Further new faces in the form of North Ayrshire’s Kilwinning Rangers await Fairydean in round one of this season’s Scottish Lowland Football League Cup, drawn this week, with that away tie to be played on Saturday, November 21.