Morton

Long before fan ownership became a talking point across Scottish football, Greenock Morton had already treated itself as a formal enterprise. In 1896 it became the first football club in the country to register as a public limited company, a structure that set it apart from clubs still run as loose associations of local men. That businesslike streak stretched back to 1874, when Morton FC first took shape on the banks of the Clyde in Greenock; the club did not adopt its current name, Greenock Morton, until 1994.

The single trophy that still defines the club came in 1922, when Morton beat Rangers 1-0 in the Scottish Cup final on a penalty from Jimmy Gourlay. Below that level, the club has largely lived in the Second Division, which it won six times across the middle decades of the twentieth century. It has climbed out of the third tier three times since, the most recent in 2015.

During the Second World War, with fixtures thinned out and squads scattered, Cappielow occasionally hosted guest players of a calibre the club could never otherwise have afforded: Stanley Matthews and Tommy Lawton both turned out for Morton under wartime arrangements. Allan McGraw, by contrast, built his name over years rather than a season, scoring 148 goals for the club, still the most anyone has managed in Morton colours.

The club's finances were not always so kindly treated. Administration in 2001 brought Morton to the brink, and chairman Douglas Rae's rescue was followed by two successive relegations rather than any quick recovery. Two decades later, in 2021, the Rae family sold their controlling stake to Morton Club Together, a supporters' organisation, making Morton a community-owned club.

Across the Clyde, St Mirren remain the fixture that matters most: the Renfrewshire Derby, played between two towns a few miles apart, is the rivalry Morton supporters measure a season by.