Ross County FC

Ross County begin this season in League One, two divisions down from where they stood in the spring of 2024. Relegation from the Premiership was followed a year later by relegation from the Championship — the first time any club has gone straight through the Championship and out the other side in successive seasons since the SPFL was formed. The job now is to come back up.

The club has managed that climb before. Voted into the Scottish Football League in 1994 after decades playing part-time in the Highland League, County reached the top flight for the first time in 2012 off the back of a 40-match unbeaten run. Four years later came the club's one major trophy, the Scottish League Cup, won in March 2016 with a 2-1 final victory over Hibernian. There was also a Scottish Cup final in 2010, reached after a semi-final win over Celtic, though Dundee United beat them 3-0 on the day itself.

Dingwall gave the club its name and, in 1929, its start; the nickname, the Staggies, comes from the heraldic stag on the crest, taken from the badge of the Seaforth Highlanders. Home matches are played at Victoria Park, known commercially as the Global Energy Stadium, an all-seated ground holding 6,541 in the club's navy, red and white. No one has worn the shirt as often as Michael Gardyne, whose 444 appearances and 73 goals stand as club records. Matches against Inverness Caledonian Thistle, the Highland Derby, are the fixtures that carry the sharpest edge for supporters in the north.

For now, County's focus is League One, and finding the form that once carried them the other way.