Cove Rangers

Cove Rangers topped Scottish League One in 2021/22, a championship that sent them into the Scottish Championship for the first time in the club's history — the highest tier it has ever reached, even if the stay lasted only a single season before relegation back to League One in 2022/23.

The club grew out of junior football in Cove Bay, now the Altens district of Aberdeen, and was founded in 1922. Decades in regional football followed: Cove joined the Highland Football League in 1986/87 and went on to win the title seven times and the Highland League Cup six times, building a record few clubs outside the senior leagues could match.

That amateur strength did not translate into a place in Scottish professional football straight away. In 2008, with Gretna having folded, Cove applied for the vacated SPFL spot but lost out to Annan Athletic, whose ground was judged to meet league standards where Cove's did not. The wait ended in 2018, when the club left its old home at Allan Park — sold for development three years earlier — for the newly built Balmoral Stadium in Altens. A Highland League play-off win followed in 2019, finally taking Cove into Scottish League Two, which they won outright in that first season, 2019/20.

Balmoral Stadium holds 2,602, with 410 seats. Cove play in blue at home and black away, a kit occasionally paired with a lilac alternative, and are known to supporters as the Toonsers. The club returned to Scottish League One for 2025/26, the division whose place had once gone to Annan Athletic instead.