RANGERS will help bring the down the curtain on a home ground belonging to one of Scotland's oldest junior football teams.

The Glasgow club will play a friendly against Kirkintilloch Rob Roy next month - the last match ever to be played on Adamslie Park, which opened almost 100 years ago.

For eight years, in a desperate bid to keep the team financially viable, officials at the junior club have been trying to find a buyer for their home stadium.

Their task was made more difficult when the team's social club closed several years ago with debts of around £30,000.

But now a deal has been struck with a house builder and on Wednesday Rob Roy played their last competitive home game, with a cup win over Renfrew. Afterwards, the visitors presented Charlie O'Brien, general secretary of Kirkintilloch Rob Roy, with a commemorative shield to mark the occasion.

However, one more match will be played on the Adamslie Park pitch. Charlie revealed: "We have just had confirmation of a friendly game with Rangers on Sunday May 18. It will be an emotional high."

Rob Roy is to ground share with Cumbernauld United next season, but hope to have their new stadium built and open in the Southbank area of Kirintilloch before the season ends. It will have capacity for 490 spectators and will be one of the few junior grounds to have an artificial playing surface.

Club officials have sold the Adamslie ground for £1.8million. Every penny and more will be ploughed into building the new ground, which will be shared with a number of other sports.

East Dunbartonshire Council is backing the project with a £1m grant, while it's hoped a shortfall of £700,000 will come from other sources.

Rob Roy has survived two World Wars. It was launched in 1878 and named after a curling club in Perthshire which has since folded. The club has had several home grounds but Adamslie Park was officially opened on August 7, 1926, by Kirkintilloch's then provost John Shanks.

The side has appeared in the final of the Scottish Junior Cup eight times.

But the club's best season so far was 1961-62, when the team won the Scottish Junior Cup, Central League Championship, Coronation Cup and the Dunbartonshire Cup.

Now the players are preparing to bow out in style against Rangers.

gordon.thomson@eveningtimes.co.uk