A visit to Ibrox is not normally associated with having a tranquillising effect on passionate football people but in the case of Spencer Fearn it may do just that. Fearn, the director of East Stirlingshire who is doing much to engineer the club’s resuscitation, has been a bundle of nervous energy since late November, when the draw for the Scottish Cup fourth round paired Rangers with East Stirling.

Only on finally taking his place in the directors’ box for Sunday’s match may he finally calm down; unless East Stirling, third-bottom of the Irn-Bru Scottish League third division, should perform the unlikely feat of scoring against the Clydesdale Bank Premier League leaders.

“I was still dancing for a few weeks after the draw was made,” Fearn, an irrepressible Yorkshireman, says. “There’s a lot of excitement, a lot of nervousness, on my part and I have been unable to sleep. I’ve been going to bed at 8.30 this week because I’ve been so tired but things have been going round and round in my head such as the tie is nearly here now and how are we going to do?

“I can’t wait for it now. It’s come pretty quickly since the draw was made. I find it difficult to keep my emotions in check in the directors’ box because I’m a fan really so I leap up and down and I do go a bit crackers when we score.”

That natural exuberance was what propelled Fearn first to become involved with East Stirling despite being based in London. A follower of East Stirling’s fortunes, initially from afar, his curiosity led him to find out more about the club and in November 2006 he became a director. The 32-year-old has injected £40,000 into the club for this season and is now spearheading East Stirling’s bid to find a new ground and rid them of their reputation as Scottish football’s most consistent losers, after having finished at the foot of the third division for the past five successive seasons.

“The Rangers money will allow us to create a fan base a lot better than in recent times,” Fearn, 32, says. “Season tickets will be £50 next season for an adult and £10 for kids, OAPs and students; it’s currently £120 for adults. We’ve got around 100 hard-core fans but we’ve sold 700 tickets for Ibrox and it would be nice for a few of those people to come along to Firs Park as well, in weeks and months to come.

“It will be nice to be at Ibrox - we can’t believe we’ve drawn Rangers. It will be good to meet David Murray and, hopefully, I’ll also get some advice from him; Walter Smith and Ally McCoist too. I’ll be taking my camera.

“We’ll have a bit of money after the Rangers game but we’re not going to go daft with it – we’re going to be tenants at Stenhousemuir next season so we need money to rent from them.”

That tenancy is enforced by the planned sale of Firs Park, East Stirling’s endearing but ramshackle home since 1921, for £1.7 million to Ogilvie Homes by Alan Mackin, the chairman, a deal that Fearn fully expects to go through but from which he would not profit – only Mackin and those with shares in the nonfootballing infrastructure would do so. Mackin would then step aside and Fearn would spearhead a new-look East Stirling board’s search for a new stadium in the Falkirk area.

Fearn, a successful businessman who owns a record label in Sheffield and skills centres in southern England, already has a professional bid writer in Scotland researching ways to obtain joint-funding from public bodies for the new stadium. “We need our own ground,” Fearn says. “We have a five-year deal with Stenhousemuir with the option to extend it; then it’s up to the council seeing if they have any land that they can arrange for us to buy or even to give us.

“It would also be nice to get East Stirling up a couple of divisions. We’re never going to do a Gretna and get into the Premier League but I’d like to be in the second division and then getting into the first division would be like a dream. Finishing mid-table or getting into the play-offs would make this a great season.”

Should East Stirling finish bottom again, though, they would revert from being full members to associate members of the Scottish League and would be in danger of losing their membership altogether. Fearn is confident it will not come to that.

First, there is the match with Rangers and Fearn is not expecting a surprise result. “Stranger things have happened” he says, “but I can’t see it. I’m sure it won’t be a cricket score, though.” Coming from a Yorkshireman, even one whose overriding passion is for Scotland’s perennially underachievers, that is a prediction that has to be treated with respect.