Gary Keown casts his eye over events at the Rangers EGM

There, a few rows from the top, was McCoist. Leaving it to the last minute, just the way he did as a player. If there is anyone who can be forgiven for holding up perhaps the most important development in the club's recent history, mind you, it is their all-time record goalscorer.

As McCoist, having at least managed to grow a beard during his gardening leave, was ushered along the aisle to his seat by a member of the Rangers security staff, the cheers began to sound throughout the ground.

There was barely any proof needed, but his welcome showed, without question, that the difficulties that marked his managerial career under a much-loathed board have not damaged his legacy in the slightest. Those bumps in the road are now forgotten.

McCoist remains a hero to these people. In many ways, it is figures such as McCoist, the living embodiments of what this club once represented and now endeavours to rebuild from the wreckage of the past three years, that they have had to hold on to in the hope of seeing light amid the darkness.

Rangers supporters have had little option but to exist on memories of better, more prosperous times as the horror story sparked by Craig Whyte's now-infamous £1 purchase from Sir David Murray in 2012 played out. The emergence of King and his cohorts, however, has given them hope that days such as those McCoist enjoyed as a player, as the club competed at the highest level of European football and dominated the domestic game, will return.

King warns of a hard road ahead in pursuit of reaching such a Promised Land, but he clearly has the backing of the fanbase. He arrived at Ibrox just after 10am with his prospective fellow directors, Paul Murray and John Gilligan, in a chauffeur-driven silver Audi, with a number of wellwishers on hand as he was escorted into Argyle House.

The day had started with announcement through the Stock Exchange that the shareholding of Sandy Easdale, chairman of the football board, had fallen by six per cent. It was just another sign of the momentum that has now been building for some time behind King's seemingly unstoppable march to power.

There was no chanting or mass protest outside Ibrox as the shareholders filed in through the Broomloan Stand to cast their votes, though. Under grey skies and amid snell winds, there was a certain quietness. The coronation was yet to come. This was more about making sure Derek Llambias and Barry Leach, the last men standing from the old board, were buried six feet under.

Last time Llambias and Leach took to the field for the chaotic Annual General Meeting in December, they were parked in a gazebo closer to the halfway line that the people in the stand.

Despite whispers that Llambias was in town and actually at the stadium, they did not even turn up for yesterday's proceedings. That much-mocked white tent was nowhere to be seen either. As the shareholders took their seats, there was little other than a lectern with microphones, a table sporting the club crest on top of a blue tablecloth and five wooden chairs.

At 10.47 am, a member of Ibrox staff walked on to the hallowed turf to take two of those seats away. "Those were for the Easdales," piped up one comic in the crowd.

Seconds later, another man in Rangers anorak removed another of the chairs, to very audible cheers from the crowd. The bottles of water and glasses that had been in front of those places were taken away as well. Times clearly are tough down Govan way.

Ten minutes before the proposed starting time, Andrew Dickson, the head of football administration who would later be proposed as chairman of the meeting by Paul Murray, took his place on the field along with the company secretary, Matthew Wood.

Three minutes later, the men of the moment arrived. With applause echoing throughout that corner normally reserved for away supporters, King, Murray and Gilligan walked down the steps to their reserved seats in the front row along with a solicitor named James Blair, who has been working with the Rangers First community ownership group.

Blair had to return to the registrars on the concourse, reportedly to sort out a spot of paperwork, before returning. By then, King, Murray and Gilligan had already shaken hands with a number of supporters and were familiarising themselves with the handset connected to the electronic system that would be used to vote on the resolutions proposing their election to the board and those demanding the removal of Llambias and Leach.

The meeting, itself, was nowhere near as dramatic as the build-up. It lasted less than 11 minutes and 20 seconds. Dickson pointed out that the media coverage of the day's events negated any need for a debate on the resolutions put forward and merely pointed out to those present that the meeting would be "best served by avoiding acrimony or any public display of disunity."

There had been rumours of a drone flying over the ground and dropping off a Celtic shirt. Conspiracy theories circulated that people had been planted in the crowd to create a disturbance. As it was, the only unruly spectators were the seagulls circling above the ground and squawking at top volume.

Votes were cast in silence, the only sound to be heard the beeps of each individual handset. It was only when Dickson closed the meeting at 11.14am, making it clear that the results would be announced to the Stock Exchange and placed on Rangers' official website as soon as possible, that another round of applause broke out.

King briefly skipped on to trackside and on to the pitch to shake hands with Dickson and thank him for taking on the duties of chairmanship.

No sooner had he finished the pleasantries than he was gone, up the stairs and on to the concourse with Murray and Gilligan for a brief chat with waiting friends, business associates and reporters.

A significant number of the shareholders were making tracks to the nearby Louden Tavern, eager to toast the beginning of what appears to be a bright, new era. McCoist chose to leave by a side door with a security guard, avoiding any comment on what he had just witnessed.

It would be fascinating to hear the former manager's view on what happens next. Eleven minutes may well have changed the course of Rangers' history. Given what has been going on behind the scenes in recent times, though, you can be sure it will take a whole lot longer to get this badly listing ship back on an even keel.