It was over a little over a year ago as manager of East Stirlingshire that Jim McInally's love affair with football was reignited.

He had come to appreciate the contribution made by part-time players and the fans of clubs that never got to taste success, and whose gates seldom stretch to a few hundred.

McInally had emerged scarred from a difficult time trying, unsuccessfully, to persuade the players of Morton that they were good enough to take the club to a higher level. It was a full-time manager's job he did not, in the end, enjoy, though eyebrows were raised soon after his Cappielow departure when he accepted the job of endeavouring to prise East Stirlingshire from their perennial place as Scottish football's worst side.

"People said I was crazy going to East Stirlingshire so soon after leaving Morton," he said. "They were at the bottom of the league and had been for years. Amazingly, on the last day of that season we got off the foot of the table and I've never seen scenes like it.

"When I went to the Shire I fell in love with the part-time game, seeing these supporters celebrating something like getting off the bottom of the league. It was terrific. It's a totally different mentality in the part-time game."

He believes that mentality is a factor with which Rangers, who open their third division campaign against McInally's Peterhead at Balmoor Saturday, will soon become acquainted.

The 48-year-old – whose distinguished playing career took him from Celtic to Nottingham Forest before spending nine years with Dundee United – expressed his abiding admiration for part-time players, particularly those he has at Peterhead. The excitement of opening their league campaign at home to Rangers on Saturday is palpable.

"I really admire part-time football more than full-time because of what the players give up to play football," he said. "Some of them travel from far and wide to train and play. When you've been involved at full-time level you have time on your hands and then you see these guys who have been out working all day and still turning up for training, you realise what they give to the game. There are a lot more demands on them, too, when you look at the midweek fixtures they've to play."

A number of players in his squad are based in Glasgow, Perth and Dundee and he respects the effort they give. His mood is far more positive than when he talks of his final days at Morton. "The fun went out of football for me when I was at Morton," he said. "The pressure was getting to me a wee bit and I wasn't enjoying it. "

Yet, amid all the excitement in the north east fishing port and at Peterhead's refitted ground, ready to accommodate 5500 supporters, the former Scotland internationalist admits to a fear of seeing his side being thumped.

"It's always to the forefront of your mind that we might take a hammering on Saturday," he said. "We played Celtic in the Scottish Cup last year and there was so much talk about what might or might not happen.

"But I swear to God, the only thing that's in your mind is 'please don't let us be thrashed' because you know what it can do to your season and that's what I'll be thinking on Saturday. Rangers' promotion from the third division is, of course, a forgone conclusion, but I hope they get blips along the way.

"Having said that, the way you see them signing players and spending money, they are already creating a hellof a gulf, but we'll just have to do the best we can to make life difficult for them.

"I didn't want them in our league because I felt it that without them it would have been a very open league with six or seven teams in with a chance of winning it. Now, we're only fighting for play-off places now. But for our players, thoughts of going to Ibrox twice and Hampden twice to play Queen's Park makes it a decent season."