THE finishing line is in sight for Club 1872. As soon as the chequered flag is waved, the starting gun will be fired once again.

In January, the organisation launched a bid to raise £1million to be invested in the next share issue at Ibrox. Now, they have just days left to meet their seven-figure target.

Light Blues chairman Dave King confirmed several weeks ago that he hoped to bring in around £6million from a rights issue. As part of the process, loans from the likes of Douglas Park and George Letham will be converted to equity.

Club 1872 have been invited to play their own part in proceedings and director Laura Fawkes hopes supporters make the most of the opportunity after Rangers set a deadline of next Thursday for the organisation to confirm how much they will invest this summer.

“We think there are fans that believe they can take part in the share issue and they are waiting for it to be announced and are holding their money back to put in,” Fawkes told SportTimes.

“That is not going to happen, so for us it is about getting the message out that if you want to help rebuild the club and protect it for future generations, Club 1872 is the only way you can do it at this moment in time.

“There might be a handful, aside from the obvious investors, that get to participate. But for 99.9 per cent of the small shareholders, they won’t be able to participate.

“We are delivering that message to people. We see a lot of people saying ‘I have got my own shares, so when is the issue because I am definitely participating’. That’s not the case.

“Rangers won’t say ‘you are not getting to participate in this’, they will say ‘we have issued shares to the following people, at whatever price and raised X’. We have got to generate what we can over the next week and give Rangers the figure.”

Members were contacted on Thursday afternoon informing them of the seven day timetable that is now in place as Rangers move towards a rights issue at the end of the month.

Club 1872 currently have a 10.71 per cent stake in RIFC plc but their status as the second largest shareholder could come under threat as the financial landscape alters once again.

Fawkes said: “We are sitting at around £960,000, but that includes project money. The poll that has gone out to members is asking whether we can use that for the share issue.

“We don’t know what impact that this will have on the shareholding yet because this is a situation of how much money we can or want to put in.

“If we turned round and said we had £2milllion, they could probably issue £2million worth of shares. The situation is quite difficult in that we can’t say to people ‘if we don’t have £1.3million we will get our shareholding diluted’ because we could put £1.3million in and still get diluted, or put £1million in and not get diluted.

“We don’t know what other people are putting in. It is not like an open share offer where everyone buys their percentage pro rata number of shares, it is ‘we have a pot of shares and we are happy to give them to whoever wants them within this group of investors’. This is where we are at.”

The money collected from members on a monthly basis is split between shares and projects pots as supporters choose where they want to see their cash directed.

The deal that saw Club 1872 purchase half of the stake held by Mike Ashley took them above the 10 per cent threshold for the first time.

But that stake could be diminished as fans prepare to see more of their hard-earned put into their club.

Fawkes said: “There will certainly be a group of people on the internet who will make a big thing of it if the 10 per cent goes down or we drop from second to third or second to fourth.

“A lot of people say they are signed up to Club 1872 because, for them, it is about protecting the club. They put their money in and they just want to know it is going to benefit the club and protect the club for future generations.

“Particularly now, at a time when we are rebuilding at the club, people will want to see their money going straight in so they might not be too hung up on the 10 per cent.”

Rangers have received almost £18million in soft loans from directors and wealthy supporters in recent years as significant operating losses have been offset.

King has stressed that the Ibrox board are not seeking fresh cash from outwith the current investor pool as the Light Blues gear up for the new campaign under the guidance of Steven Gerrard.

But Fawkes hopes Club 1872 can be in a position to play more of a part sooner rather than later as the group looks to continue to grow in the coming years.

Fawkes said: “With the organisation pushing for a board place, obviously the higher the shareholding is the easier it is to justify that board place. It is the same for any investor.

“We are aiming for two things – a board place and 25 per cent – and both of them can only be achieved by putting in more money for shares.

“We are kind of missing an opportunity in the share issues because if we had £2million in the bank, we could be going and saying ‘we want more shares’. Instead, we are trying to raise as much as we can to get as many shares as we can.

“This only works if a lot of people participate over a long period of time. We don’t want to be in the position of having a week to raise £50,000. We want to be in a position to know that, if another share issue comes along in a years’ time, we are going to have the funds to invest.”