Scottish Football Made Not Very Simple.
Lockdown has a lot to answer for. It occurred to me during an idle moment recently that it might be interesting to look slightly further afield than the EFL and think about football as it is played elsewhere on our island at this moment in time. I should have chosen the Isle of Man (it would be simpler) but I instead focused on the country for which the alien BBC programme Sportscene (I suspect we have all heard of it) is designed: Bonnie Scotland.
I soon found out that this is far simpler thought than actually done. So let’s consider some basics before we start – and beware: the way Scottish football is organised is nothing like the way it is in England and Wales. Furthermore, it is about as easy to understand as is the great Bard Robbie Burns himself, who could even have described the arrangements there as `lousy’ in these terms: “Ye ugly, creepin, blastit wonner, Detested, shunn’d by saunt an’ sinner”[1]…
First of all, unlike in England where the distinctions were abolished years ago following scandals South of the Border, there is still a major difference between professional and amateur football in Scotland. I don’t know precisely why but I suspect this is to do with the same sort of appalling class snobbery which caused the split in English Rugby Way Back When into two codes; `gentlemen’ amateurs in Union and `players’ in professional Rugby League. Whatever, professionalism was actively suppressed by the game’s ruling body, the SFA (Scottish Football Association) and was not actually recognised by the (posh) men in suits until 1893. We will come back to this in a minute.
However – and leaving Women’s and Youth football in Scotland out of it for now – there is also a distinction between `Senior’ and `Junior’ football in the country. Senior clubs are members of the SFA. So all the teams in the current SPFL (see below) are Senior clubs.
So what is a `Junior’ club? One that caters for kids? No. One that has been formed relatively recently? No – not that, either. The distinction appears to be that a football club is a Junior one if it chooses to be, simple as that. It could be argued that that the true definition of `Junior’ football is that it is of an inferior standard to that of the Senior leagues. We shall never know though because they are not allowed to play each other. (Usually.) Junior Clubs – 60 of which are spread geographically across the country in six divisions – are part of the separate SJFA (Scottish Junior Football Association). (Although, confusingly, there is one exception apparently: Banks O’Dee. Don’t ask me why because I don’t know – I suspect it is just A Scottish Thing in the same way that a Haggis is.) I think that this arrangement is beginning to crumble at the edges (the Junior league, that is; not the Haggis) because more and more clubs are jumping ship to join `Senior’ leagues because these can now take them to the Promised Land of the until recently Closed Shop of the SPFL. Well – I think that’s the reason but I frankly can’t make much sense of it at all.
Beneath this – to thicken the Scotch Broth even more – is the SAFA (Scottish Amateur Football Association). This administers the Scottish Amateur Cup and had 417 teams competing in sixty leagues – including The Kingdom of Fife and Strathclyde Evangelical Churches’ League, for instance – right across the country in 2020-21 alone. Just to make things even more impenetrable, several Senior and Junior clubs have Reserve teams that play in some of these leagues as well. Shall we move on whilst we’re still ahead? No – we can’t. No overview of the beautiful but very complicated game north of the border is complete without a mention of the SWFA.
This is the Scottish Welfare Football Association. Welfare football is waning – from a peak of 500 clubs, there were just 85 remaining in eight geographic leagues across the country at the last count. This is how this organisation is currently defining its own role in the game:
To boost the morale of the workers after the 1914-18 conflict the Scottish Welfare Football Association (SWFA) was instituted in the latter part of 1918 and became affiliated to the Scottish Football Association in the same year.
Over the last few year the SWFA have seen changes in their national trophies, namely the Templeton Cup, which was gifted by the Templeton Carpet Factory, and the Daily Record, which was gifted to the SWFA in 1929/30. Both have now been retired and the original trophies can now to be seen in the Museum at Hampden Park.
These have been now replaced with the Donald McNair Trophy and the Jack Bryson Trophy, both provided by the SWFA through grant aid funding received by the Scottish Football Association. These trophies are played annually over the winter and summer periods by all member clubs within the SWFA.
In addition, the Highland Welfare Cup (Tom Hunter Memorial) is now played over the summer period by clubs in the North of Scotland, and the Rolls Royce Trophy, contested since 1958/59, played for by Associations in membership of the SWFA. All National Cup Competitions will be subject to review over the course of the next twelve months.
Competitions within the SWFA are played over two separate periods: summer being April to March and winter being August to July. On the whole, most summer seasons will run between April and September and most winter seasons will run between August and May. Most summer Associations are to be found in the North of Scotland, and Central Scotland playing host to the majority of winter Associations.
The SWFA conducts business on a monthly basis through the Committee and the Full Committee. Both meet using the latest online meeting facilities. The last few years have been difficult and football continues to face challenges in relation to people willing to participate. The SWFA is no different and will maintain the ethos of providing cost-free football with a view to assisting people to maintain their health and wellbeing.
The SWFA will also maintain the belief that every player can only register with one club at a time.
So how many Governing Bodies do we have so far? What do you mean – far too many? Not enough, surely. Let’s backtrack a bit. We’ve already asked: what is a `Junior’ club? One that caters for kids? No. Absolutely not. Because in Scotland, according to Dave Moor,
“The Scottish Juvenile FA (SJFA) was formed in 1899 and organised the game at under-21 level although age limits were lax, and limits were set at 25 and even 27 at various stages. A rival Scottish Secondary Junior FA (SSJFA) was formed in 1921 and over time came to dominate the game at youth level. In 1985 the SSJFA was renamed as the Association of Scottish Youth Football Clubs (ASYFC). In 1999 the rump SJFA merged with the ASYFC and the Youth Division of the Scottish Amateur FA to form the Scottish Youth FA.” [2]
Clear so far? Good – because I’m not sure I am. If, like me, you aren’t very good at football and don’t expect to be paid for pursuing your determination to play it anyway, do you join a Junior club if you’re under 27? Or play in a Youth league? Or just stick with an Amateur club? Or perhaps play in Queens Park’s reserve side in the Senior leagues? Or would it be simpler to have a sex change and play in the Women’s Scottish football pyramid, which is more recognisable to an Englishman as being the equivalent to the footballing arrangements for the male game South of the Border? Or maybe it would more realistic to just take up Curling or Tossing the Caber instead…
In such a manner, the organisation of Scottish football (even before we deal with Promotion and Relegation which is also about as clear as mud) puts the term `Fitba Crazy’ into its true context. (With due deference to the classic song by Robin Hall and Robbie Macgregor – and don’t write in and complain: `Fitba’ is the Scots for `Football’ so I’m in the clear with the Cultural and Politically Correct Police – sorry – Polis at least…) Historically, the most significant part of football in the SNP’s heartland is the:
SFL: Scottish Football League. It first saw the light of day on April 30th 1890, thirteen years after the founding of its ruling body, the SFA or Scottish Football Association. There was just one division to start off with and it consisted exclusively of the following clubs: Abercorn; Cambuslang; Celtic; Cowlairs; Dumbarton; Heart of Midlothian; Rangers; Renton; St Mirren; Third Lanark and Vale of Leven. The best-known club in the country at the time – Glasgow’s Queens Park – rejected an invitation to join as it raised fears about professionalisation of the game and another amateur club – Clyde – also refused to join. An application from St Bernard’s was refused not because dogs were not allowed in the league but because they were deemed guilty of `hidden professionalism’. Renton were thus expelled for later playing them; challenged the ruling in the Scottish Courts – and were re-instated. The rules about who was – and wasn’t – eligible to join in the first place were many and sometimes curious. One of them was that any club in the SFL had to have a Pavilion, which explains why so many of the original grounds had buildings within them more akin to Craven Cottage or the one at Fratton Park in England. Was this some sort of snobbery influenced by the genteel, `gentleman’s’ game of Cricket? Or was it just a practical way of ensuring that players had somewhere to change? Frankly, I don’t know.
Division Two appeared in 1893 as the Scottish Football Alliance was absorbed by the SFL. There was no automatic promotion or relegation: this was decided by ballot of the clubs, not on merit (or the lack of it). A Third Division – basically what had been known until then as the Western League – was introduced in 1923 but lasted only three years before collapsing under financial pressure on the clubs, many of whom joined a new version of the Scottish Football Alliance. The end of the Second World War saw another re-arrangement of the leagues, with A, B and C being introduced and reserve teams from the higher Divisions playing mostly in Tier C. This was divided into two divisions – North-West and South-East – during 1949. Six years later, these divisions were scrapped, the five leading teams promoted and all reserve teams withdrawn as the SFL became two divisions again with 18 clubs in the top one and 19 in Division 2. Clydebank made it twenty in 1966 but Third Lanark’s demise a year later saw the reversion to just nineteen clubs again.
1975 saw another change in the SFL’s structure with three divisions being introduced: Premier, First and Second Divisions. With Meadowbank Thistle joining, the SFL consisted of 38 clubs at this juncture – a position unaltered until 1994. Then, to round things up to 40, Inverness Caledonian Thistle and Ross County were granted membership of the closed shop and the divisions split into four, each containing ten clubs. This lasted precisely four years when the SPL or Scottish Premier League was formed. The SFL continued, with the old Second Division becoming the First and so on down to Division 3. The SPL expanded to 12 clubs during 2000 and Elgin City and Peterhead from the Highland League were admitted to the SFL to keep up the divisional numbers at ten each. In 2005, the SPL agreed to automatic promotion and relegation to what had previously been an exclusive elite – all the Divisions in the SFL remained a Closed Shop though. This changed again in 2013 when the SPL and SFL came back together to become the
SPFL: Scottish Professional Football League. Theoretically, this was a merger. But most people who know a lot more about the Scottish game than I do see it as a take-over of the entire Senior league structure in Scotland by the Premier League. Promotion and relegation from the Highland and Lowland Leagues – which also came under the SPFL’s umbrella – began at the end of the 2014-15 season. The Champions of each league played each other – home and away – and the overall winner then played the bottom team in EFL League Two. Two legs again. Winner stayed in or was promoted. Thus, out went East Stirlingshire in 2016; in went Lowland League Edinburgh City to be followed by Berwick Rangers’ relegation during 2018 to be replaced by Highland League Champions Cove Rangers of Aberdeen. This season, Champions of the Lowland league, Kelty Hearts (Kelty is a village in Fife) overcame another village club – Brora Rangers of Sutherland in the Highland League – by six goals to one on aggregate. They then faced the bottom club in the SPFL – Brechin City – in a two-legged Play-Off Final on May 18th and 23rd 2021. Kelty won the first leg at home 2-1 and then scored the only goal of the second leg (in which both teams ended the game with only ten men on the pitch) to reach the Big Time as Brechin were dumped into the Outer Reaches of the Scottish non-league wilderness – or Highland League if you prefer.
Promotion and Relegation. As we’ve just seen, simple it ain’t… Let’s allow Jack Wills [3] to explain:
“The playoff system has been long established in world football and is oftentimes an incredibly simple process. The best example of a playoff system is the English Championship. 1st in the league are champions, 2nd gain automatic promotion, and then 3rd through 6th engage in the playoffs. Best play worst, and so on, ie 3rd play 6th and 4th play 5th. Two legs, highest seeded team getting to play their home game second, in what is perceived as an advantage. The winners then meet at a neutral venue, in this instance, the national stadium of Wembley. All very simple, very logical, right? Well, why then can Scotland not replicate this? While the English (and pretty much the global) system, allows the better-placed league team to have a slight advantage, the Scottish system actively discourages the lower finishing from gaining promotion.
The first issue to highlight is the pathetically small size of leagues that Scotland have. The top-flight has 12 teams, while the lower three professional divisions have 10 each. In the top flight, the team finishing 12th are automatically relegated. The team in 11th go into a playoff spot. This is transferable to the lower divisions, where 10th is an automatic relegation and 9th involves a playoff. Consequently, in the lower divisions, the team finishing 1st gains automatic promotion, while the teams finishing 2nd, 3rd and 4th also join the second bottom team in the above divisions in a playoff system.
In Scottish league 1 and 2, the playoff system is as you would imagine, 9th in the above division play 4th in the lower division, and 2nd play 3rd. The winners then play each other…
The Scottish Championship has always been a tough division… With such a competitive division, the expectation would be that the playoff system would be designed to create a competitive, fair way to see the best of the four teams promoted.
Yet for some bizarre reason, the Scottish Championship does not follow the logical system of 11th playing 4th, and 2nd playing 3rd. Instead, the format is as follows:
• 3rd play 4th in a two-legged tie.
• The winner of the above game plays 2nd in a two-legged tie.
• The winner of the above game plays 11th in a two-legged tie.
This ludicrous format is incredibly unfair to the teams who finish 3rd and 4th in the Championship.”
Got it? Good. Well – that’s as good as it’s going to get anyway. Oh – apart from a mention of the fact that all the Scottish leagues split at a pre-ordained point in the season into `Promotion’ and `Relegation’ sections. No – I’m not making this up. Clearly, the arrangements set-out above are not sufficiently confusing already. So get your Abacus ready as we allow the SPFL itself to explain how and why this works; bear in mind that the same arrangement applies to all the other divisions in the SPFL as well as the Premier League – and remember at the end of it all to take away the first number you thought of to make total sense of it all:
“With the top and bottom six in the Clydesdale Bank Premier League set to be confirmed… we answer a few common questions on how the SPL split operates…
What’s the background to the split?
During the first phase of the season all clubs play each other three times for a total of 33 games, meaning they will have played 16 matches at home and 17 away, or vice versa.
The split then kicks in and clubs have another five matches against opponents in their half of the table for a total of 38 games over the campaign.
When was the current system introduced?
The split was first introduced in 2000/01 when the league was increased from 10 to 12 clubs.
Why have the split at all?
The primary reason is to increase competition within the league and reduce the number of meaningless mid-table clashes. The make up of the top six has often remained in the balance until the 33rd round of fixtures.
It also means clubs going for the championship or Europe, and those attempting to retain their SPL status, face the same opponents in the run-in, which ensures a sense of balance and fairness.
Also, in a 12-team league, there are issues with fixturing – a total of 33 games would be imbalanced and is too few games while if clubs played each other four times the total would be 44 games, which is too many. The split, therefore, provides a solution.
How are the fixtures worked out?
The main factor is to try to ensure that clubs finish the season having played 19 home games and 19 away games.”
Well there we are – it’s very easy to understand really, isn’t it, when it’s explained so extraordinarily clearly? (This whole Scottish Football thing really has been a comprehensive education for me at least: I didn’t even know that `fixturing’ was an actual word until now…) Oh – and before we go, let’s just have a quick look at another of Scotland’s football traditions and try and make some sense of that as well:
This is the Scottish Challenge Cup. I thought this was an alternative title for the Scottish FA Cup. But not so: that would be far too simple. These turn out to be two totally different things altogether. The Scottish Challenge Cup is actually more like the Scottish League Cup, which only SPFL clubs are allowed to compete for. Confused? – you will be… Next time it’s possible to compete in a Pub Quiz, squirrel this little gobbet of information away somewhere in the recesses of your brain – you never know when it might come in useful. (Probably never, but who can say?) The Challenge Cup was instigated in 1990 to mark the Centenary of the SFL. It was intended to be a one-off event but popularity with crowds (and, no doubt, club accountants) has made it a regular event. Unlike the Scottish FA Cup – which any Senior club can enter – the Challenge Cup is only available to SPFL members. And four teams each from the Highland and Lowland Leagues. As well as two teams each from Northern Ireland’s NIFL Premiership; the Welsh Premier League; the League of Ireland, the National League in England and the Isle of Man Amateur Seal-Spotters’ Alliance League. I’ve made the last one up – it seemed a shame to leave them out. The rest of it is right, though. Honestly. So – theoretically at least – a team at the top of the non-league pyramid in English football could win this competition: Wrexham and Solihull Moors were both in it during the 1920-21 season, believe it or not. The competition was shelved after this altogether due to Coronavirus. But the final season before this suspension, a Welsh club almost won the Challenge Cup: Connah’s Quay Nomads got to the final only to lose to Ross County 3-1 after initially taking the lead.
So let’s move away from the tricky subject of cups, leagues and promotion for a moment and move on now to a subject altogether far darker.
There is a historical religious and cultural divide in Scotland between people of Irish descent and the natives (even though the natives consist of many distinct groups; ancient tribes and immigrants of one sort or another and are not a cohesive whole.) The violence and bigotry which has accompanied this divide – on both sides – is of far too wide a scope to be fully explained or analysed in an account such as this. However, in order to understand Scottish football, Sectarianism cannot be either ignored or understated. The community with Irish roots in Scotland can be recognised sometimes simply by their surnames, which have the Irish prefix `Mc’ (as opposed to the Scottish one, `Mac’) in them. These people tend to be Catholic and are routinely referred to by anti-Catholic Scots as `Fenians’. Fenians are actually Irish Nationalists but the term tends to be applied pejoratively to anyone of Irish descent by certain members of the non-Catholic Scottish community. In turn, it is not uncommon to hear Protestants in Scotland being called `Orange bastards’ or `Huns’ by bigots in the Catholic community. (These terms refer to William of Orange, a Germanic Presbyterian who defeated Irish Catholic forces at the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland as long ago as 1690: four numerals which resonate deeply and often genuinely alarmingly throughout Scottish society.) The sectarian associations with the House of Orange are reflected in Orange Marches held by Protestants in most Scottish cities to commemorate this victory even today, over three hundred years later. In the literally vicious circle of intolerance practised by both sides, other Irish terms – or images – are used by the Irish Catholic community to distinguish themselves from other people in Scotland. Green has connotations for Irish nationalism as does the image of the Harp and the term `Hibernian’. Hibernia is the Roman name for the island of Ireland. Hibs are thus the `Catholic’ club in Edinburgh and they play in Green. Other `Hibernians’ have also existed in Scottish football: Dundee and Maryhill, for example. Equally, the club Dumbarton Harps played in green and was populated by Catholic players and watched by fans with an Irish heritage. Celtic – as the name in itself suggests – are the Irish Catholic club to be found at Parkhead in the East End of Glasgow where Irish immigrants have traditionally settled. There is a non-Catholic side to this coin as well, of course. Most obviously, Glasgow Rangers – from the west of the city where Catholics have been historically rarer or simply absent – is part of the Old Firm where the singing of mutually offensive songs and violence of a distinctly Sectarian nature has long been practised by both sides of the divide. The Offensive Behaviour at Football Act was introduced by the ruling Scottish Nationalist Party in 2012, specifically to deal with this problem. It was almost as quickly repealed; the Glasgow Herald rejecting it by suggesting that `Scotland cannot arrest its way out of sectarianism’, for example. One of the authors of a reformed version of the Act, Scottish MSP James Dornan, said as recently as 2019:
“What made me do it was there was clearly no move from the football authorities. Clearly no move.
There was the trouble at Parkhead where there was hanging effigies, Rangers’ fans smashed the toilets and the two clubs, instead of saying, ‘We need to get this sorted’, the two clubs blamed each other’s fans for whatever had happened. And then there was the trouble at the cup final with Hibs and Rangers and at the end of it, when you saw hundreds of people on the park fighting at various levels, the SFA’s report was, ‘Nothing to see here, move on’. And I thought, ‘You don’t care. You either don’t care or you don’t have the powers, and either way, we have to do it’.” [4]
The problem thus clearly persists and it is impossible to ignore it in any historical account.
But let’s move on. Let’s have a look at all the clubs who have ever played in the most famous league of Senior Football in Scotland. If you are aware of any mistakes or omissions – or would like to add your own personal recollections or photos – please get in touch with me at
Part One: Abercorn to Arbroath.
Abercorn
Nickname: The Abbies.
Strip: Originally dark blue and white hooped shirts; white shorts; dark blue socks. Several other combinations until the final strip of royal blue and white vertically striped shirts, white shorts and dark blue socks.
Home Grounds: East Park on East Lane, Paisley from 1877-1879; Blackstoun Park, Paisley 1879-1889; Underwood Park 1889-99; Old Ralston Park, East Lane, Paisley 1899-1909; New Ralston Park, East Lane, Paisley 1909-1920.
This Paisley club was one of the founders of the SFL during 1890. When the amateur club’s lease ran out on New Ralston Park during 1920, however, the local Council refused to renew it. It has been claimed – rightly or wrongly – that local professional rivals St Mirren not only pinched the Abbies’ best players, it also used its influence with local politicians to finish the club off. Abercorn had to apply for re-election at the end of each of its first three seasons in the EFL. It was effectively relegated to the new Second Division after its inauguration in 1893-4. The club went back into the First Division to replace Dumbarton during 1897 but lasted only a single season. They were Champions of the Second Division during 1908-9 but not re-admitted to the upper tier. At the end of the 1925-6 season, the Second Division was abolished and the Abbies joined the Western League. Without a ground to play at any more and no longer a member of any league, the club nevertheless played a single game in the Scottish FA Challenge Cup competition of 1920–21. This was away at Vale of Leven, which they lost 8-2. They never played again. The Daily Record tells us:
“The club finally turned professional – 17 years after their rivals at St Mirren. It was that reluctance to turn pro which Richard McBrearty, the curator of the Scottish Football Museum, believes cost the Abbies dearly.
“Abercorn were capable of rivalling St Mirren in the early era,” he said. “The decision to stay amateur is ultimately what cost them. As football turned professional, a lot of clubs were dead against it and Abercorn were one of them. They had been a reasonable club during the amateur era but, as soon as the game in Scotland went pro, it became a lot harder for them to attract a decent standard of player, as St Mirren were picking up all the local talent by offering them money.”
By 1915, Abercorn had pulled out of the SFL to play in the lower Western League set-up. With dwindling crowds, the death knell was about to sound. The club had moved from its third home at Underwood Park to its Old Ralston ground – a plot near to where the Tesco supermarket now sits in East Lane – in 1899. It then moved just a few yards down the road a decade later but its lease there ran out in 1920 and the local council refused to extend it – claiming they wanted to build a new ice rink. Many, however, claimed St Mirren had used their connections with Paisley Town Council to kill off their rivals.”
A new version of the club – Abercorn AFC – was founded in 2009 but seemed to have disappeared once more by the end of the 2014 season.
Aberdeen
Nickname: The Dons; The Dandies; The Reds.
Strip: All-white for their first season; then black and gold vertically-striped shirts with white shorts and black socks until 1939 (until which time they were understandably known as The Wasps). Since then, red or scarlet shirts, shorts and socks.
Home Ground: Pittodrie Stadium; the first football ground anywhere in Britain to be fully covered and all-seater.
Pittodrie Stadium (CC 4.0)
Pittodrie is Pictish for `the place of manure’ and legend is that police horse dung was once dumped on the fields there. But never has such a description been so inappropriate to the history which has unfolded on that hallowed but well-fertilised turf over the years because Aberdeen FC is one of the true giants of Scottish Football. They were formed after the merger of three other clubs: Aberdeen, Orion and Victoria United – on 14th April 1903, adopted Aberdeen’s ground and started playing in the Northern League. This happened after the old Aberdeen had rejected advances from Edinburgh’s Hibernian to take over their ground and start playing in the Granite City instead. The new Aberdeen were elected to the SFA’s Second Division during 1904 as Ayr Parkhouse departed and then entered the premier tier of Scottish Senior football – the old First Division – during 1905. Despite changes in the name of it (`A’ or Premier for example), and problems during the First World War which caused them to resign briefly, Aberdeen have stayed there ever since. 116 years in the same, top division is almost unheard of anywhere on the planet.
They were certainly most famous during the 1980s when Alex Ferguson was so successful that he was persuaded to take the reins at Manchester United – and the rest, as they say, is history. Altogether, Aberdeen have won four Scottish League titles; seven Scottish FA Challenge Cups and six League Cups. Unusually for any team from Scotland, they have also won European trophies in the shape of the Cup Winners’ Cup and Super Cup, both under Ferguson’s guidance during 1983. Plans to move to a larger stadium have been afoot for the last decade or so which had been a relatively barren time for the club until they won the League Cup during 2013-14. Since then, they have finished second behind Celtic in the Premier League every season since 2015 to mark a renaissance in the club’s form. In the season which ended in May 2021, however, they came fourth. To put some context to this, though, they ended up with 56 points. Champions Rangers harvested almost twice as many – 102 – so there is still an awfully long way for the club to go to make up lost ground…
Airdrieonians
(Airdrie United from 2002 until 2013)
Nickname: The Diamonds.
Strip: White shirts with a red diamond; white shorts and socks.
Home Grounds: Broomfield Park, Airdrie until 1994 and then the Excelsior Stadium, Airdrie.
Airdrie is a former mining town that can be found directly east of Glasgow in North Lanarkshire and some distance west of Livingston. The football club was originally founded as Excelsior FC but changed its name to Airdrieonians during 1881. They joined the new SFL Scottish Second Division in 1894, a year after it had been formed and were elected to the First Division in 1903. They were runners-up in this division for four years in a row from 1923 to 1926 and also appeared in four Scottish FA Challenge Cup Finals, winning it in 1924. This was as good as it got for the club, which was relegated during 1926. They were promoted back to the top tier again in 1947 for a single season and were there again between 1950 and 1954. Since then, they remained in the top two tiers for quite some time, including several seasons in the Premier League. Things started to go very wrong for the club, however, when they made the fateful decision to sell their ground, which was on a prime site right in the centre of the town, to a supermarket during 1994. Broomfield Park was iconic, with one of the narrowest pitches in Scottish football, an intimidating atmosphere and its cricket-style pavilion (reminiscent of Fulham’s Craven Cottage) survived long after these features had disappeared from most other SFL grounds. All this was abandoned as short-sighted Directors with no Plan B simply saw pound signs flashing before their eyes and cashed in their chips by selling the club’s traditional ground, which is now the site of the town’s Morrison’s. They had not prepared properly for the implications of the sudden upturn in the club’s financial fortunes, though. Planning Permission was denied for a new stadium in the town and the club was forced to ground-share with far-away Clyde for four years between 1994 and 1998. Although still relatively successful on the pitch – Airdrieonians won the Scottish FA Challenge Cup again in both 2000 and 2001 – its dwindling support off it saw the club spiral into financial disaster. Ex-Spurs and Scotland international Steve Archibald took control of the club with the agreement of its liquidators and introduced many overseas players after most staff and the existing footballers were made redundant at the end of the 1999-2000 season. This team won the Challenge Cup in 2000 but Archibald was sacked by the administrators who had previously agreed to his take-over during February 2001 for spending too much money on his new side. With the Manager gone, the club had difficulty fulfilling its fixtures and narrowly avoided relegation to the Second Division at the end of the season. New Manager Ian McCall steered the club to a second Challenge Cup success and a decent league campaign but things were soon to get even worse for the very flawed Diamonds. Airdrieonians had to resign from the League altogether with debts of three million pounds in May 2002. Furious fans invaded the pitch during their final game at Ayr United and caused the match to be abandoned as they damaged Ayr’s Somerset Park ground. Their ire was partially aimed at Ayr’s owner, Bill Barr, whose eponymous construction company had built Aidrieonians’ new Excelsior stadium and was one of the club’s main creditors. These supporters were also angry with the Chairman of Glasgow Rangers, David Murray, who had already increased the financial crisis at the North Lanarkshire club by issuing a Court Order to recover money owed by them to one of his own businesses. A new consortium was immediately formed as Airdrie United but the Scottish League’s leadership refused them entry to its hallowed ranks, allowing Gretna (then playing in the English Northern Premier League) to fill the sudden vacancy in Division Three instead. In a bizarre twist, the consortium’s leader, one Jim Ballantyne, negotiated a buy-out of homeless Clydebank FC and moved them lock, stock and barrel to Airdrie, where the League bosses blessed their membership of the Second Division. They then immediately allowed them to play as Airdrie United and wear the same colour strip previously favoured by Airdrieonians. Ring any bells, Wimbledon supporters? In June, 2013, the Powers That Be in Scottish football allowed Airdrie United to adopt the club’s original name into the bargain. For Clydebank and all its former fans, this is a deal that stinks to this very day…
I’m personally glad to say that the cuckoo club has not flourished. They have been saved from relegation by unforeseen events such as Rangers’ demotion to the lowest tier of Scottish football during 2012 but finally sank into the third tier the following year. Since then, there have been other problems, however prosaic. Who wants to be threatened with a `horning’ after all?:
“In April 2015 Airdrieonians found themselves in trouble with the Court of the Lord Lyon, an archaic institution that oversees heraldic law in Scotland. According to a statute dating from the 16th century, Airdrieonians’ crest was illegal because it has letters across the shield. Penalties faced by the club included fines, forfeiture of the offending arms and even the issuing of letters of horning. The club was forced to redesign its crest by removing the shield device.” [5]
Airdrieonians came fourth in Scottish League One at the end of the 2020-21 season and eventually faced Greenock Morton – who had finished in that curious relegation position in the Championship above them – in the two-legged final. Morton won both legs and Airdrieonians didn’t even get on the score sheet, losing 4-0 on aggregate to remain in Scottish League One.
Albion Rovers
Nickname: The Wee Rovers.
Strip: Blue and white originally; gold – sorry; primrose –with red in various combinations since the 1960s. Sponsored by Scottish chocolate biscuit manufacturer Tunnock’s in 1983, they have the dubious distinction of wearing a kit identical to the sponsor’s famous Caramel Bar in that year.
Home Grounds: Meadow Park and Clifton Hill Park, Coatbridge; Clifton Hill Park exclusively since 1919.
Cliftonhill Park (CC 2.0)
Glasgow is about twelve miles due west of Coatbridge, which is less than three miles from Airdrie to the east. This part-time club came about as a result of the merger of two local teams – Albion FC and Rovers FC – in 1882. They initially kept the two grounds they had and played at both of them until 1919. They were elected to the SFL in 1903 and stayed there until the First World War interrupted. As with all other clubs, many of their players fought against Imperial Germany and the Axis powers and – also like many other clubs – some of these unfortunates did not survive to tell the tale. They were back in the Scottish League First Division by 1919 and celebrated by knocking Rangers out of the Scottish FA Challenge Cup at the semi-final stage that year and then losing the final itself at Hampden Park 3-2 to Kilmarnock. Legend has it that their goalkeeper had to be bailed out of police custody to play this game, having been arrested as drunk and disorderly the previous night. Having lost the Cup Final, they then also came bottom of the league. With the Old Firm only twelve miles away as a constant drain on potential support, the Wee Rovers have always found life hard both on and off the field. Even their own website is gloomy about the club’s prospects, marking 1948 when it was briefly promoted to Tier A with the legendary Celtic Manager Jock Stein in the team, as its zenith:
“This was to mark the effective end of the Rovers as any sort of force in Scottish football as they became stuck in the Second Division from then on, rarely threatening the teams at the top. In a rare break from the gloom for supporters for a spell during the 1970s, the Rovers team frequently included the “spicy” trio of Bill Currie, Sid Sage and Albert Rice which raised a few smiles at the time.” [6]
A brief flirtation with full-time professionalism during the earliest years of the Twenty-First Century almost brought financial ruin but the Board’s potentially catastrophic decision to consider a ground share with nearby Airdrieonians just in time for that club to go bust in 2002 was avoided as they were ousted just in time to stop it happening. In 2015, the club won the new SPFL Second Division championship – their first title since 1989 and only their second since 1934. Since then, though, the club has fallen back into the lowest tier of SPFL football, Scottish League Two, in which they are currently struggling. When Coronavirus again put an end to proceedings, only Brechin City – just two points worse off albeit having played one game more – lay between them and potential relegation out of the SPFL altogether. However – in the uniquely curious way Scottish Football is organised – Rovers ended up second at the end of the 2020-21 season. Well – in a sense at least. They were actually seventh out of ten in the division but this had, of course, split into `Promotion’ and `Relegation’ halves earlier in the season for the very sensible reasons set out in the introduction to this account. So Albion Rovers were second behind Stenhousemuir in the Relegation section of Scottish League Two when the season finally ended in May 2021. Is that good? I’m not really sure to be honest…
Alloa or Alloa Athletic.
Nickname: The Wasps.
Strip: As suggested by the nickname, it has been predominantly black and gold over the years; there have been orange phases and the club currently play in a very fetching shade of `deep amber’.
Home Ground: Recreation Park Alloa, Clackmannan County, to the east of Stirling.
The club was founded as Clackmannan County in 1878 but changed its name to Alloa one year later and added the tag Athletic during either 1883 or 1997, depending on which sources you believe. They joined the SFA in 1921 and were elected to the First Division after winning Division Two at the first time of asking. Sadly, they came bottom in their next campaign and were effectively relegated again. They were promoted in 1939 but the Second World War saw an end to all league football and when it started again in 1945, Alloa were one of the unlucky clubs that the Powers That Be effectively relegated to the second tier. One of their few claims to fame over the next few decades was that they produced John White, the Scottish international who, as a Tottenham Hotspur player, was struck by lightning and killed when sheltering under a tree on a golf course during 1964. They are another team that never made it to the Premier League but they yo-yoed between the other divisions on a regular basis from the mid-1970s onwards. They won the Scottish FA Challenge Cup in 1999, beating Inverness Caledonian Thistle on penalties after extra time and penalties at a time when the score was 4-4. As Coronavirus took hold again, Alloa found only Arbroath lower than them in the Championship in January 2021. It got worse once the campaign started again and they were relegated at the end of the 2020-21 season, having come rock-bottom of the division. They celebrated this by immediately announcing that ex-Rangers and Scotland Captain Barry Ferguson had been tempted away from the SPFL’s newest member – Kelty Hearts – and will take over the reins at the Recreation Park next season.
Annan Athletic
Nickname: Black & Golds; Galabankies.
Strip: Black and gold in various combinations.
Home Ground: Galabank Stadium, Annan, Dumfries & Galloway, just on the other side of the Solway Firth from England.
Annan Athletic was formed in 1942, had their early years interrupted by the Second World War and used to play at the exotically-sounding Mafeking Park in the town from 1946 to 1953. The club initially was a member of the Dumfries & District Youth Welfare League. This ended as a result of the Second World War so Annan registered as a Junior club to compete in the Dumfries & District Junior Football League. When the league folded in 1951 due to a lack of match officials, the leadership nevertheless refused to de-register the club and thus prevented Athletic’s progression to Senior football. So Annan joined the English FA and played in the Carlisle & District League instead. In 1977, they re-joined the Scottish FA. Following success in minor Senior leagues, they applied to join the Big Boys in the Scottish League during 1999-2000 – and were rejected. They finally entered the hallowed ground of what is now the SPFL following the demise of nearby Gretna on 3rd July 2008 – a move that meant that floodlights had to be installed for the first time at their home ground at Galabank. They haven’t exactly set the SPFL on fire since then and at the end of the 2020-21 season, ended up third in the League Two Relegation section – or eighth out of ten in the lowest division of Scottish football if you prefer.
Arbroath
Nickname: The Red Lichties (as in the `Red Lights’ carried by the town’s fishing fleet) and the Smokies – as a tribute to the smoked fish the town is still famous for.
Strip: Maroon shirts and white shorts.
Home Ground: Originally Lesser Gayfield; currently Gayfield Park, Arbroath – the closest football stadium to coastal water anywhere in Britain and notorious for being bitingly cold and wet when gales crash against the walls of the stadium from the angry North Sea during the winter.
Gayfield Park (CC 2.0)
Arbroath is a small fishing port that can be found to the north of Dundee and south of Montrose on the east coast. This club’s greatest early claim to fame is that it once beat a rival club – Bon Accord – by a record score in the Scottish FA Challenge Cup (or anywhere else in the world for that matter): thirty-six goals to nil. This was way back when in 1885 and there was not a lot more to say about them in the next few decades which ensued. They joined the SFL in 1922 and their first game – at home against Johnstone, which they lost 1-3 – saw two of their players sent off and the police called to suppress a riot that was threatening to break out. In 1934, the club was promoted to the First Division but the end of the Second World War saw the SFA placing them in Tier 2 of the reformed league: effectively a demotion and not very fair at that. Promotion to the first tier followed briefly in 1959; 1968 and 1969 each time for a single season and then for a while longer during 1970. But the Holy Grail of the Premier League has always eluded them and the Twenty-First Century saw them yo-yo between the lower tiers of the SPFL in its early years. There has been a recent resurgence, though, which saw the club win Division Three in 2010-11 before becoming Champions of League Two during 2016-17. They came top of that division as well and progressed to the second tier – the Championship – during 2018-19. They were rock bottom of this Division, however, when COVID-19 put an end to proceedings during January 2021. Once play restarted, though, they managed to struggle a bit further up the division: they ended halfway up (or down if you like) the Relegation Section of the Championship – or, in terms that most people would far more easily understand – seventh out of ten altogether.
words Roger Fitton, D3D4 Morecambe correspondent
[1] Part of his Ode to a Louse.
[2] http://www.historicalkits.co.uk/Scottish_Football_League/Scotland_Index.htm
[3] https://www.byfarthegreatestteam.com/posts/whats-off-scottish-playoffs/
[4] https://www.holyrood.com/inside-politics/view,sectarianism-still-scotlands-shame_8905.htm
[5] http://www.historicalkits.co.uk/Scottish_Football_League/Airdrie_United/Airdrie_United.htm
[6] https://albionroversfc.com/history/