Scotland's Lost Clubs , livre ebook

Pitch Publishing Ltd - Jeff Webb

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128 pages

English

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Scotland's Lost Clubs: Giving the Names You've Heard the Story They Own is the gripping, constantly surprising, intrinsically romantic and all too commonly tragic story of some of Scotland's lost football clubs. You'll be taken on a journey across Scotland, from the Highlands to the English border, with tales of some of the most important names in world football and their impact on the modern game. Learn about the picturesque Victorian seaside town that had no fewer than five clubs, and the team that rescued a league rival who was shipwrecked only to sadly disappear the year Celtic won the European Cup. Discover how a mining village of less than 3,000 inhabitants became world champions but folded 36 years later. Football at its most raw and disorganised was a breeding ground for amazing stories, and Scotland's Lost Clubs captures some of the very best of them. It's essential reading for any Scottish football fan.

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Publié par	Pitch Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	18 octobre 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781801500289
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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First published by Pitch Publishing, 2021
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Jeffrey Webb, 2021
Every effort has been made to trace the copyright.
Any oversight will be rectified in future editions at the earliest opportunity by the publisher.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 9781785318627
eBook ISBN 9781801500289
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Contents
Introduction
1. Founding of the League
2. Renton
3. Vale of Leven
4. Third Lanark
5. Arthurlie
6. Cambuslang
7. Helensburgh
8. St Bernard s
9. King s Park
10. Cowlairs
11. Abercorn
12. Airdrieonians
13. Leith Athletic
14. Clydebank
15. Dundee Wanderers
16. Armadale
17. Edinburgh City
18. Gretna
19. West of Scotland Clubs
20. South of Scotland Clubs
21. East of Scotland Clubs
22. Current Clubs
Bibliography
To Claudine and Vienna. Thank you so much for putting up with me being physically attached to my laptop for what feels like years. Also, thanks to Paul and Jane at Pitch for being so understanding about my what feels like never-ending delays. Finally, thanks to Spence and Andy for putting up with me moaning about word counts at every pint we had, and to the guys at Forgotten Clubs, Phil and Ross especially, without whom I don t think I d ever have had the belief in myself to go out and write an actual book.
Introduction
THE THINKING behind this book was simple. I absolutely love Scotland and Scottish football. Scotland is a country of massive extremes: the schemes, tenements and industrial smog of Glasgow and the Central Belt at the one extreme, and the unending beauty of the Highlands and islands at the other. It has a history of being unsure of itself, even before the Crowns of England and Scotland came together. Scotland until 1998 was even more uneasy; it had no parliament and the only stage it would be able to show itself on as something separate was through its sport. This meant that in Scotland, more so than anywhere else, football players became the folk heroes. The footballer became the same to Scotland as a bullfighter is to Spain, as a tenor is to Italy and as an actor is to the USA. He became a true working-class hero.
After 1603 when the English handed their throne over to King James VI of Scotland, things changed. The people had lost their king, and even though in Scotland loyalties had always been a mix of ancient agreements and friendships that had lasted centuries, the House of Stuart had ruled Scotland since 1371.
In 1603 when the English invited King James VI to London to take the throne, things looked as if they were about to change, with peace being brought between the two kingdoms as they would both be viewed as equals. However, things are never black and white when it comes to these two countries. When the Scots waved away their king in 1603, none would have believed it would take until 1633 for them to see him again. In fact, it wasn t even their king anymore; King James VI of Scotland soon became King James I of England, and history now remembers him solely as that. In 1625, King James VI died and was replaced by his second son Charles.
King Charles I, who was born in Dunfermline Palace in 1600, hadn t visited Scotland since his early childhood. He was declared King of Scotland, England and Ireland in 1625, although he was only crowned King of England and Ireland in that year, because the Scots refused to send Scottish Crown Jewels to London for the coronation. Finally, after eight years of negotiations, which mostly consisted of the King demanding the jewels be sent to London and the Scottish Parliament saying no they won t, an agreement was reached for the King to come to Edinburgh to be crowned King of Scotland. When in 1633 King Charles I came to Edinburgh it was a nation that was a lot poorer than the one he had left, but also one that was more curious. Scotland had throughout its history learned to live without a king and it kept plodding along just fine. As Charles made his way along the Royal Mile to St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh, he was a matter of great interest to the people lining the route. Things were uneasy from the start as the Scottish nobles were feeling pushed aside and viewed as an inconvenience by the King, which led to a tense coronation. To add to this, Charles demanded that the ceremony use the Anglican rite rather than the traditional ceremony the Scots had carried out for over a century.
Soon after the ceremony in 1633, King Charles fell out with the Scottish Parliament. This wasn t uncommon with Charles, but in 1637 things took a turn. The King ordered that all the kirks in Scotland should use a new prayer book, which was pretty much the English Book of Common Prayer . As the King hadn t consulted the Kirk or Parliament, this didn t go down as well as he had expected. There were riots in Edinburgh, Perth and Stirling. Ministers had rotten food, stones and faeces thrown at them. One minister in a kirk outside Edinburgh managed to keep the peace by standing in his pulpit preaching with the help of two loaded pistols either side of the Bible. Finally, in November 1638, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland condemned the new prayer book and removed the bishops placed by the King from their posts.
This action led the King to start a war with the country of his birth because he feared his power was slipping. The Bishops War, as it became known, was a military disaster for the King. He had spent most of his own money to save having to recall Parliament. When he got to Berwick-upon-Tweed he became reluctant to go to battle, knowing how outnumbered his troops were and how determined the Scots were to defend their Church and heritage. Instead, the King signed the Treaty of North Berwick in which he strengthened his position as King of Scotland but also reaffirmed the strength of the Scottish Parliament and the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.
With the humiliating scaling down from the King during the Bishops War and subsequent fallout, the wheels were in motion for the English Civil War between a king who believed he ruled directly from God and a parliament that had barely been called during his reign. When things finally came to a head in 1642, the Scots raised an army to support their king. They fought at the opening exchanges in the Battle of Powick Bridge, just outside the city of Worcester, in September 1642. When on 30 January 1649 King Charles I was beheaded for treason in London, the Scots straight away declared his son Charles II as King of Scotland. The Scots again came to their king s aid when he needed to raise an army. This army was defeated at the Battle of Worcester in September 1651, during which the Scots lost over 2,000 men. The King, after this defeat, escaped the city and went into exile until the restoration of 1660.
Even after everything the Kingdom of Scotland did for both Charles I and Charles II, it did the country no favours. By the time King Charles II died in 1685, Scotland was becoming increasingly isolated from Europe. When King James VII of Scotland and II of England came to the throne the world was a very difficult place. James was a committed Catholic, which was at direct odds with the Protestant views of the country. Finally, in 1688, William of Orange and his wife Mary were invited to take the throne. During the inevitable war that followed, William beat James at the Battle of the Boyne in 1691 to confirm his position.
In Scotland things were, as now, split. Most in the Lowlands were happy with this new Protestant king. However, in the Highlands an army was raised based on old loyalties to the House of Stuart. The army, which won the Battle of Killiecrankie, was soon defeated by a much smaller force at the Battle of Dunkeld. These two battles, as well as the massacre of Glencoe in 1692, made the country even more uneasy with the treatment it was receiving from this new king.
In 1695, with the country having limited capital and noticing that other European countries were making their wealth from colonies, Scotland tried to set up a colony in Panama. The Scottish government passed an act that created the Bank of Scotland to raise the funds required. This was an attempt to start an empire to allow the nation to become richer and more prosperous. However, it was always destined to fail. The ships that set sail were criminally unprepared and the people who sailed had no experience for the weather conditions they faced. For example, they took over 300 woollen undergarments for a colony on the equator, amongst countless other mistakes. Then came the English colonies in the area, which at the start promised to help the fledgling Scots; however, they quickly turned and left them to their fate.
The final nail in the coffin came in 1699 when the Scots took to raiding Spanish ships in the area. This led to the Spanish raising a force of 500 men to take the lands the Scots held. When they marched in, they found that the land was all but abandoned and of the 2,000 settlers that left Leith in 1695 only 150 would see their homeland again. Most had fallen to disease. As a result, the colony was officially abandoned in 1699. This failure had cost Scotland half a million pounds at the time, effectively bankrupting the country to su