History of Stirling Albion F.C.

History of Stirling Albion F.C.

This section of Rave On Line brings you the history of Stirling Albion football Club, since their foundation in 1945. If you have any further questions on the history of the Binos then contact the Stirling Albion Programme Editor, and life long supporter, Allan Grieve, by E-mail.

The Binos story begins in 1945. Kings Park FC had been the town's representative in the Scottish League between the wars, having been admitted in 1921 and doggedly clinging to membership of the Second Division until the League closed down in 1939. The old club, won precisely nothing during its league career, although it's name does appear on the Stirlingshire Cup, which it lifted four times in the early years of the century.

King's Park struggled away in the wartime leagues for a year, but it's existence was effectively ended by a German bomb which fell on it's Old Forthbank ground in July 1940. Ironically, only two bombs fell on Stirling in the entire war, but this one demolished the Forthbank grandstand, flattened part of the terracing, and left an 18-foot deep crater in the pitch. Understandably, the club closed down, and when hostilities ended, those parties interested in re-kindling football in Stirling decided against re-starting the old King's Park, preferring instead to create a new club based at a new park they had acquired from the Annfield estate, a stone's throw away from the old Forthbank.

The chairman, Tom Ferguson, a local coal merchant, was one of the great characters of Scottish football, and, despite having only one leg (the result of another German shell, this one having hit him during the First World War) he kept his club in the news through thick and thin for over 20 years, until his death in 1967. There was rather more thin than thick, though, as the club established the yoyo reputation that still haunts it today. Try to follow this roller coaster, if you can...

Promotion in 1949 was followed by relegation the very next year; then promotion again in 1951; followed by relegation yet again in 1952; then promotion yet again this time as Champions, in 1953. Three seasons of First Division security ended with relegation, once more, in 1956, only for promotion to be achieved just two years later.

Relegated in 1960, the Binos bounced back, again as Champions, within a year, only to down again in 1962. Finishing rock bottom of the Second Division in 1964, the glory years seemed to be over, but, astonishingly, the Annfield club won the Championship the very next year, to gain a three-year spell in the top league, ended by a dismal last place in 1968.

The club appointed Bob Shankly as manager in 1971; in one of those weird football coincidences, this meant that Bob was managing at Annfield, while his brother, Bill, was managing another club playing in red, at the somewhat larger Anfield (with just one 'n') down on Merseyside.

Bob was long gone, though, by the time Albion regained their First Division status in 1977, and this time they lasted a whole four years before the inevitable happened. The 'yoyo' was slowing down, and the club spent ten long seasons in the Second Division, enlivened only be a century's record 20-0 win over Selkirk in the Scottish Cup, before scrambling back up in 1991, only to find itself relegated yet again in the league reconstruction of 1994. Undaunted, and buoyed up by a move to a new Stadium, they came up as Champions two years later, with Steve McCormack winning the Second Division Player of the Year award, only to slip back again two years later, and then disastrously, to fall into the Third Division in 2001. But 2004 finds the Albion in better fettle, as they've cruised to promotion once again, narrowly missing out on the championship.