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Leith Athletic
Football Club (1887 to 1954)
The original Leith Athletic
were founded in June 1887 following a public meeting in premises in the
Kirkgate with the main aim to give the then independent town of Leith its own
‘Senior’ team that the best players with the numerous local ‘Junior’ and
‘Juvenile’ sides could aspire to join in order to challenge the other ‘Senior’
sides in the city – Hibs, Hearts and St Bernard’s. Other than a couple of enforced breaks during
part of both World Wars, the “Zebras”, so called because of their black and
white vertical striped shirts, represented Leith with pride, experiencing both
joy and heartbreak in the 67 years they were in existence before finally
calling it a day in 1954, mainly for financial reasons but betrayed too, not
for the first time either, by the Scottish football authorities.
Their first ever game was a
Scottish Cup tie away to Bo’ness on 3 September 1887 which resulted in a 1-4
defeat. The club’s first home was the
newly opened Hawkhill Recreation Grounds just off Lochend Road. In these days the club’s fixture list, other
than the Scottish Cup, consisted only of friendlies and local cup ties but for
season 1891/92 Athletic were invited to join the fledgling Scottish League,
then about to enter its’ second season with an increase from 10 to 12 clubs and
they finished a very creditable fourth.
Hawkhill remained the club’s
rented home for their first two seasons but they got a home of their own for
the start of the 1889/90 season when they made the short move to the other side
of Lochend Road to Bank Park which was accessed from a footpath that ran along
the side of the Eastern Cemetery from Easter Road. The club won the prestigious Rosebery Charity
Cup in 1890/91, beating Hearts 3-2 in the final at Logie Green and that result
made people sit up and notice as it was the same Hearts team that had won the
Scottish Cup earlier in the season.
Athletic were on the move
again in time for the start of the 1894/95 season to Beechwood Park. In actual fact, the move was once again a
very short one as the new ground was almost on the same footprint of land but
with the pitch turned round by 90 degrees to now run north to south and moved
by about fifty yards north with an entrance on Lochend Road. It was around this time that the club started
to be referred to by the nickname of the ‘Zebras’ on account of their black and
white striped shirts. Sadly though,
there was an unhappy ending to the Zebras first season at Beechwood Park as
they failed to get re-elected to Division 1 after finishing second bottom and
they were replaced by Division 2 winners Hibs.
The club remained in the
second tier of Scottish football up until the end of season 1914/15 but
ground-wise they continued to lead a nomadic existence. The building of a new branch line of the
North British Railway into Leith Central Station meant vacating Beechwood Park
at the end of the 1898/99 season but there was some consolation with the
securing of the Rosebery Charity Cup for a second time and again it was Hearts
who fell, 1-0, in the final at Logie Green.
It was back to their original home of Hawkhill for the next two seasons
and 1900/01 brought the club’s only East of Scotland Shield success, seeing off
Hearts 3-2 in the final played at Easter Road.
Not for the first time,
Athletic found themselves in serious financial difficulties as the start of the
1901/02 season approached and their failure to negotiate a new lease at Hawkhill
was swiftly followed by the club, which had become a Limited Company in June
1893, going into liquidation. The Leith
public rallied round their club though and a hastily arranged public meeting
led to a new committee being formed. The
new committee acted quickly and were able to persuade the Scottish League to
allow the newly constituted club entry into the League and they even managed to
negotiate a delayed start to their Division 2 fixtures to enable them to try to
secure a home ground. Near neighbours
Hibs came to the rescue and allowed Athletic to play their early season
fixtures at Easter Road before they were able to secure a lease on a piece of
land in the Powderhall area from the Heriot Trust to play on from November.
Their new ground became known as Logie Green but was a completely different
ground to the original Logie Green, venue of the 1896 Scottish Cup final
between Hibs and Hearts, which had disappeared after the area was developed and
built on.
The Logie Green years
initially saw the reconstituted club grow and develop and season 1905/06
brought the club double success – a first winning of the Scottish Qualifying
Cup, beating Beith 2-0 in the final at Clyde’s Shawfield ground, was followed
up by finishing as Scottish League Division 2 Champions. Once again though the fates were against the
Athletic, promotion was not automatic in those days and sadly they couldn’t
muster enough votes at the Scottish League AGM to bring a return to Division 1
and that despite the Division being increased from 16 to 18 clubs.
Season 1909/10 saw Athletic
again finish at the top of Division 2 but this time on the same number of
points as Raith Rovers and the League declared both clubs to be ‘Joint
Champions’. Yet again though there was
no joy at the League AGM and it was Raith Rovers who secured the required votes
to gain elevation to Division 1. There
was some consolation though with a second win in the Scottish Qualifying Cup,
beating Bathgate 4-0 in the final at Easter Road.
Season 1914/15 brought a three-way
tie at the top of the League but in a round-robin play-off Cowdenbeath emerged
as Champions over Athletic and Edinburgh rivals St Bernards. The following season saw Division 2 disbanded
for the duration of World War 1 – Athletic took part in the Eastern League in
1915/16 but it was not a financial success and the club took the decision to
close down for the duration of hostilities. There were some attempts to
resurrect the club in time for the 1919/20 season but it wasn’t until the
following season that the Athletic took to the field again and that was for
friendlies and cup ties only as they failed to gain entry to any League
competition. Home now was Chancelot Park
just off Ferry Road and there was some success with the winning of the East of
Scotland Consolation Cup, beating Coldstream 1-0 in the final played at Union
Park, Berwick.
May 1921 brought yet another
disappointment from the Scottish League when Athletic’s application to rejoin
Division 2 was rejected and rather strangely the club decided to take part in
the Western League in season 1921/22 which meant games against opponents from
the West of Scotland including Ayrshire.
Early season home games were played at Hawthorn’s Recreation Ground in
the Wardie area but the club switched back to Chancelot Park from
November. The Scottish League AGM in May
brought yet another rejection for the club’s latest application to join
Division 2 and this time they elected to take part in the Eastern League for season
1922/23 – ever the nomads, the club actually had several homes during the
season, playing games at Chancelot Park, Wardie Park, Easter Road and Bathgate
Park, just off New Street in the Canongate. The club won the King Cup for the
one and only time, beating Berwick Rangers 2-1 in the final at Tynecastle.
Athletic were invited to join
the newly-formed Division 3 in 1923/24 but instead elected to join the Scottish
Alliance which meant all their League opposition consisted of the Reserve XI’s
of Division 1 clubs with Wardie Park once again the club’s home. It was all change yet again in 1924/25 –
Athletic had a change of mind and joined Division 3 and on the ground front
there was a return to Logie Green.
Logie Green had in the main
been a happy home for the Athletic and season 1925/26 brought another Scottish
Qualifying Cup victory, beating Solway Star 3-1 in the final played at St
Mirren Park, Paisley. Athletic finished
runners-up in Division 3 but yet again there was disappointment at the Scottish
League AGM – a number of clubs had failed to play all their fixtures and the
Scottish League ruled that automatic promotion could not apply. Athletic were
denied promotion to Division 2 on the casting vote of the Chairman and just to
add insult to injury it was Forfar Athletic, who had finished in third place
who got the vote and even worse, Division 3 was then disbanded.
So, season 1926/27 saw
Athletic return to the Scottish Alliance, starting off at Logie Green but then
moving to Powderhall from January. The end of the season brought joy at the Scottish
League AGM for once though with Athletic winning the vote over Nithsdale
Wanderers to gain a place in Division 2 for 1927/28. The club continued to call
Powderhall it’s home but the ground wasn’t always available and some games were
played at St Bernard’s Royal Gymnasium ground in Stockbridge plus one Scottish
Cup tie at Easter Road.
It was on the move again for
1928/29, this time to Marine Gardens at Seafield, now the site of the LRT Bus
depot. It was the biggest of Athletic’s
many homes but with little cover for spectators it could be a very cold and wet
ground and another drawback was that there was no direct bus or tram service
from Leith. On the field though things
were going well and 1929/30 saw Athletic snatch the Division 2 title from East
Fife on goal average – both clubs were promoted to Division 1. Athletic found it hard going back in the top
division, finishing 17th in 1930/31 and then bottom of the heap in
1931/32 to slide back into Division 2.
There was some consolation at the season’s end though with Athletic
securing another victory in the Rosebery Charity Cup, beating Hearts 2-1 in the
final at Tynecastle.
The club continued their
Division 2 existence at Marine Gardens for the next few seasons but dwindling
crowds were, as ever, causing increasing financial difficulties and they were
desperate to secure a more central ground. In May 1936 the Council granted the club
a lease at Meadowbank – at that time, Meadowbank consisted of two grounds, one
known as New Meadowbank was basically an athletics ground albeit with a
football pitch in the middle and situated roughly where today’s Meadowbank
stadium is; the other, known as Old Meadowbank, was situated just fifty yards
or so towards Jock’s Lodge and consisted of a well-worn football pitch with
changing rooms which was used by various Juvenile sides.
Throughout the summer of 1936,
club officials, greatly assisted by members of the Leith Athletic Supporters’
Club, worked tirelessly on the ground, laying a new pitch on top of 400 tons of
top soil. Attendances improved and
season 1938/39 brought another Rosebery Charity Cup victory, this time with a
2-0 win over Hearts in the final at Easter Road. World War 2 was just over the horizon though
and League football was abandoned just 4 games into the 1939/40 season. The club tried to continue with friendlies
but didn’t play any games from November onwards until the end of season
Rosebery Charity Cup in May.
The club didn’t operate at all
during 1940/41 and an attempt to recommence in 1941/42 by playing in the North
Eastern League proved a financial disaster and the decision was taken to give
up playing until the cessation of hostilities.
In one way the decision was forced upon the club though, with the Army
commandeering Old Meadowbank for use as a supply and transport depot. It would
be season 1946/47 before Athletic would take to the field again and the
Scottish League, as seemed to frequently be the case, had a nasty surprise in
store for the club – instead of restoring them to Division 2, as had been
promised when League football was abandoned in 1939, Athletic were placed in
Division C, the third tier, where some of the competing sides were the Reserve
XI’s of Division A clubs. Just to compound the difficulties the club faced they
had to restart life at New Meadowbank as their Old Meadowbank ground had
effectively been destroyed by all the heavy Army transport vehicles using it
during the War.
The end of the 1946/47 season
brought yet another twist with Athletic, along with Cowdenbeath, voted into
Division B for season 1947/48. There was more good news when the club
negotiated a new 10 year lease of Old Meadowbank and secured compensation from
the Army for the damage done during the war.
Once again the Supporters’ Club supplied much of the labour in the
rebuilding of the ground during the summer months – a new pitch was laid, new
terracing was built and St Bernard’s old stand from the Royal Gymnasium ground
was dismantled and then rebuilt at Old Meadowbank. The journey to the heady heights of Division
B didn’t last long however and Athletic returned to Division C for the 1948/49
season which brought a victory in the Scottish Qualifying Cup South, with a 3-2
win over Montrose at Recreation Park, Alloa.
By then, Old Meadowbank also boasted a speedway track and the ground
also became home to the Edinburgh Monarchs speedway team.
The Scottish Qualifying Cup
South was retained in 1949/50, this time with a 5-2 win over Brechin City at
Annfield, Stirling. The Scottish League
AGM in June 1950 brought the now almost taken as the norm bad news for the club
when a proposal to increase Division B from 16 to 20 clubs, by promoting the four
‘League’ as opposed to Reserve XI sides playing in Division C, was narrowly
defeated in a vote. It was a cause Leith
Athletic would continue to lobby and campaign on as they remained aggrieved
that the promises given back by the Scottish League back in September 1939 had
been broken but they got little support – in truth, this latest setback was the
beginning of the end.
Division C football with the
majority of League fixtures being against Reserve XI’ s held little attraction
for supporters, unless the game was against Hibs or Hearts 2nd XI,
and dwindling crowds and the resultant financial problems put the club’s very
future in doubt. Despite that though
they remained ambitious and in December 1952 Athletic installed floodlights at
Old Meadowbank, the first club in Edinburgh to do so and a crowd of 12,000
attended the first floodlit fixture, an East v West friendly on 13 January
1953. By that time though the Scottish
League Management Committee had already rejected the club’s application to play
their home fixtures under floodlight on a Friday night to avoid clashing with
Hibs and Hearts games and maybe attract along a few more spectators. Opposing clubs were willing but the Scottish
League saw no future in football being played under floodlights.
If the club had gambled and
lost with their floodlight initiative their next confrontation with the
Scottish League was to prove disastrous.
In an effort to force the League’s intransigence over the 1939 broken
promise Athletic refused to take part in Division C for season 1953/54. When the club refused to back down they were
expelled from the Scottish League and the threats of legal action fell on deaf
ears. They were able to initially retain
their SFA membership though and in the hope that a good Cup run or even just a
plum draw against a big club might give them the necessary finance to restart
the following season, Athletic entered the Scottish Cup, giving the SFA an
undertaking they would compete no matter the draw. Not for the first time though ‘Lady Luck’
wasn’t smiling and the draw brought a long trip to Highland League side
Fraserburgh. The Directors, assisted by an honorary manager in the shape of the
Scottish Players’ Union Secretary, arranged three trial matches in early
January and managed to cobble together a team from non-contract players and
free transfers and they put up a battling display before going down by
4-5. The financial gamble had failed and
the cost of the trip, including an overnight stay in Aberdeen, actually
resulted in a loss. The pain of defeat
can only have been compounded when the next round draw brought Fraserburgh a
home tie against Hearts which, had it been Athletic’s tie at Old Meadowbank,
might just have generated enough income to keep the club alive.
The club still retained their
SFA membership and again entered the Scottish Cup for 1954/55 but after drawing
Selkirk in a preliminary round they scratched from the competition and that
action led to the loss of their SFA membership.
The club went into voluntary liquidation on 17 May 1955 but there was
one final sting in the tail – at the Scottish League AGM just a few weeks later
the members voted for League reorganization and the non-reserve clubs from
Division C found themselves voted into Division B for the new season. It was what Leith Athletic had campaigned for
since football restarted after the War but it had come just too late to save
the club but no one could doubt that the proud old club from the Port had
fought valiantly throughout its’ life against one setback after another and in
doing so surely upheld the Port’s motto of “Persevere”.
There were a couple of failed
attempts to revive the club over the years and then in 1996 the famous old name
of Leith Athletic was back as the club was reformed at youth level and the
black and white striped jerseys were seen in the old Port again. The club grew
from strength to strength at youth level and then in 2008 a tie-up with
Edinburgh Athletic saw the name of Leith Athletic back in the senior ranks of
the East of Scotland League for the start of the 2008/09 season.
Interestingly,
when Ger Freedman, now the club’s Honorary Chairman, reconstituted the Leith
Athletic FC name there was a visitor to the Links for a presentation that
provides a timeline from the current club through to the original club’s early
years. David Dalziel, born and raised in
Leith, had played for the club, at outside-right, from 1948 to 1954 and he
played in the original club’s last game, a Scottish Cup tie at Fraserburgh in
January 1954. After retiring from
playing he became a very successful businessman, owning a well-known local
garage, while staying involved in the game as a scout with Hibs in the 60’s,
where he is credited with spotting the likes of Peter Marinello and Alex
Cropley, then at Hearts in the 70’s, where his spots included Eamonn Bannon and
John Robertson. He became very involved
with Juvenile football and in 1980 he was made Honorary President of the
Association of Scottish Youth Football. His father, Andrew, had also played for
the club, at outside-left, from 1923 to 1925 and he later became a Director of
the club. On that visit back in 1996 David marked his family’s long and proud
connection with the name of Leith Athletic and linked the old to the new by
presenting the new club with the beautiful antique club document stamp, used
for players’ contracts and legal documents, which dates back to the early
1900’s with the original Leith Athletic and which remains proudly on display
today in the club’s trophy cabinet at Leith Links.
LEITH
ATHLETIC FC
Honours
Original Club
– 1887 to 1954:
Scottish
League, Division 2 (3): 1906/06,
1909/10 (Joint), 1929/30.
Scottish
Qualifying Cup (3): 1905/06,
1909/10. 1925/26.
Scottish
Qualifying Cup – South (2): 1948/49,
1949/50.
East of Scotland
Shield (1): 1900/01.
East of
Scotland Consolation Cup (1): 1920/21.
East of
Scotland (‘City’) Cup (6): 1913/14,
1921/22, 1926/27, 1928/29, 1935/36, 1936/37.
King Cup (1): 1922/23.
Rosebery
Charity Cup (4): 1890/91, 1898/99,
1931/32, 1938/39.
2nd
XI Scottish Cup (2): 1891/92,
1892/93.
2nd
XI Edinburgh Cup (1): 1892/93.
Reformed Club
– 2008 to date.
East of
Scotland League (1): 2015/16.
East of
Scotland League Cup (1): 2014/15;
Alex Jack Cup
(5): 2009/10, 2012/13, 2013/14, 2014/15;
2015/16.
King Cup (2): 2015/16, 2016/17.