Stirling Albion Football Club was established in 1945. The club’s formation was tied closely to the end of the Second World War and the dissolution of an earlier Stirling-based club, King’s Park FC (1875). King’s Park were members of the Scottish Football League from 1931 until 1939. In 1940, their home ground, Forthbank Park, was bombed by the Luftwaffe and King’s Park never played again.
After the war, coal magnate and former managing director of King’s Park, Tom Fergusson, purchased the Annfield Estate in Stirling, developing the site as a new football ground and establishing a new football club, Stirling Albion. This new club was accepted into the Scottish Football League for the 1946/47 season and has remained there ever since.
For the first two decades of their existence, Stirling Albion hopped between the top and second tiers, earning the unfortunate nickname, ‘the Yo-Yos’. The club has never soared to especially great heights, their best finish being 12th in the top tier in the 1958/59 season. To date, the 1967/68 season was Stirling Albion’s last spell in top flight football.
The club’s first badge consisted of a rendering of the Stirling coat of arms, composed primarily of a Saltire and lion rampant within a shield. This badge was used from 1961 until 1964. In 1966, Stirling Albion became the first British club to tour Japan. During this tour, a new badge was designed for the club’s blazers. Annfield House, the club’s offices and changing rooms, formed the centrepiece of this badge. Rather humorously, this badge also featured a yo-yo running through its centre. In 1987, the club began to use this badge on their kits.
In 1993, the club left Annfield for a new stadium, called Forthbank after King’s Park FC’s Forthbank Park. The badge featuring Annfield House remained until 2000, when the current badge was chosen as its replacement. The centrepiece of this badge consists of the National Wallace Monument atop Abbey Craig, with the Ochil Hills in the background.
Although the Wallace Monument is a striking structure, being neither ancient (built between 1861 and 1869) nor very central, I find its inclusion to be relatively unrepresentative of both Stirling and the football club. I opted to stay away from a depiction of an architectural landmark and instead, I designed a modern monogram of the club’s initials. The wide-set ‘A’ resembles a set of goals, while the ‘S’ cradles a football into the net (or is it being saved by the keeper?). I decided to keep the red and black colour scheme of the current badge, though, on my kit renderings, the monogram is displayed in one colour.
The home kit is inspired by the classic Stirling Albion home kits from the late 1950s through the mid-1960s, particularly the home kit from the 1964/65 season. The away kit is inspired primarily by the handsome Macron 2015/16 away kit. On this kit, the monogram is presented in yellow on the dark blue field.
As ever, I am indebted to Dave at Historical Football Kits for some of the historical information used above.
Queen’s Park Football Club was established in 1867, making it the oldest football club in Scotland. It can be argued that no single club has had such an influence on the game of football in Britain—and in turn, the world—than Queen’s Park. They invented the passing game (as opposed to the tactic of a ‘rolling-maul’ like that used in rugby, the primary tactic employed by all other football clubs of this early era), as well as the crossbar on goals, the half-time interval and free kicks.
Peterhead Football Club was established in 1891 by a number of local football enthusiasts. The passion of this young club caught the attention of the town’s Feuars Managers and a plot of land was gifted to the club within Peterhead’s Raemoss Park. Recreation Park, as it this original home ground was called, opened that same year. Although the stage was set for competition, Peterhead would have to wait until their admittance into the small Aberdeenshire Football Association (consisting of only six sides) in 1900 before playing competitive football.
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