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.