First seen in that excellent football fanzine, ‘View from the Allotment End’ produced by the fine chaps at North Ferriby FC
100 years ago, the Scottish Football League decided, after reforming and expanding their division 2, that the time was right for a further expansion. How wrong they were…
Back in the early years of football, leagues were springing up all the time as more clubs came into being. In England, the FA Cup had held sway as the premier competition, many clubs not holding with such competitions as leagues, before in 1888, 12 northern clubs formed the Football League.
Scottish football clubs had seen this and in 1890, started their own league, the Scottish Football League. By 1893, there were two divisions, each of 10 clubs and by the time WW1 broke out, there were 34 teams within the competition, 20 in the topflight and 14 in the lower. One curiosity was that there was no automatic promotion to Division 1, it had to be applied for through election at the end of season AGM, meaning the SFL could control who was taking part.
During the war, the league had reverted to a one division format with Division 2 not being run but around 1921, the SFL decided to expand the competition back to a two division one after having its organisational nose bloodied by the fledgling Central League.
This League had come about after the SFL had disbanded Division 2 in June 1919, leaving those clubs, 13 in number, feeling betrayed over the decision. As a result, the clubs set up the Central League in direct competition to the SFL. As the league was outside of the Inter-League Board, and not affiliated to the Scottish FA, Scottish League players could join the Central League clubs without a fee being paid.
As the crowds grew for the Central League clubs, the SFL chose to wait and see if it was just a flash in the pan. However, as the fans kept going to see the biggest names, the SFL had to make a decision and thus compromise their stance, which they did in 1921 by re-forming the second division and introducing automatic relegation and promotion. A number of the Central League clubs were then found places, with the players poached during the boom years required to return to their original clubs.
This settled the football landscape down and no doubt the SFL committee patted themselves on the back at having come up with a solution to the problem of the Central League.
However, just two years later, this self-same committee then had what might be termed a fit of madness by proposing the formation of a Third Division, with a mass of conditions attached to membership. These included only associate membership of the league and no voting rights, entry into the Qualifying Cup and a minimum match guarantee of £15 (payable to the visiting club), this payment would increase to half the gate where receipts exceeded £40.
The League chose to extend invitations to many of the clubs in the settled Western League, clubs like Nithsdale Wanderers, from Sanquhar in Dumfries and Galloway. Sanquhar was essentially still a village in the 1920s, and even now the population wouldn’t be estimated above around 1,900, so it would have been so much less then.
What also must be remembered is that at this time the Scottish economy was on a downturn following WW1, which had provided plenty of much needed employment across the country. With the conflict ending, this boom had faded away and times were getting harder. The SFL then sowed the seeds of the division’s demise by setting a much too high minimum admission tariff of 1 shilling for adults and sixpence for boys.
Considering the level and quality of football on offer, this was clearly above what was reasonable, and given the wages in many of the townships invited, it would’ve been a considerable proportion of a weekly wage.
However, the new division completed its first season, and on the surface, it looked like it could all work out. Going beneath the surface though, it was clear that some of the clubs were finding life tough, and it all stemmed from the high admittance tariff.
Attendances in the third division were, in the main, recorded in the hundreds, and it was seldom that a four-figure gate was announced, like what steps 3 and 4 receive in today’s English pyramid. From these paltry attendances, clubs had to find the previously mentioned match guarantee, money to pay the players, cover transport costs (clubs from SW Scotland being expected to travel to Glasgow, Edinburgh and into Fife and Angus to fulfil fixtures) and keep their grounds maintained.
Do you see where it’s all going?
However, the 1924-25 season began as normal, Arthurlie and East Stirlingshire had been promoted to the 2nd division, with Vale of Leven and Lochgelly Utd dropping in the 3rd. In addition, Leith Athletic were elected to the division, having been one of the clubs being forced to leave the League in 1915.
The cracks were starting to appear behind the scenes in the 3rd division façade though, as more and more clubs found the low attendances and income (thanks to the League’s high stipulated admission tariff) not sufficient to allow these small township clubs to keep heads above water. They had done very well in the likes of the Western League, from where most had come, but the higher tier of football with increased responsibilities were proving to be a massive challenge for many.
Clubs tried to stimulate attendances by reducing their admittance prices below the League’s minimum price, with Vale of Leven & Galston receiving stern words from the League committee for setting the adult admittance at sixpence, which in truth, is probably where it should have been from the start. To meet the match guarantee of £15, given the 1 shilling admittance, this would mean a bare adult attendance of 300 to cover that alone, and given the deteriorating general economy in Scotland, it was becoming more and more evident that these figures would be met on fewer occasions.
By February 1925, the League could no longer hide the situation within Division 3 as Dumbarton Harp formally resigned from the League, having played their final match early in January against Dykehead, for which the gate receipts totalled just £7, not even half the sum required for the match guarantee. Two clubs in the town hadn’t worked out, which sensible observers could have foreseen, and so the Harp’s season was expunged from the records by the League.
They weren’t the only ones in serious trouble. In April, Galston weren’t even sure they could make it through the last few weeks to the end of season, but they managed to struggle on and complete their fixtures. The writing was starting to be clearly on the wall for the division and we’ll return to Galston later…
Tiny Nithsdale Wanderers were champions in this second season and no doubt they proudly took their place in the 2nd division, alongside fellow SW Scotland club Queen of the South.
These would be the last clubs to achieve promotion out of the slowly crumbling Division 3.
For the final season (ahem!), Forfar Athletic and Johnstone had been relegated down from the 2nd division and for one of them, there would be a salvation denied the others.
As the 1925–26 season unfolded, the general economic situation worsened further as the events leading up to the 1926 General Strike took place. The 3rd division was in effect a hollow shell, with more and more of the clubs having to make difficult choices. In one example, the match between Dykehead and Montrose generated only £2 in gate receipts… but the league insisted the match guarantee of £15 be paid.
In January, Galston wrote to the SFL with their resignation, citing finance as being the main reason, with the admission if it hadn’t been for ‘the efforts of an enterprising Supporters’ club’, it might well have happened sooner.
The whole house of cards then began to slowly collapse. Players at Vale of Leven went on strike over unpaid wages, clubs began to not travel to fixtures that involved sizeable travel distance and a proportion of the Division 3 clubs declared that they were not prepared to compete in any 3rd division the following season.
By the end of April, you didn’t need to be a student of Nostradamus to see the way it was all going to turn out, and the weekly Sunday Post newspaper summed up the feeling of most in a rather pithy sentence,
‘The feeling in football circles grows that in Scotland, a Third Division is almost an absurdity, a waste of time, money and energy, and that local leagues, run at quarter the cost, should be revived.’
In the end, the Post declared, ‘it is time the Third Division of the League was dead. It does not deserve to be alive. Many of its members would like to see it done for.’
Despite this, those clubs that could play matches continued to do so, and Helensburgh led the table when it became clear that all the possible fixtures that could be played had done so. They were the only club who had managed to compete all their 30 fixtures and so, as a result, the League decreed, as per the competition rules, that there would be no championship flag for the division, plus no promotion from or relegation to Division 3.
A small committee of division secretaries had been authorised to meet with the SFL to discuss options for any competition for the following season during that spring of 1926.
One of the club secretaries supplied evidence that every club in the 3rd division had paid more in for travelling than some in the 1st division, and this was one of main reasons so many clubs were in dire financial straits, which the high gate price had clearly been a factor.
There was talk of breaking up the 3rd division, and with some 2nd division clubs, regionalising into South & West and North & East divisions; the League themselves suggested a combination of the 3rd Division and Scottish Alliance League to create a regional competition.
In the end, though, the division was just wound up ignominiously, with only Forfar Athletic getting a crumb of comfort, winning the re-election ballot, as many felt they would have been most likely to have been champions as they still had a couple of games unplayed on Helensburgh, and being three points behind.
Sixteen clubs, despatched from the league, all because of the SFL’s mismanagement and mistakes, and they ended up joining an expanded Scottish Football Alliance league, a league mainly composed of First Division reserve sides. Later on, a handful of the clubs who lost their membership eventually found their way back into the League system, Brechin City, Leith Athletic and Montrose.
After one season of the Alliance, the clubs then tried to found another league, the Provincial League, but this collapsed after just one season, and most of the clubs involved then managed to find local leagues. For some though, this was the end of the road, Johnstone were wound up in 1927, Dykehead in 1928.
Perhaps for these clubs, it might have been better that the League Committee had never had the idea of a 3rd division, and there’s no wonder that the whole episode is one that the Scottish Football League might wish had never happened.
Original league members
Arthurlie (Barrhead, Glasgow), Beith (Ayrshire), Brechin City (Angus), Clackmannan (Tayside and Fife), Dumbarton Harp (West Dumbartonshire), Dykehead (Shotts, Lanarkshire), East Stirlingshire (Falkirk), Galston (Ayrshire), Helensburgh (Argyll & Bute), Mid-Annandale (Lockerbie), Montrose (Angus), Nithsdale Wanderers (Sanquhar, Dumfries & Galloway), Peebles Rovers (Scottish Borders), Queen of the South (Dumfries), Royal Albert (Larkhall, South Lanarkshire), Solway Star (Annan, Dumfries & Galloway).
Hurlford were invited but did not reply, the club being ultimately dissolved in 1924.
Vale of Leven (Alexandria, West Dumbartonshire), Lochgelly Utd (Fife), Leith Athletic (Edinburgh), came into the division for the 1924-25 season.
Forfar Athletic (Angus), Johnstone (Renfrewshire) came into the division for the 1925-26 season.
Johnstone should not be confused with St Johnstone, who are from Perth.
Football - as I see it 