Scarborough F.C.

This article is about the original football club in Scarborough, wound up in 2007. For the successor club, see Scarborough Athletic F.C.

Scarborough F.C.
Full nameScarborough Football Club Ltd
Nickname(s)Seadogs, Boro
Founded1879; 145 years ago (1879)
Dissolved2007; 17 years ago (2007)
GroundAthletic Ground
Capacity6,408
2006–07Conference North, 20th

Scarborough Football Club was a football club based in the seaside resort of Scarborough, North Yorkshire. They were one of the oldest football clubs in England, formed in 1879, before they were wound up on 20 June 2007, with debts of £2.5 million.[1] They played at the Athletic Ground from 1898 until the club's dissolution.

Scarborough formed in 1879 and entered the FA Cup for the first time in 1887. They entered the Northern League in 1898 and remained there for 28 years, apart from four seasons spent in the Yorkshire Combination from 1910 to 1914. They moved to the Yorkshire League in 1926 and switched to the Midland League the following year, being crowned as Midlands League champions in 1929–30. In 1960, they moved into the Northern Counties League, and would win the North Eastern League title in their only season in the division – 1962–63. Returning to the Midland League, they became founder members of the Northern Premier League in 1968. They won the FA Trophy on three occasions in the 1970s: 1973, 1975–76 and 1976–77, and were runners-up in 1974–75.

Scarborough were founder members of the Alliance Premier League (later named the Conference) in 1979 and in 1987 were the first team to secure automatic promotion to the Football League, which had been introduced for the 1986-87 season. They were relegated back down to the Conference in 1999, and then were relegated into the Conference North after entering administration in 2006. At the end of the 2006–07 season, Scarborough finished in 20th place, which would have resulted in their relegation to the Northern Premier League had the club not instead been liquidated. A new supporter-owned 'phoenix' club was established by the Seadog Trust under the banner Scarborough Athletic on 25 June 2007,[2] and one year later a second supporter-owned club, Scarborough Town, also came into existence, which itself folded in 2013.[3]

  1. ^ "Scarborough FC wound up after 128 years", Yorkshire Post, 20 June 2007
  2. ^ "Town's fans get new football club" – BBC Sport
  3. ^ New boys Town confirm Cook role Scarborough Evening News