association football
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 Football player, players who almost exclusively use their feet to propel a Ball (association football), ball around a rectangular f ...
club from
Ayr
Ayr ( ; ; , meaning "confluence of the River Àir"), is a town situated on the southwest coast of Scotland. A former royal burgh, today it is the administrative centre of South Ayrshire Council, and the historic county town of Ayrshire. With ...
,
Ayrshire
Ayrshire (, ) is a Counties of Scotland, historic county and registration county, in south-west Scotland, located on the shores of the Firth of Clyde. The lieutenancy areas of Scotland, lieutenancy area of Ayrshire and Arran covers the entirety ...
, Scotland.
History
The club was founded in 1885, originally with 30 members, but within a year had grown to 70, which made it nearly as big as Ayr F.C. The club was not related to an earlier Ayr Rovers which played at Robbsland Park and which disbanded in 1881.
Soon after the club's foundation, it joined the
Scottish Football Association
The Scottish Football Association (; also known as the Scottish FA and the SFA) is the governing body of football in Scotland and has the ultimate responsibility for the control and development of football in Scotland. Members of the SFA incl ...
, and entered the
1885–86 Scottish Cup
The 1885–86 Scottish Cup was the 13th season of Scotland's most prestigious football knockout competition. Queen's Park won the competition for the eighth time after they beat defending champions Renton 3–1 in the final.
Arbroath set a wor ...
. Indeed the club's first recorded match was its first round tie with Dalry, which the club scheduled to take place after the Ayr v
Maybole
Maybole (, ) is a town and former burgh of barony and police burgh in South Ayrshire, Scotland. It had an estimated population of in . It is situated south of Ayr and southwest of Glasgow by the Glasgow and South Western Railway. The town is ...
tie on the same day had finished, hoping to attract spectators; however the weather militated against people wanting to watch two matches, and Dalry dismantled Rovers to the tune of 8 goals to 0. A mix-up with the wires had the score originally reported as a Rovers win.
The Rovers recovered enough to beat the Stevenson Dynamite in its first
Ayrshire Cup
The Ayrshire Cup was an annual association football regional competition in Scotland. The cup competition was a knockout tournament between football clubs in the historic county of Ayrshire. The Ayrshire Cup was first held in 1877–78, the tr ...
tie, albeit in a second replay at Monnkcastle, by 1–0, plus having two goals disallowed. In the second round, the Rovers hosted Ayr, whose players were distracted by a
Scottish Cup
The Scottish Football Association Challenge Cup,3rd Lanarkshire R.V. the following week, and who put in a "wretched" performance, but nevertheless were still good enough to beat the Rovers 2-0.
The club was given a boost at the start of 1886, when it received an invitation to enter the Ayr Charity Cup, after
Kilmarnock
Kilmarnock ( ; ; , ), meaning "the church of Mernóc", is a town and former burgh in East Ayrshire situated in southwest Scotland. The town has served as the administrative centre of East Ayrshire Council since 1996 and is the region's main ...
and Lugar Boswell turned down theirs. The club successfully protested its first round defeat by
Annbank
Annbank is a village in South Ayrshire, Scotland. It is around five miles east of Ayr. Originally a mining settlement, it once had a rail link to Ayr via the Auchincruive Waggonway.
Amenities
The village has a village hall, bakery, shop, bo ...
on the basis that Barbour had not been registered as an Annbank player for the required 6 weeks. The protest availed the Rovers little as Annbank won the replay at Springvale 5–0.
The club's performances gradually improved in 1886–87; it lost in the Scottish Cup once more to Dalry, although this time only by 5–2, in a tie which aroused next to no media interest. The club's performances in the county cup were more creditable, a walkover and a win over Kilmarnock Athletic putting the club into the quarter-finals, where it faced
Hurlford
Hurlford is a village in East Ayrshire, Scotland, situated on the outskirts of Kilmarnock, the largest and administrative centre of East Ayrshire and East Ayrshire Council. It has a population of 4,968. Hurlford's former names include Whirlfor ...
. Hurlford had beaten Kilmarnock in an earlier round, and Kilmarnock had put 7 and 12 past the Rovers in two friendlies that season. Rovers arranged the tie for New Year's Day 1887, which meant Hurlford refused to play as having already arranged a fixture, and Rovers claimed the tie. The Ayrshire FA ordered the tie to be played by the end of January, and the Rovers gained a surprising draw. Hurlford set matters right in the replay, scoring inside 3 minutes, turning around at half-time 5–0 up, and winning 7–0; the man of the match was Rovers' goalkeeper Dunbar, hailed as an "Ayrshire Macaulay".
Nevertheless, the Rovers were on an upward trajectory, winning 5–1 at Monkcastle in the Charity Cup, and beat Clyde in a friendly, shortly after the latter had beaten Ayrshire Cup holders Kilmarnock. The club's final match in the season was a defeat at
Kilbirnie
Kilbirnie () is a small town of 7,280 (as of 2001) inhabitants situated in the Garnock Valley area of North Ayrshire, on the west coast of Scotland. It is around southwest of Glasgow and approximately from Paisley, Renfrewshire, Paisley and ...
in the Charity Cup semi-final, and players competed in athletic sports over the summer.
However the increasing success appears to have proved fatal for the club. By the start of the 1887–88 season, "the majority of the team ha gone over to Ayr", with others to the new Ayr Thistle club, and the club did not renew its membership of the Scottish FA. The club had already entered the Ayrshire Cup and a side was got up to play a tie at
Irvine Irvine may refer to:
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*Irvine Glacier
* Mount Irvine (Antarctica)
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* Irvine Island
* Mount Irvine, New South Wales
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* Irvine, Alberta
* Irvine Inlet, Nunavut
Scotland
*Irvine, North Ayrshire, Scotlan ...
, which ended 6–1 to the home side. The club was definitively defunct by the start of the 1888–89 season, with goalkeeper Dunbar and back Simpson joining up with some former team-mates at the new Ayr Athletic.
Colours
The club wore black and white vertical stripes with white knickers.
Ground
The club's ground was Springvale Park in Midton Road.