football
Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...
club based in
Bellshill
Bellshill (pronounced "Bells hill") is a town in North Lanarkshire in Scotland, southeast of Glasgow city centre and west of Edinburgh. Other nearby localities are Motherwell to the south, Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, Hamilton to the south ...
,
Lanarkshire
Lanarkshire, also called the County of Lanark (; ), is a Counties of Scotland, historic county, Lieutenancy areas of Scotland, lieutenancy area and registration county in the Central Lowlands and Southern Uplands of Scotland. The county is no l ...
, Scotland.
History
The club was formed in August 1879.
It shares the distinction with Dean F.C. of
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 ...
Forfar
Forfar (; , ) is the county town of Angus, Scotland, and the administrative centre for Angus Council, with a new multi-million-pound office complex located on the outskirts of the town. As of 2021, the town had a population of 16,280.
The town ...
of having played 4
Scottish Cup
The Scottish Football Association Challenge Cup,1879–80: 1–2 at
Excelsior
Excelsior may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Literature and poetry
* "Excelsior" (Longfellow), an 1841 poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
* "Excelsior", an 1877 picture book in verse by Bret Harte, published as an advertisement for the Sa ...
Cambuslang
Cambuslang (, from ) is a town on the south-eastern outskirts of Greater Glasgow, Scotland. With approximately 30,000 residents, it is the 27th-largest town in Scotland by population, although, never having had a town hall, it may also be cons ...
; six goals came in the first half, when Cambuslang was kicking against the wind and the sun.
Four months into its first season, in November 1879, Bellshill was one of the 16 clubs which founded the Lanarkshire Football Association. Bellshill duly entered the first Lanarkshire Cup, but lost in the first round at
Shettleston
Shettleston (, ) is an area in the Glasgow#East End, east end of Glasgow in Scotland.
Toponymy
The origin of the name "Shettleston" is not clear and, like many place-names of possibly medieval origin, has had a multitude of spellings. A papal bu ...
, a Bellshill protest being dismissed.
In its first season, Bellshill had 30 members, which put it on par with clubs like Excelsior and Cambuslang. However, it did not participate in the 1881–82 season, as its players (including captain William Moody) and committee members had mainly been part of the junior Bellshill Daisy club. 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 ...
recorded the club as "dissolved," although upon Bellshill's return in 1882, it still claimed a foundation date of 1879.
That seems to have stalled the club, as, by 1883, Bellshill had not grown at all, but Cambuslang had 70 members and Excelsior (now called Airdrieonians) had 40. The size of the gap was shown by a 10–0 friendly defeat at Royal Albert in February 1883; four years earlier, the clubs had been of similar sizes, but the Royalists now had double the membership. The club did not pay its subscription to 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 ...
for 1884–85, being struck from the membership before the season started.
Colours
Bellshill originally played in cardinal and white, with white trousers. In 1882, it changed to -inch black-and-white hooped jerseys and white knickers.
Grounds
The club originally played at Bellshill Park, a 15-minute walk from Bellshill railway station, gaining its venue in 1880 at Viewhill Park, Muirmadkin Road.
Alpha
Alpha (uppercase , lowercase ) is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of one. Alpha is derived from the Phoenician letter ''aleph'' , whose name comes from the West Semitic word for ' ...