association football
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is t ...
Lanarkshire
Lanarkshire, also called the County of Lanark ( gd, Siorrachd Lannraig; sco, Lanrikshire), is a historic county, lieutenancy area and registration county in the central Lowlands of Scotland.
Lanarkshire is the most populous county in Scot ...
, active in the late 19th century.
History
The club was formed in 1897, "from the ashes" of the Carfin Shamrock club. The media often referred to the club more simply as Carfin.
Rovers joined the
Scottish Football Association
The Scottish Football Association (also known as the SFA and the Scottish FA; sco, Scots Fitba Association; Scottish Gaelic: ''Comann Ball-coise na h-Alba'') is the governing body of football in Scotland and has the ultimate responsibility fo ...
that August, Its side for its first
Scottish Qualifying Cup
The Scottish Qualifying Cup was a football competition played in Scotland between 1895 and 2007. During that time, apart from a brief spell in the 1950s, it was the only way for non-league teams to qualify for the Scottish Cup. The Qualifying Cup ...
tie in 1897–98, at home to
Albion Rovers
Albion Rovers Football Club is a semi-professional football team from Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire, Scotland. They are members of the Scottish Professional Football League (SPFL) and play in Scottish League Two, the fourth tier of the Scot ...
, contained Hughie Clifford and William Mason, both of whom had been players at Shamrock, plus Thomas and Galloway, formerly of
Motherwell
Motherwell ( sco, Mitherwall, gd, Tobar na Màthar) is a town and former burgh in North Lanarkshire, Scotland, United Kingdom, south east of Glasgow. It has a population of around 32,120. Historically in the parish of Dalziel and part of Lana ...
. A good-tempered match ended 1–0 to the visitors.
Rovers bounced back from the defeat with its biggest competitive win - 13–0 in the Lanarkshire Cup, against Airdriehill - which put the club into the semi-final, against Motherwell, but the Steelmen had an easy time of it, winning 6–1.
Rovers only had one more season in senior football, and beat
Uddingston
Uddingston ( sco, Uddinstoun, gd, Baile Udain) is a small town in South Lanarkshire, Scotland. It is on the north side of the River Clyde, south-east of Glasgow city centre, and acts as a dormitory suburb for the city.
Geography and boundarie ...
in the second round in the Qualifying Cup (after walking over a "non est"
Blantyre
Blantyre () is Malawi's centre of finance and commerce, and its second largest city, with an enumerated 800,264 inhabitants . It is sometimes referred to as the commercial and industrial capital of Malawi as opposed to the political capital, Li ...
), but lost at Renton in the third, when a win would have put the club into the
Scottish Cup
The Scottish Football Association Challenge Cup,East Lanarkshire in its first round Lanarkshire Cup tie, the blame in part being put on a decision to go to Harthill by brake in windy conditions, which left the team not only unfit, but at a disadvantage in gauging the effect of the wind on an exposed and unfamiliar ground. The E.L. repeated the result when the clubs met in the Consolation Cup.
The club was also one of the five which formed part of the Lanarkshire Football Second League, scheduled for the latter half of the 1898–99 season, but which does not seem to have completed.
The club died as the result of a breakaway; perhaps notably, the club had changed secretary the previous season amid some rancour. The new club, Carfin Emmet, claimed it had the right to use Beechgrove Park. Rovers' last action was scratching to
Albion Rovers
Albion Rovers Football Club is a semi-professional football team from Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire, Scotland. They are members of the Scottish Professional Football League (SPFL) and play in Scottish League Two, the fourth tier of the Scot ...
in the first round of the 1899–1900 Qualifying Cup, by which time the club existed "in name only"; the club secretary tried to claim that Emmet had inherited Rovers' debts, but after the Scottish FA investigated the matter and ruled the clubs were separate entities, the Carfin secretary's letter was "relegated to the waste paper basket without being read".
Colours
The club wore white jerseys and blue knickers in its first season, and black afterwards.
Ground
The club played at Beechgrove Park, which was "not by any means an ideal one", with a small and narrow playing area.
Nickname
The club's nickname of the Dandy Dandy came from the Dandy Rows, streets of miners' cottages in the village. The club was also known as the Double Back Row for the same reason.
Notable players
* Hughie Clifford, later of Stoke
* William "Cosh" Mason, who had played for
Nottingham Forest
Nottingham Forest Football Club is an association football club based in West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire, England. Nottingham Forest was founded in 1865 and have been playing their home games at the City Ground, on the banks of the River Tren ...