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
Motherwell
Motherwell (, ) is a List of towns and cities in Scotland by population, town and former burgh in North Lanarkshire, Scotland, United Kingdom, south east of Glasgow. It has a population of around 32,120. Shires of Scotland, Historically in the p ...
,
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 ...
, active in the early 1890s.
History
The club was formed in early 1890 as a split from Carfin Shamrock; the club's first secretary, John Timminey, had been Carfin's secretary in 1889, and Carfin captain (and club co-founder) "Dodger" Breslin threw in his lot with the new club. The club's first match was against a
Glasgow
Glasgow is the Cities of Scotland, most populous city in Scotland, located on the banks of the River Clyde in Strathclyde, west central Scotland. It is the List of cities in the United Kingdom, third-most-populous city in the United Kingdom ...
select in April 1890, watched by the
Celtic
Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to:
Language and ethnicity
*pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia
**Celts (modern)
*Celtic languages
**Proto-Celtic language
*Celtic music
*Celtic nations
Sports Foot ...
President, who was checking to ensure none of the Celtic players was appearing for a rival Irish diaspora club without permission.
The Motherwell side tried to get an invitation to the Airdrie Charity Cup, on the basis that it now had a large number of Carfin players, but the charity committee stayed loyal to the Carfin; in any event, under the rules of the competition, the Motherwell players were mostly Cup-tied, for having represented Carfin in other tournaments in the earlier part of the season.
The Shamrock 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 ...
in August 1890 and was expected to win its debut
Scottish FA Cup
The Scottish Football Association Challenge Cup,Fairfield club of Glasgow, but the visitors scored five in the first half and ran out 7–3 winners. Perhaps worse for Motherwell was that Carfin Shamrock held Celtic to a draw in the second round.
Two months later, Shamrock held
Albion Rovers
Albion Rovers Football Club is a semi-professional football team from Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire, Scotland. They play in the , the fifth tier of the Scottish football league system.
Founded in October 1882, the club joined the Scottish Foot ...
to a draw in its first
Lanarkshire Cup
The Lanarkshire Cup was an annual competition open to football teams in the Lanarkshire area. The competition is now defunct. The Lanarkshire FA was dissolved in June 1999 when it was merged with the Ayrshire and Renfrewshire FAs to form the Wes ...
tie, due to the Rovers "skylarking" when in an easy two-goal lead, but lost 8–1 in the home replay, and scratched from its entry to the Consolation Cup to "no surprise". The club's moment had passed before it was even founded; the rise of League football, the unexpected continuance (at least temporarily) of Carfin, and the all-encompassing growth of Celtic were all mortal blows to the Shamrock. The club had already lost its ground to Dalziel Rovers in March 1891, and ceased to exist at the close of the 1890–91 season, although an attempt to revive the name saw an application for re-admission to the Scottish FA in August 1892, to no avail.
Colours
The club wore green and white vertically striped shirts, and dark blue knickers.