History of East Stirlingshire F.C.
The club has suffered financially in the past decade and has regularly finished bottom of the Scottish Football League during this period.
East Stirlingshire's official date of formation was in 1881, but its origins can be traced to the previous year in 1880 when a local cricket club called Bainsford Bluebonnets formed a football team under the name Britannia.
The inaugural season of the tournament saw East Stirlingshire and Falkirk contest the final, the latter winning 3–1 in a replay after an initial 1–1 draw.
The club was eventually eliminated in the quarter-finals 2–1, after a very closely fought encounter with a new football team – Celtic – who reached the final of the tournament in their first season in the competition.
The first was the Wales national team captain, Humphrey Jones, who earned five of his fourteen caps whilst with the club between 1889 and 1890.
Three other players, David Alexander, Archibald Ritchie, and James McKee made appearances for the Scotland national team between 1891 and 1898.
En route to promotion, the club spent 32 weeks at the top of Division Two, ending the season equal on 55 points with St Johnstone, with East Stirlingshire winning the championship by virtue of a superior goal average.
[9] East Stirlingshire spent only one season in its first spell in the top flight, ending the year bottom of the league in 20th, amassing a total of seventeen points.
[10] Back in Division Two in the 1935–36 season, East Stirlingshire's heaviest league defeat was inflicted by Dundee United in April 1936.
[5][12] As a result, East Stirlingshire competed in a newly created Division C along with pre-war clubs such as Montrose, Leith Athletic and Brechin City.
In the 1962–63 season, the club won promotion to the top flight for a second time as runners-up in Division Two behind, ironically, champions St Johnstone.
Like the previous occasion in 1932–33, East Stirlingshire spent one solitary season in Scotland's top tier before being relegated.
[13][14] However, the merge lasted only one season, with East Stirlingshire shareholders winning several court cases against it and thus the club reverted to its original legal status and moved back to Falkirk,[15] parting company with the Steedman brothers, who reformed a senior Clydebank team which was elected to the Scottish Football League in 1966.
[21][22] The clubs shared the top two spots in the league for the majority of the season and entered the final match equal on 48 points, with East Stirlingshire required to better Falkirk's result to win the championship due to an inferior goal difference.
However, Falkirk won its match and East Stirlingshire managed only a 1–1 draw away to Brechin City and had to settle for second position.
[30] The following season, retaining its full member status, the club moved to Ochilview Park in a ground-share agreement with neighbours Stenhousemuir.
In the 2010–11 Scottish Cup, East Stirlingshire initially reached the fifth round of the tournament with a 1–0 victory against Buckie Thistle at Ochilview Park but was expelled a week later for failing to register the loan extension of Falkirk goalkeeper Michael Andrews to the Scottish Football Association, who therefore became ineligible to play for the club.
