The team was formally founded on 12 December 1872 at a meeting of the Third Lanarkshire Rifle Volunteers in the Regimental Orderly Room in Howard Street, Glasgow.

[1] In its early years, the club was successful in shooting competitions, with members winning the prestigious 'Queen's Prize' (still contested today as an event within the Commonwealth Games).

It was later decided that all guernseys should have the number three on them,[2] and at the first AGM in March 1873, the constitution was amended to allow members of Queen's Park to become office bearers of Thirds.

The players first used an old drill field on Victoria Road (north of the village of Strathbungo, close to today's Govanhill Park, roughly on the site of Hutcheson's Grammar School's Primary department), to train.

[8] In 1921, Third Lanark organised a tour of North America inviting several guest players to join them and thus being billed in some press reports and marketing as a 'Scotland XI'.

[13] Two years later the club (again with some guest players) made a tour over South America, playing a total of eight friendly matches in Buenos Aires and Montevideo,[14] including a game against the Argentina national side on 24 June.

[17] After being relegated in 1953, Third Lanark beat Rangers 1–0 to lift the Glasgow Charity Cup in 1954,[18] and captured the same trophy two years later against Partick Thistle,[19][20] then returned to the top tier in 1957.

On 8 January 1966, the Glasgow Herald announced in a front-page story that the board was investigating the possibility of moving Third Lanark to the new town of East Kilbride and selling Cathkin Park for housing.

[23] That season, Third Lanark played 36 league matches, winning 12, drawing 8 and losing the other 16, thus gaining 32 points to finish fourteenth out of nineteen clubs.

Third Lanark recorded its lowest-ever home League attendance of 297 spectators on Saturday 15 April 1967 (on the same day as the England-Scotland international at Wembley) for the visit of Clydebank.

[27] About a fortnight after the final match at Boghead Park, it was announced that Glasgow Corporation had received an offer from the Third Lanark board to sell it the land at Cathkin for housing.

A subsequent Board of Trade investigation into Third Lanark's affairs - which was published in November 1968 - revealed constant player squabbles and bitter internal struggles for power, as well as the fact that the corruption at Cathkin extended to defrauding the club lottery (which rarely paid out the weekly £200 prize).

All of these events finally took their toll; on 7 June 1967, Lord Fraser in the Court of Session in Edinburgh issued a winding-up order and appointed an official liquidator.

[31] On 26 June 1967, it was announced that Third Lanark's membership of the Scottish Football League had ceased and that the club's remaining players were up for transfer.

The investigation by the Board of Trade accused club chairman Bill Hiddleston of blatant corruption and found that "the circumstances (merited) police inquiry".

Another allegation was that Hiddelston wanted to force the club to move to either Cumbernauld or East Kilbride, the then booming New towns in the Glasgow commuter belt, which at that time had no senior sides of their own.

[32] On 9 June 2008, a four-man delegation from the club made a surprise announcement to the press, stating that Third Lanark AC would be interested in returning to the Scottish Football League, after SPL team Gretna decided to withdraw from the SFL.

[33] However, there was no formal application from Third Lanark to enter the SFL, and the club remained in Division 3 of the Greater Glasgow Amateur League.

[41] There was a public house called The Hi Hi Bar at the southern end of Crown Street in the Gorbals area of Glasgow, about one mile from the club's Cathkin Park stadium.

[6][42] New Cathkin Park is currently owned by Glasgow City Council, and large areas of the terracing remain intact on three sides of the ground.