History of Scarborough F.C. - Foundation and Early Years

Foundation and Early Years

During the late 1870s, a group of young men from the town including cricketers wanted a game to play during the winter months and began meetings at North Marine Road cricket ground to discuss founding Scarborough Football Club. Lord Londesborough was a pivotal figure in getting the club off the ground and helped organise the first inter-club matches in October 1879. As a patron of the club he persuaded the local cricket club to allow the installation of experimental electric lights for two night football games. Due to the code preferences of the other teams from York and Hull, the rugby football code was played instead. The first ever line-up was:

The first ever time the club played an association football match was on 6 November 1880 at the Cricket Ground against Bridlington. Scarborough won the game 2–1. During the early half of the 1880s the side played in the Scarborough & East Riding County Cup competition and the name of the club was changed to Scarborough Cricketers Football Club. Scarborough won their first trophy in 1885–86, lifting the County Cup; however it was a hollow victory as the final ended 4–4 against a team from Hull, but Hull refused to attend the replay and so Scarborough won by default. The following season Whitby beat them 3–2 in the final of the same competition. By the summer of 1887, the club had reverted to the name Scarborough Football Club and moved to their own ground in the form of the Recreation Ground.

That season in their new ground, in front of 5,000 locals, Scarborough avenged their County Cup final defeat the previous season, by beating Whitby 6–1 in the final of the same competition. During this period rivalry between the two clubs was intense. In the 1889 FA Cup Scarborough knocked Whitby out in the First Round, with Whitby complaining that Scarborough's ground was an illegal size. Scarborough lost in the Second Round and were knocked out, though they did win the County Cup that year again by beating Whitby in the final. Unfortunately the rivalry culminated in one of the first football riots: after a disagreement about a goal, Whitby players were attacked on the pitch by Scarborough fans and eventually chased out to the Scarborough railway station. 19 year old Whitby player Albert Drabble was attacked at the game and died the following month of a heart attack; although links between the incidents were not conclusive it put a large shadow over the fixture.