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Scarborough Football Club was a football club based in the seaside resort of Scarborough, North Yorkshire. They were one of the oldest football clubs in England, formed in 1879, before they were wound up on 20 June 2007, with debts of £2.5 million. They played at the Athletic Ground from 1898 until the club's dissolution.
Scarborough formed in 1879 and entered the FA Cup for the first time in 1887. They entered the Northern League in 1898 and remained there for 28 years, apart from four seasons spent in the Yorkshire Combination from 1910 to 1914. They moved to the Yorkshire League in 1926 and switched to the Midland League the following year, being crowned as Midlands League champions in 1929–30. In 1960, they moved into the Northern Counties League, and would win the North Eastern League title in their only season in the division – 1962–63. Returning to the Midland League, they became founder members of the Northern Premier League in 1968. They won the FA Trophy on three occasions in the 1970s: 1973, 1975–76 and 1976–77, and were runners-up in 1974–75.
Scarborough were founder members of the Alliance Premier League (later named the Conference) in 1979 and in 1987 were the first team to secure automatic promotion to the Football League, which had been introduced for the 1986–87 season. They were relegated back down to the Conference in 1999, and then were relegated into the Conference North after entering administration in 2006. At the end of the 2006–07 season, Scarborough finished in 20th place, which would have resulted in their relegation to the Northern Premier League had the club not instead been liquidated. A new supporter-owned "phoenix" club was established by the Seadog Trust under the banner Scarborough Athletic on 25 June 2007, and one year later a second supporter-owned club, Scarborough Town, also came into existence, which itself folded in 2013.
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The club was formed in 1879 by members of the town's cricket team, and played their earliest games at the cricket ground on North Marine Road. The football club soon moved to the nearby Recreation Ground. In 1898, Scarborough Football Club made the move across town to the Athletic Ground on Seamer Road and remained there until 2007, though the ground was renamed The McCain Stadium in a pioneering sponsorship deal in 1988.
Early years
Scarborough first entered England's national cup competition, the FA Cup, in 1887. Before the club became professional, they spent their time competing in the Northern League.
It was in 1927 the Yorkshire club became professional and joined the Midland League. After only three years, they became champions of it, breaking the record for most points in a season. The same year, the club were performing respectably in the FA Cup, reaching the third round, before going out 2–1 to Grimsby Town who were in the nation's top league at the time.
Club attendance records were broken when the club reached the same stage of the FA Cup again, during the 1937–38 season. The game against Luton Town, which was a 1–1 draw, saw 11,162 people packed into the Athletic Ground. Unfortunately for Scarborough, they were soundly defeated 5–1 in the replay.
1970s FA Trophy success
Because of their decent performance in the Midlands League, the club were entitled to become one of the founding clubs in the new Northern Premier League in 1968. The 1970s would prove to be a successful time for the club; Scarborough won the FA Trophy three times at Wembley Stadium, beating Wigan Athletic, Stafford Rangers and Dagenham in the process.
However, there was also a tragedy for the club during the 1970s. On 18 May 1977, 21-year-old winger Tony Aveyard died after collapsing as a result of a head injury suffered in a match two days earlier.
The 1970s also saw the club performing well in the FA Cup. They reached the third round in the 1975–76 season before losing 2–1 to Crystal Palace in a match that was featured on BBC's Match of the Day. During the 1977–78 season, they reached these heights again, with a third round clash against Brighton & Hove Albion; they lost the tie 3–0 at the Goldstone Ground in front of 23,748 spectators.
They also took part in the Anglo-Italian Cup twice, beating Udinese 4–0 in 1976, and then beating Parma 2–0 during the following year's competition. They lost 4–1 on aggregate to Lecce in the final match. Gordon Banks played for Scarborough, in the opening game of that season's competition (against Monza). By the end of the 1970s, Scarborough had been selected to be part of the new Alliance Premier League. They stayed in this league for several seasons with generally consistent finishing positions in mid-table. The club gained a new manager named Neil Warnock, and his team became champions of the Conference in 1987. They were automatically promoted into the Football League, the first club to achieve this feat by this route.
The Football League era
In 1987, Scarborough were promoted into the Football League Fourth Division. Scarborough hosted Wolverhampton Wanderers on the first day of the season, an event which attracted national media attention, due to it being the club's debut match in the Football League. However, the match was marred by crowd trouble provoked by visiting Wolves supporters, with players having to leave the pitch during the match.
Warnock stayed as manager of Scarborough until he left for Notts County in November 1988, and has since gone on to win numerous promotions for a string of league clubs. However, the subsequent years were rather less successful for Scarborough.
Scarborough qualified for the Fourth Division play-offs in 1989, courtesy of a fifth-place finish. They were knocked out at the semi-final stage 2–1 on aggregate by Leyton Orient.
The club had mixed fortunes during their stay in the Football League. They spent several seasons near the bottom, but reached the play-offs for promotion twice. They became giant killers in 1989 with a 3–2 victory in the League Cup over Chelsea, after achieving a 1–1 draw during the first leg at Stamford Bridge. Their cup runs continued to throw up good results following this, with a 7–6 aggregate win over Preston North End, and a 5–3 defeat against Southampton (including two goals from Alan Shearer) in 1991. In October 1989, however, Scarborough lost 7–0 to eventual runners-up Oldham Athletic, in which Frankie Bunn scored six of Oldham's goals, a record for an individual player that still stands.
Their best run however, came during the 1992–93 season, where Scarborough knocked Bradford City, Coventry City and Plymouth Argyle out of the competition. This brought Arsenal to Scarborough in a tie which Arsenal narrowly won, 1–0 with a Nigel Winterburn goal. Arsenal went on to win the League Cup that year.
In 1998, they qualified for the Third Division playoffs, but lost to Torquay United in the semi-finals. The following season would bring a relegation battle rather than a promotion challenge.
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