Alex Menzies

Football clubs sprang up all over Britain in the 1870s as the working classes took to the game as saturday half-days, the expansion of rail travel and the need for high density sports in urban areas created the opportunity. Football soon out stripped cricket, bowls and quoits in popularity and helped put an end to the miner's pastime of hainching (throwing whinstone balls along the highway).

The first football club in these parts was Shotts ( founded in 1876 ) and the first game in West Lothian when the Shotts men travelled to West Calder two years later. Scottish FA Annuals and Hynd-Brown say Armadale FC dates from 1879.

The club adopted navy blue as it's colours and played home matches at Mayfield on what was then the southern edge of the town and handy for the works and workers' houses in Bathville. The first recorded match was actually the second XI losing to their Bathgate counterparts on 4Th September 1880.

First committee : ( September 1881 ) captain :J Sprott, vice captain : J Mckenzie ; secretary, H Russel ; treasurer , J Goldie ; committee, J Sprott, C Scott , J White.

Oldest surviving team line-up was, W. Love, J McKenzie, W Easton, T Johnstone, Walter Wilson, W Walker, J McDonald, W Kerr, R Mathieson, R Smith and J White ( November 1881 against Greenburn Hibernians )

First cup : 1886 Linlithgowshire Cup, with a win over Broxburn Shamrock. However in 1882-83 season an Armadale team won the Greenock and District Junior FA Badges, which the SFA regards as the first official junior competetion.

Armadale entered the Scottish FA Cup in 1886, going down to St Bernards in the third round. Junior football was also thriving in the town with Armadale Athletic and Armadale Thistle (not the present club but a recurrent name) starting up by 1887.

Armadale had their biggest game of the Victorian period when they drew Hibernians in the Scottish Cup in 1889. A special train brought the supporters of the Edinburgh side, who won 3-2 despite a spitited fight back from the 'Dale.

It was the 1893 legalisation of proffessionalism that spelled the decline of senior football in Armadale. Star player William Booze was poached by Burnley and a new era had dawned. Armadale joined a number of middling clubs in the short lived Eastern Alliance. Armadale's scale and cyclical nature of incomes dependant on mining and other heavy industries meant they could'nt compete.

The club had severe financial problems, so much so that they 'folded' with Armadaale Thistle taking over their players and fixtures and the dropping the 'Thistle'. As a way of warding off creditors it seemed to work, but the reality was Armadale FC spluttered into extinction. Armadale Volunteers took up the challenge and entered senior competitions. Armadale Daisy joined the list of local juniors, filling the gap as Volunteers went upstairs.

Volunteers, though scratched from the Scottish Cup in 1899 and were expelled from the Association Football continued in the domain of juniors - Armadale Thistle, Armadale United Armadale Rising Star, Woodend Jubileans (renamedWoodend Athletic) and Woodend Excelsior. Juveniles were also to the fore - Armadale Rangers, Armadale Nothern and Armadale Unity.

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