Forgotten Derbies – Falkirk v King's Park

It is well known the enmity between the fans of Falkirk & Dunfermline Athletic, and this is what most would recognise as our current main rivals in the so-called “Kincardine Bridge Derby”.

But I was recently looking through Falkirk's New Year Holiday matches and noticed a fixture popping up on a very regular basis which has now gone the way of most history.

The opponents were King's Park and the match was played invariably played in Stirling in the first week of January, usually the first Monday. This was an arrangement which never occurred with East Stirlingshire which is itself interesting.

The rivalry [perhaps a creation of the two teams to try to have a lucrative annual match we will never know] is obvious with hindsight. These were the two oldest and longest established clubs in Stirlingshire [Bonnybridge Grasshoppers were older but they had a precarious existence and had long spells of inactivity] both coming into existence in the mid 1870s. There was possibly also a slight element of snobbery in the fixture, both clubs probably looking down on other relative newcomers to the local football scene.

The earliest found match between the two clubs dates back to April 1878 [though there might have been an match earlier that season which was not noted in the press] when the young bloods of Falkirk travelled to the county town and came away with a very creditable scoreless draw. Over the next decade the reciprocal friendly matches were complimented with the odd meeting in the Scottish & Stirlingshire Cups and largely meetings were very even, only the odd large victory being obtained by either team.

The first recognisable 'holiday' match between the two teams took place on Monday the 4th of January 1892 [this was the first season Falkirk played any special 'holiday' matches [unless the 1887/88 'tour' of the North be can counted]], King's Park winning by two goals to one.

With the exception of 1900 and 1901 [when the match was played as part of the Falkirk & District League schedule] the annual match continued to be played almost every year [several were not played because of the Scottish January weather] until Falkirk joined the Scottish League in 1902 when the fixture list meant there was no space for the match.

But this just meant a switch to May when the two clubs played a benefit or charity match for a worthy cause [though later the worthy cause more increasingly became King's Park itself]. Even these matches were dying by the outbreak of the Great War and never came out of the other side.

Between the wars matches the clubs were restricted to Stirlingshire Cup or Stirlingshire Consolation Cup matches with the odd benefit here or there. But by this time Falkirk had long since stopped treating the Stirlingshire cup with anything like seriousness and in many of these later matches Falkirk played either their reserves or a very weakened side, and King's Park were themselves withering, to the point that it was decided by the directors that they were wound up as an entity during WWII and the relationship between the clubs finally ended.

I cannot say from this distance what this relationship between Falkirk and King's Park was like or how the two sets of supporters felt about the other club. It was quite unlike the Falkirk/East Stirlingshire relationship which could get quite hostile at times. And it is slightly a pity that the club never resumed after the war.

Below is as complete a picture as I can give to the fixture.