shull Posted July 8, 2018 Report Share Posted July 8, 2018 The merging of East Stirlingshire and Clydebank. Before my time. Interesting story. https://beyondthelastman.com/2018/02/27/the-merger-that-shook-scottish-football-the-es-clydebank-story/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shull Posted July 8, 2018 Author Report Share Posted July 8, 2018 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
St.Ricky Posted July 8, 2018 Report Share Posted July 8, 2018 interesting article. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cornwall_Saint Posted July 8, 2018 Report Share Posted July 8, 2018 (edited) I came across the ES Clydebank thing a few months ago when I was reading up on Clydebank and Old Airdrieonians/Airdrie United/New Airdrieonians. I didn't know much about the ES Clydebank story so it was good to read this article, very informative for me. Has there been many mergers through the days of Scottish football? The first one that springs to mind is Inverness Thistle and Caledonian FC. Looks more likely that clubs get bought over instead of merged, looking at Clydebank/Airdrie and the Ferranti Thistle/Meadowbank Thistle/Livingston situations. Compared to Belgium it seems quite minimal. Belgium has seen plenty of mergers though the years, one of the best examples of recent years would be SK Zulte and KSV Waregem, who merged in 2001. Zulte-Waregem have done well from this, qualifying for Europe on a few occasions, winning the Belgian Cup twice, and league runners up in 2012/13. Elsewhere, in the last decade Royal Excelsior Mouscron went bust. The Mouscron name managed to merge with RRC Peruwelz. After three promotions as Mouscron-Peruwelz they got rid of the Peruwelz name and are now known as Royal Excel Mouscron. Each club in Belgium has a "matricule". This is a number is given to the club when they gain Belgian FA membership. When clubs are merged only one matricule can survive, so in the case of SV Zulte (5381) and KSV Waregem (4451), KSV's financial problems lead to them having to merge with SV Zulte. As a result SV Zulte's matricule 5381 continued, and the new club Zulte-Waregem took on the history of SV Zulte. KSV Waregem were dissolved and known to cease to exist with their matricule now defunct. It also allows the merged club to take on the league position of that matricule, so here Zulte-Waregem took the place of SV Zulte. With a system as straight as this, had it existed in Scotland Rangers FC could have found a merger, potentially kept their place in the SPL, and have much stronger claims to their history as it would remain with the matricule. A decent number of current clubs in Belgium are direct results of mergers. Certainly appears to be on a much larger scale than Scotland, which leads me to wonder what mergers have happened in the Scottish leagues. Edited July 8, 2018 by Cornwall_Saint Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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