King's Park F.C.

Defunct association football club in Scotland

King's Park Football Club were a football club who played in the Scottish Football League (SFL) before the Second World War. Based in Stirling, they joined the League in the 1921–22 season, following the reintroduction of the Second Division and were one of 11 new members for that season.

The club was established in 1875 in the King's Park area of Stirling, although they did not stay long in this locality. They first entered the Scottish Cup in the 1879–80 season. They moved between various more minor leagues for several seasons before entering the re established Central Football League in 1909, retaining their membership of this division until 1921 (barring a brief hiatus during the First World War when they did not compete). Indeed, Dyet's feat stands as the British record for goals on a debut to this day. The club's other great goalscorer of the 1930s was Alex Haddow, who hit five consecutive league hat tricks in January and February 1932. Although overall they failed to make much impact on the league, they were four times winners of the Stirlingshire Cup. Although a middle ranking Second Division club King's Park did at times make the headlines. Their league game against Dundee Hibernian on 20 October 1923 would be the last game that club would play under that name, they were renamed Dundee United two days later. The club became the centre of controversy in 1927 when a newspaper report suggested that their next opponents Clydebank were about to go out of business and as a consequence the attendance at the match was minimal. As a consequence King's Park held back Clydebank's cut of the gate until the Scottish League intervened. Although the issue was resolved it helped to increase support amongst the League administrators for cutting the number of clubs due to their volatile status.

When World War II started King's Park, largely as a consequence of their geographical location, dropped out of competitive football. Nonetheless, the club continued to play friendlies and, like a number of Scottish clubs who could offer higher war time wages than their English counterparts, welcomed a number of high profile guest players including Andy Black and Bill Shankly.

The club's Forthbank Park was one of a number of stadiums at the time to host animal racing, usually greyhounds but also cheetahs. The Scottish Football Association at the time was keen to put an end to this practice as, although the racing provided a financial lifeline to many smaller clubs including King's Park, they feared that it would lead to football becoming too reliant on gambling just like the races. An SFA inspection team deemed that the greyhound track at Forthbank encroached on to the pitch and as such it was removed, along with the source of income. Forthbank suffered from a Luftwaffe bombing on 20 July 1940 and although temporary repairs were made to the partially destroyed stadium, only two further games were played there before both Forthbank and King's Park F. C. were closed down. There was compensation given eventually from the War Office in 1953, but it was paid to Stirling Albion F. C.

Local business man Thomas Ferguson started Stirling Albion F. C in 1945 and shortly purchased the Annfield estate to construct Annfield Stadium, which has now made way for housing once more. In 1992 they moved to Forthbank Stadium, sited about two thirds of a mile (1 km) from the location of the original stadium Forthbank Park.