Stranraer FC

..Stranraer Football Club was formed in 1870, making them Scotland's third oldest senior team. "The Blues" (nicknamed after their blue and white home strip which symbolises the town's maritime heritage) play their home games from Stair Park, which has a capacity of around 5,600. The most recent addition to the stadium is the Main Stand, which was constructed in 1995 and can hold 1,500 seated spectators. The stand looks out over the loch, where main Club sponsors Stena Line house some of their ferry fleet. Even though formed in 1870, Stranraer only gained entry into senior football by gaining election to the Scottish "B" Division in 1955.More recently, Stranraer have had their fair share of success. After a dire slump in the 1980s, the Club won its first Championship Trophy in 1994 under the management of Alex “Sanny” McAnespie. Then, in 1996, The Blues won the Challenge Cup, beating First Division St.Johnstone by a goal to nil, this time under Campbell Money.With the same manager, Stranraer were promoted again from the Second Division as Champions in 1998. It was in the first division that the Club recorded perhaps its finest victory, beating Hibernian FC 2-1 at Easter Road in front of nearly 10,000 spectators. Despite that performance, The Blues found it difficult to find their feet at that level, where most other clubs were full time. Lack of fitness showed and many games were either lost or pegged back in the last 20 minutes of games and Stranraer succumbed to the inevitable and slipped back to Division 2. Three seasons of reasonably settled football followed, Campbell Money had moved on and Billy McLaren took the reigns, there were a couple of good cup runs, a few good wins over Queen of the South but apart from that there was nothing too spectacular and the club just went about its business. However in the 2002-03 season things started to go very wrong, despite topping the table as late as January 03 The Blues started to slip in the wrong direction, suddenly thoughts of missing out on promotion were long since past as the main concern, the closeness of the Division, Stranraer’s rutted Stair Park pitch, tired players and a lack of belief kicked in and it was on the last day of the 02-03 season that Airdrie United (Formerly Clydebank) inflicted the last slap to the chops and sadly in May 2003 we were relegated to Division 3 for the first time in our history. As expected at the time we parted company with Billy Mclaren, but in as a replacement, former Blues Skipper Neil Watt arrived at the club from a successful spell with Maryhill Juniors and the much respected Stuart Millar arrived from a talented Cumbernauld, it was not too apparent at the time but these two managers were to turn around the clubs fortunes in a dramatic style.Neil & Stuart first set about re-signing the players that they wanted to stay on at the club, they also signed SEVENTEEN new squad players. Over the summer of 2003 they worked hard on the team, building up morale. This was revealed in one of Neil Watt’s interviews as one of the priorities that they had when they came in. The squad that was relegated was originally built to succeed in Division Two, not to drop into Division Three. They worked hard on that and brought in fresh tactics, this along with a relaxed regime, and team bonding exercises meant that the new team of experienced players, Junior League imports and one player whom had been playing Amateur football the previous year, hit the ground running. In Division Three Watt and Millar’s team quickly gained a reputation for a good solid team playing good football and gaining results. Through out the season, player’s like Michael Moore and Davey Graham were knocking in the goals up front, and players like Dexi Wingate, Fraser Wright and Allan Jenkins were working hard to keep the defence and supply line up. In their first season in Division Three Stranraer were promoted with two games to spare, amassing their highest league points total, their highest league goals tally and scoring the most goals for a team that season apart from Celtic!(info provided by www.stranraerfc.org)