The following post was kindly submitted to us by Gordon McCreath, who is a keen Ayrshire junior football historian.
Regular readers of my articles will be aware that Irvine has not always been a two-club town as far as Junior football is concerned. If you go back to Queen Victoria’s Reign you’ll come across names like Irvine Caledonia, Irvine Rangers and Irvine Celtic. None of which have survived to the present day.
When the Second World War broke out, many Junior clubs found the they could not continue playing due to low attendances, lack of funds and difficulties in finding players. Irvine Victoria and Irvine Meadow were no exceptions. Victoria went into abeyance and Meadow struggled on until 1942 but eventually had to shut up shop and wait until the war was over before they could start playing football matches again.
So, you might think the town was bereft of Junior football throughout the war years. But think again! Victoria Park was owned by the Ayrshire Dockyard Company and they regularly used it as the home pitch of their own Juvenile football club. Victoria Park had been kept in good condition, whereas on the other side of the river Meadow Park was falling into disrepair. Like Meadow and Victoria had done several decades previously, the Ayrshire Dockyard Company (ADC) made the decision to step up from Juvenile to Junior football. They joined the Western League where they played out their one and only season.
In their first Western League match, ADC went into an early two-goal lead and things were looking good. But they slackened off and Ardeer Recreation fought back to lead 3-2 at the interval. At the end of 90 minutes, the score stood at 4-3 in Ardeer’s favour and ADC were left to regret a missed penalty. They then travelled to Kirkconnell and lost 1-3. At last, they got a victory when they beat Riccarton Bluebell in their 4-2 third match.
The next match turned out to be their greatest success. They faced Saltcoats in the Scottish Junior Cup and beat them 2-1. Aird put ADC into the lead but Saltcoats came back at them with a penalty equaliser before half-time. Early in the second-half McPhee scored the goal that won the game for ADC. There was a protest as Saltcoats alleged ADC had fielded an unregistered player. But it was rejected as the “error was clerical,” To prove it was no fluke, ADC beat Saltcoats Victoria again in a high scoring Western League match there following weekend when they won 5-4.
On 25 November 1944, Terry McGibbons played at centre-forward against Saltcoats Victoria in that return Western League match. McGibbons had been a highly successful goalscorer for Irvine Meadow, scoring 78 goals in season 1932/33, before moving to Ayr United and then on to Preston North End.
Although McGibbons signed for Ayr United for a second time just before the war, he never played for the club again as Ayr United historian, Duncan Carmichael explains:
“Then aged twenty-seven he became occupied in the more pressing matter of shipyard work and had ceased playing on the abandonment of the First Division programme. He remains Ayr United’s all-time second highest scorer of league goals but this legend of a player was reduced to playing for the Ayrshire Dockyard team through the intervention of war. This was a man who in 1938, had played for Preston North End in a Charity Shield match at Highbury.”
In that game against Saltcoats Victoria, McGibbons scored to put ADC in to a 1-0 lead, and he missed another good chance to score before ADC ran out of steam in the second 45 minutes and lost 1-3. “Terry McGibbons’ opening goal was a smasher, if he really meant it. It was the unexpected type. But Irvine Dockyard will have to introduce more younger players who can last ninety minutes.” (Kilmarnock Herald and North Ayrshire Gazette).
ADC progressed to the third round of the Scottish Cup courtesy of a bye in the second round. The third round draw sent them to the north east to play Dundee East Craigie and watched by a crowd of 3,000 they lost 1-4. A ‘Footballers Day’, collection was taken at the game in aid of the Red Cross.
The rest of the league campaign was a struggle for ADC and on three separate occasions they conceded seven goals. Yet occasionally, they produced a quite unexpected scoreline. The trip to Somerset Park to where they beat SS&E 6-1 being a prime example.
At the end of the season, ADC sat third from bottom in the league table, having won six games and lost the remaining 14.
In his excellent history of Irvine Victoria, Forbes D Brown describes the end of ADC “…after much discussion it was decided (with some dissention in both camps) that Irvine Victoria FC and the Ayrshire Dockyard Company FC would amalgamate to form a club which would be known as the Irvine Victoria Ayrshire Dockyard Company Football Club, or the Irvine Victoria ADCFC as it was written. This union was never formally dissolved, just quietly forgotten.”
“In 1961 the shipyard became the Ayrshire Metal Products Limited and the last trace of the ADC disappeared in 1974 when Victoria erected a new clubhouse and the name Irvine Victoria FC, not Irvine Victoria ADCFC was painted above the entrance.” (The Wee Vics)