Gibraltar Football Club is an

association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

team based in the

British Overseas Territory The British Overseas Territories (BOTs), also known as the United Kingdom Overseas Territories (UKOTs), are fourteen dependent territory, territories with a constitutional and historical link with the United Kingdom. They are the last remna ...

Gibraltar ) , anthem = " God Save the King" , song = " Gibraltar Anthem" , image_map = Gibraltar location in Europe.svg , map_alt = Location of Gibraltar in Europe , map_caption = United Kingdom shown in pale green , mapsize = , image_map2 = Gib ...

. Formed in 1893, it was one of the first civilian football teams to be established in Gibraltar, along with

Prince of Wales F.C. Prince of Wales Football Club was a Gibraltarian association football club. It had been founded by 1892 as one of the first civilian football clubs in Gibraltar. Although no longer in existence, up until 2014 it held the record for the most natio ...

; until then football had been the almost exclusive preserve of members of the British military forces.

History

Gibraltar F.C. was formed in November 1893 by

cricketers Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

to allow them to continue playing sport during the winter. The club's formation led to a growing interest in football among Gibraltar's civilian population, which in turn led to the founding of the Gibraltar Civilian Football Association. When the

Gibraltar Football League The Gibraltar Football League is the only senior tier of association football in Gibraltar, founded in 2019 as the Gibraltar National League after a merger of the Gibraltar Premier Division, which served as the top division of football on the R ...

was formed in 1895, Gibraltar F.C. became the inaugural winners of the new league. Gibraltar F.C. then failed to win the league again until the 1923–24 season following Prince of Wales F.C. who had won the three previous seasons. In addition to winning the league in 1895, Gibraltar F.C. were also recorded as having won the inaugural Merchants Cup however there are conflicting records of this with other records claiming that Jubilee F.C. won the Merchants Cup by beating Gibraltar F.C. in the final. Gibraltar F.C. had also played matches against teams from outside Gibraltar. In 1914, they played a match against Spanish team Betis. While Gibraltar F.C.'s men's team have ceased to compete in the Gibraltar Football League, Gibraltar F.C. Ladies continue to maintain a presence in the women's leagues in Gibraltar, winning the women's league as recently as 2011.

References

{{Gibraltar topics Defunct football clubs in Gibraltar 1893 establishments in Gibraltar Association football clubs established in 1893