Hawick Royal Albert Football Club is a Scottishfootball club based in the town of
Hawick
Hawick ( ; sco, Haaick; gd, Hamhaig) is a town in the Scottish Borders council area and historic county of Roxburghshire in the east Southern Uplands of Scotland. It is south-west of Jedburgh and south-south-east of Selkirk. It is one ...
in the Scottish Borders. The club was founded in 1947 as Hawick Royal Albert and in 2019 merged with amateur side Hawick United to create Hawick Royal Albert United. The club plays its home matches at Albert ParkInformation – Hawick Royal Albert , East of Scotland Football Association. Retrieved 30 March 2013.Albert Park ''footballgroundmap.com''. Retrieved 30 March 2013. and currently competes in the . For the 2022/23 season, they dropped the name "United" from their title and incorporated a revised club badge.
Before the
East of Scotland League
The East of Scotland Football League (EoSFL) is a senior football league based in the east and south-east of Scotland. The league sits at levels 6–9 on the Scottish football league system, acting as a feeder to the Lowland Football League.
Fo ...
was split into two divisions, Hawick Royal Albert won it three times and finished runners-up once. The club reached the final of the Scottish Qualifying Cup South on three occasions, winning it twice, before it was abolished in 2007. Hawick Royal Albert now qualifies automatically for the
Scottish Cup
The Scottish Football Association Challenge Cup,Scottish Football Association (SFA), its best result reaching the second round on five occasions.Football Results Summary for Hawick Royal Albert ''londonhearts.com''. London Hearts Supporters' Club. Retrieved 30 March 2013.
History
Hawick Royal Albert was formed in 1947 after breaking away from Hawick Railway F.C., who were founded a year earlier. , Scottish Football Historical Football Archive. Retrieved 30 March 2013. The club name is derived from another
Scottish football
Association football ( sco, fitbaa, gd, ball-coise) is one of the national sports of Scotland and the most popular sport in the country. There is a long tradition of "football" games in Orkney, Lewis and southern Scotland, especially the Sc ...
Larkhall
Larkhall ( sco, Larkhauch, gd, Taigh na h-Uiseig) is a town in South Lanarkshire, Scotland, around southeast of Glasgow. It is twinned with Seclin in northern France.
Larkhall sits on high ground between the River Clyde to the East and the ...
, where William Bunton, the co-founder of the Hawick club was from. The other co-founder was Harry Weir. ''Royal Albert'' was a ship, which the original club is named after. Hawick Royal Albert first competed in the Border Amateur League, which it won in the 1947–48 season.
The club joined the East of Scotland Football League, a senior
non-league
Non-League football describes football leagues played outside the top leagues of a country. Usually, it describes leagues which are not fully professional. The term is primarily used for football in England, where it is specifically used to d ...
competition for the 1953–54 season. In its first year, the club was ranked 11th from fifteen, before the season was declared null and void due to a backlog of outstanding fixtures. Two seasons later, the club finished runner-up behind Eyemouth United. In 1966, the club applied to join Scotland's main national league competition – the Scottish Football League – when it was seeking to increase its membership by one. Hawick Royal Albert applied for election along with
Gala Fairydean
Gala Fairydean Rovers Football Club are a Scottish association football club based in the town of Galashiels in the Scottish Borders. The club competes in the , after joining from the East of Scotland Football League in 2013. At the same tim ...
, but both lost out to Clydebank.Scottish Football League – Elections 1893-2008 , Scottish Football Historical Archive. Retrieved 30 March 2013. Remaining in the East of Scotland League, they won the competition for the first time in the 1966–67 season, and defended the title the following year. As a result of winning the league, the club qualified for the
Scottish Cup
The Scottish Football Association Challenge Cup,Scottish Football Association. Its inaugural match in the
tournament
A tournament is a competition involving at least three competitors, all participating in a sport or game. More specifically, the term may be used in either of two overlapping senses:
# One or more competitions held at a single venue and concentr ...
was in the first preliminary round against rivals
Gala Fairydean
Gala Fairydean Rovers Football Club are a Scottish association football club based in the town of Galashiels in the Scottish Borders. The club competes in the , after joining from the East of Scotland Football League in 2013. At the same tim ...
and ended in a 4–1 victory, before losing to
Elgin City
Elgin City Football Club (also known as City or The Black and Whites) is a professional senior football club based in Elgin, Moray.
Elgin was founded in 1893 and originally played their football in the Highland Football League. The club was g ...
in January 1967 in a replay by two goals to nil. This replay match was played at Borough Briggs, the home of Elgin City FC, and it was the first competitive match played under the newly installed Borough Briggs floodlights.Hawick Royal Albert ''www.fchd.info''. Football Club History Database. Retrieved 30 March 2013. The following
season
A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and ...
they won 8–2 on aggregate against Tarff Rovers in the Scottish Qualifying Cup South final to qualify for the Scottish Cup again. The club went on to win two preliminary round matches to reach the first round proper, losing 3–0 away to St Johnstone in January 1968. The club finished third in the East of Scotland League in 1969–70 and 1972–73, before winning it for the last time in the 1973–74 season.
Hawick Royal Albert applied to join the Scottish Football League for a second time in 1975, when the league was restructured, along with seven other non-league clubs, but was eliminated in the first round of voting.Ferranti Thistle, which later became Livingston, was the club elected. In 1980 and 1981, the club reached the Scottish Qualifying Cup South final in successive years, losing to Whitehill Welfare and beating Gala Fairydean respectively, to qualify for the Scottish Cup. In the 1987–88 season, the East of Scotland League was split into two divisions of ten clubs; the Premier Division and First Division. Hawick Royal Albert competed in the first season of the Premier Division, but finished 9th and were relegated to the First Division.
From the 2007–08 season, the
Scottish Qualifying Cup
The Scottish Qualifying Cup was a football competition played in Scotland between 1895 and 2007. During that time, apart from a brief spell in the 1950s, it was the only way for non-league teams to qualify for the Scottish Cup. The Qualifying Cup ...
was abolished which was the only way for non-league clubs, such as Hawick Royal Albert to qualify for the
BBC News
BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...
. 1 June 2007. Retrieved 31 March 2013.Hawick deny betting allegation ''
Yahoo!
Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Manage ...
Eurosport
Eurosport is a group of pay television networks in Europe and parts of Asia. Owned by Warner Bros. Discovery through its international sports unit, it operates two main channels— Eurosport 1 and Eurosport 2—across most of its territories, ...
''. 1 October 2009. Retrieved 31 March 2013. A
new format
New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created.
New or NEW may refer to:
Music
* New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz
Albums and EPs
* ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013
* ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator, ...
was introduced, which allowed all clubs with Scottish Football Association membership in the three senior non-league competitions to qualify automatically for the first round of the tournament.Scottish Cup First Round Draw Scottish Football Association. 28 August 2008. Retrieved 31 March 2013. Through the new rules, the club competed in the Scottish Cup in 2007–08 for the first time in ten years. In the 2009–10 competition, Hawick Royal Albert was accused of being part of a match fixing scandal following betting irregularities in a first round match against
Huntly
Huntly ( gd, Srath Bhalgaidh or ''Hunndaidh'') is a town in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, formerly known as Milton of Strathbogie or simply Strathbogie. It had a population of 4,460 in 2004 and is the site of Huntly Castle. Its neighbouring settlement ...
, when it lost 7–0.Cup match-fixing probe launched
BBC News
BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...
. 29 September 2009. The club denied any wrongdoing and no action was taken by the police or SFA.
Grounds
Hawick Royal Albert first played its home matches at Wilton Lodge Park near the village of
Wilton Dean
Wilton Dean is a village in the Scottish Borders area of Scotland, on the Cala Burn, and close to the River Teviot.
Along with Stirches and Burnfoot, Scottish Borders, Wilton Dean is now often considered to be a suburb of Hawick whic ...
in
Hawick
Hawick ( ; sco, Haaick; gd, Hamhaig) is a town in the Scottish Borders council area and historic county of Roxburghshire in the east Southern Uplands of Scotland. It is south-west of Jedburgh and south-south-east of Selkirk. It is one ...
.
In 1963, the club moved to Albert Park in the town. The ground is located on Mansfield Road on the northern bank of the River Teviot and is adjacent to
Mansfield Park
''Mansfield Park'' is the third published novel by Jane Austen, first published in 1814 by Thomas Egerton. A second edition was published in 1816 by John Murray, still within Austen's lifetime. The novel did not receive any public reviews unt ...
, a rugby union ground. Shortly after moving to the ground, it was inspected and passed criteria to allow the club to become a member of the Scottish Football Association. The opening game at the ground was a friendly between Hawick Royal Albert and Hibernian. The spectator stand at Albert Park was constructed from the steel remnants of the Wilson and Glenny woollen factory, which was destroyed by a fire in 1959.Hawick Royal Albert – Ground , Vale of Leithen F.C. Retrieved 31 March 2013. Floodlights were installed at the ground in 1981, and were first used in a friendly against Celtic. Included in Celtic's squad was future Scotland internationalist,
Charlie Nicholas
Charles Nicholas (born 30 December 1961) is a Scottish former professional footballer. A striker, Nicholas is best known for his spells at Celtic and Arsenal. He won 20 international caps for Scotland, including playing at the 1986 FIFA World ...
RSSSF
The Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation (RSSSF) is an international organization dedicated to collecting statistics about association football. The foundation aims to build an exhaustive archive of football-related information from around th ...
. 15 December 2004. Retrieved 30 March 2013.
**Winners (2):
1967
Events
January
* January 1 – Canada begins a year-long celebration of the 100th anniversary of Confederation, featuring the Expo 67 World's Fair.
* January 5
** Spain and Romania sign an agreement in Paris, establishing full consular and ...
,
1981
Events January
* January 1
** Greece enters the European Economic Community, predecessor of the European Union.
** Palau becomes a self-governing territory.
* January 10 – Salvadoran Civil War: The FMLN launches its first major offensiv ...
**Runners-up (1): 1980
* East of Scotland Qualifying Cup
**Winners (4): 1964–65, 1967–68, 1974–75, 1977–78
* King Cup
**Winners (3): 1966–67, 1981–82, 1983–84