Bo'ness Athletic Football Club is a Scottish

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

club, based in the town of

Bo'ness Borrowstounness, commonly known as Bo'ness ( ), is a town and former burgh and seaport on the south bank of the Firth of Forth in the Central Lowlands of Scotland. Counties of Scotland, Historically part of the county of West Lothian (historic), ...

. The club was formed in 2001 as Linlithgow Thistle, and were known as Bo'ness United Juniors between 2019 and 2021. They are members of the

Scottish Junior Football Association The Scottish Junior Football Association (SJFA) is an affiliated national association of the Scottish Football Association and is the governing body for the junior grade of football (soccer), football in Scotland. The term "junior" refers to the ...

and presently play in the . The club plays its home matches at

Newtown Park Newtown Park is a multi-purpose stadium in Wellington, New Zealand, owned and managed by Wellington City Council. It is used for football (soccer) matches in winter, and track and field athletics in summer. Newtown Park is the primary athletic ...

, groundsharing with Bo'ness United of the Lowland League.

History

The club were originally formed in 2001 in

Linlithgow Linlithgow ( ; ; ) is a town in West Lothian, Scotland. It was historically West Lothian's county town, reflected in the county's historical name of Linlithgowshire. An ancient town, it lies in the Central Belt on a historic route between Edi ...

, and competed as Linlithgow Thistle in the Lothian and Edinburgh Amateur Football Association. In 2019, when Bo'ness United moved from the East Region Junior leagues into the

East of Scotland Football League The East of Scotland Football League (EoSFL) is a senior association football, 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 Lowlan ...

, Thistle relocated and changed their name to Bo'ness United Junior to maintain a Junior presence in the town. They only played a total of 26 matches at Junior level due cancellations from the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, and in 2021 all the remaining clubs in the East Region Juniors located south of the

River Tay The River Tay (, ; probably from the conjectured Brythonic ''Tausa'', possibly meaning 'silent one' or 'strong one' or, simply, 'flowing' David Ross, ''Scottish Place-names'', p. 209. Birlinn Ltd., Edinburgh, 2001.) is the longest river in Sc ...

moved en masse to the East of Scotland league. At that point the club was renamed Bo'ness Athletic and cut ties with Bo'ness United, with the older club's chairman expressing his concern at the prospect of there now being an ambitious rival organisation in the same league system based in their small town (albeit by then his club had been promoted further up the pyramid into the

Lowland Football League The Scottish Lowland Football League (SLFL, commonly known as the Lowland League) and the Park’s Motor Group Scottish Lowland League for sponsorship reasons is a senior football league based in central and southern Scotland. The league sits a ...

). Bo'ness Athletic earned their first honour by winning the EoSFL Third Division title in

2022–23 The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen ...

, losing only once during the campaign, and also claimed the League Cup after defeating five opponents all playing at Premier or First Division level. After promotion they secured consecutive titles by winning the Second Division the following season in 2023–24. In 2024–25 they were promoted again for the third season in a row as runners-up of the First Division, and also won the

King Cup The King Cup (sometimes spelled King's Cup) (), officially known as The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques' Cup (), is the Saudi Arabian football knockout cup competition. The King's Cup is the second-oldest knockout competition in Saudi Arabian ...

Honours

* East of Scotland League **Second Division winners: 2023–24 **Third Division winners:

*East of Scotland League Cup: 2022–23 *Alex Jack Cup: 2023–24 *Cup-Winners Shield: 2023–24 *

: 2024–25

References

External links

Official websiteClub info
East of Scotland Football League website {{SJFA East Region Football clubs in Scotland Football in West Lothian Football in Falkirk (council area) Bo'ness Association football clubs established in 2001 2001 establishments in Scotland East of Scotland Football League teams Scottish Junior Football Association clubs