It has finally happened; the 'Shire are gone. The once Falkirk based side formed in 1881 as Bainsford Britannia lost the League Two play off final to Lowland League Champs Edinburgh City and now the capital has three league clubs for the 2016/17 season. It was 'Shire's continual perverse love affair with the basement of Scottish football in the 1990's and 2000's that finally saw a pyramid system put in place following a five year run for the central Scotland team at the bottom of the Scottish League.
That pyramid would allow Highland and Lowland League clubs to gain promotion to the Scottish League competitively and no longer through election. Montrose saved themselves v Brora Rangers last term but 'Shire could not stop the march of Edinburgh and lost their play off final on a 2-1 aggregate. A great day for the capital but one cynical hack looking at the result on his laptop at the Queens Park v Clyde play off I attended said "all this advancement in Scottish football so we can make Meadowbank Stadium a league ground again!"
Here are five significant signposts that East Stirlingshire FC visited along their eventual drop to Lowland League football.
1. Grangemouth: Would it have been different if the 'Shire had relocated to Grangemouth in the 1990's, as was the plan of Alan Mackin a former 'shire player who became their Chairman. Looking at the Meadowbank Thistle model (they relocated to West Lothian to become Livingston FC). Mackin made an aborted attempt to reinvent 'Shire as Grangemouth FC at Grangemouth Athletics Stadium.
2. ES Clydebank: Shire were bought by the Steedman Brothers in the mid 1960's as a vehicle to get Junior club Clydebank FC into the league and the ES Clydebank merger lasted a season before legal action saw the clubs gain independent status and it meant Clydebank got their league place after all. Hard to believe now that 3,000 'Shire fans demonstrated at the club's former Firs Park ground as they fought to retain their right to autonomy.
3. 10 Quid a week: Shire were once reputed to be paying their players £10 a week in the 1990's. Pay peanuts get monkeys? Certainly the rot set in around the club in that decade. They did find a Sugar Daddy in the form of Englishman Spencer Fearn but the following quote on a business website not long after Fearn's departure now looks like something of a prediction. ''Without Fearn, however, there may well have been no club by now". It’s only a few years since the Shire were the laughing stock of Scottish, if not British, football, having finished bottom of the league for five consecutive seasons between 2002 and 2007, including the 03/04 season when they finished with the princely total of eight points. The following year, as well as prompting Jeff O’Connor’s book ‘Pointless’, Shire’s run also prompted the SFL into a rule change. With no means of demoting a team from the Third Division, it was decided that any club finishing bottom for two consecutive seasons could be voted down to Associate Member status, and – if the run continued – could ultimately be voted out of the league.
4. Ground Sale: "The sale of Firs Park to Granchester Developments for retail development will allow the club to finance a £500,000 improvement to the stadium in Grangemouth." said a local newspaper report in 2002. The deal fell through with Cala Homes eventually inheriting the site of 'Shire's stadium but deeming the ground unfit to build homes on mostly due to uneasy access to the site. Shire ended up ground-sharing with Stenhousemuir and that is likely to continue next season as the likes of Stirling University, Spartans and BSC Glasgow come calling.
5. Just Not Good Enough: In the end 'Shire's trajectory downward a couple of seasons after promotion to the First Division in 1981 (then the second tier of the Scottish League) just never ended. Various managers and players came and went, always working enthusiastically, but ultimately without decent financial support and maybe a vision from the club itself that never planned for any more than being an outfit that simply existed in Scottish League football. That apparent lack of ambition could could only have one outcome and it was maybe something of a feat, if not a miracle, that they didn't drop out the Scottish League before 14th May 2016.
Shire's demise is maybe a warning to other familiar names in Scottish League football. The likes of Berwick Rangers, Cowdenbeath, Montrose, Arbroath and Stirling Albion should take heed of a sea change heading Scottish football's way via the pyramid system. There could be more changing of the old guard as the seasons progress and who's to say East Stirlingshire's relegation to Lowland League activities isn't the start of a familiar process that could cull smaller league clubs in Scottish football who some might say have simply been making up the numbers in the SPFL over the years.