Johnstone FC

Johnstone FC

Johnstone was one of the many football clubs to emerge from the industrial communities of western Scotland during the extraordinary growth of the game in the late nineteenth century. The Renfrewshire town had developed around the cotton industry, with two large mills established towards the end of the eighteenth century, while coal mining had also once been an important part of the local economy.

Football arrived early. A Johnstone club was formed in 1878, at a time when association football was spreading rapidly through Scotland's working-class towns. The enthusiasm for the new game was particularly evident locally: during the following years a succession of clubs appeared under various names, although most proved short-lived. The original Johnstone survived until 1887, having enjoyed some respectable Scottish Cup runs and established itself as one of the town's leading sides.

The name was revived in 1891 and it is this second Johnstone FC that enjoyed the longer and more significant existence. The new club initially played at Mossbank Park before moving to Newfield Park in the early 1890s, the ground that would become its permanent home.

Johnstone's early years were spent among the various competitions that existed beneath the Scottish League. In 1894 the club entered the Scottish Alliance, which had been considerably reshaped when many of its stronger members departed to form the Scottish League's Second Division. Thereafter Johnstone competed in the North Ayrshire League and, between 1898 and 1905, the Scottish Football Combination.

The club also became a familiar participant in Renfrewshire football. Although it never managed to capture the senior Renfrewshire Cup, Johnstone reached the final on several occasions and enjoyed greater success in the Renfrewshire Victoria Cup, winning the competition five times between 1900 and 1920.

By the opening years of the twentieth century Johnstone had established itself among the stronger clubs outside the Scottish League. Membership of the Scottish Football Union provided another step forward, and when the Scottish Second Division was expanded in 1912, Johnstone and Dunfermline Athletic were elected to fill the additional places.

League football proved difficult. Johnstone finished eleventh of fourteen clubs in their first campaign and bottom the following season. The upheaval caused by the First World War then transformed Scottish football. The Second Division was suspended in 1915 and Johnstone continued playing in the Western League during the war years and their aftermath.

When the Second Division was finally restored in 1921, Johnstone returned with it. This second spell in the Scottish League produced the club's best League season, an eighth-place finish amongst twenty clubs in 1923/24. It was, however, to be a brief high point.

Johnstone were relegated at the end of 1924/25 into the recently created Third Division. The new competition proved financially unsustainable and collapsed during the following season with its programme of fixtures still incomplete. Its disappearance also brought Johnstone's Scottish League career to an end.

The club returned to the Scottish Alliance but survived for only one further season. In 1927, after more than three decades of football under the revived Johnstone name, the club went out of business.

The colours

Johnstone's appearance changed considerably during its history. Blue predominated during much of the nineteenth century, with navy and later royal blue shirts appearing in several different combinations. There was also a brief experiment with maroon before black and white stripes were adopted in the years immediately before the First World War era.

Black and gold subsequently became strongly associated with the club. From 1909 Johnstone generally appeared in black-and-gold striped shirts, initially with white shorts and later with black.

The 1923 strip represented a striking departure from those colours. Johnstone changed to white shirts with black collar and cuffs, white shorts and black stockings carrying two white bands at the top. It was an unusually clean and distinctive combination and remained in use during the club's final years, from 1923 until its demise in 1927.

That makes the strip particularly evocative: it belongs to Johnstone's last period as a Scottish League club, including their best League campaign in 1923/24, and ultimately to the closing chapter of a club whose history stretched back through the formative decades of Scottish football.

Despite the similarity of the names, Johnstone FC of Renfrewshire should not be confused with St Johnstone of Perth. They were entirely separate clubs, and for a period Johnstone had their own place within the Scottish League before disappearing from the senior game in 1927.

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