Every fortnight we cover the best and worst football songs from every club in the UK from our book ‘The Sound Of Football: Every Club, Every Song’. You can buy it here

Albion Rovers

Nickname: The Wee Rovers

Ground: Cliftonhill Stadium

Stadium Capacity: 1,238

Song: The A-Team theme song

Everyone knows a Mike Post song. He started as a session musician in the early 60s playing on songs by Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr. By the end of the decade he was in a band with Kenny Rogers and playing guitar for Sonny and Cher on their biggest hit ‘I Got You Babe’. But it wasn’t his session songs that made him famous. After moving to television he composed theme songs for the biggest shows of the 70s and 80s. He wrote themes for classics like Doogie Howser, M.D., Hill Street Blues, Law & Order, Magnum P.I., Quantum Leap, Remington Steele, The Rockford Files and The A-Team, which is how 

Albion Rovers can hear the following famous voiceover as it’s unofficial anthem.

“In 1972 a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A-Team.“

Post has made it known several times that the theme is very close in rhythm to ‘Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah’ a song from the 1946 Walt Disney film Song of the South.

The 80s provide another interesting addition to Rover’s history. In 1983, as part of a sponsorship agreement, the Wee Rovers agreed to change the appearance of its shirt to mimic the gold wrapper with red diagonal stripes of a Tunnock’s Caramel Wafer. The link between Tunnock’s and Albion Rovers was inspired as one of Hannibal Smith’s cunning plans.

Tunnock’s is a company that’s changed very little. It knows its strengths and it has kept to them, selling wafers, teacakes and snowballs in the same way established by Thomas Tunnock over 100 years ago. The company hasn’t changed the size or packaging one bit. Tunnocks is a company that believes in its product and actually heeds the common sense advice ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’.

Albion Rovers also believe in the principle that ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’, especially if fixing it might involve spending cash.

Albion has spent most of its existence, since it was formed in Coatbridge in 1892 from the merger of Albion FC and Rovers FC, in the bottom league of Scottish football. Coatbridge lies close to Glasgow and the pull of the Old Firm has always meant that the Wee Rovers has always struggled to build a support, and with few fans, and little cash, it’s finished bottom of the league more times than they care to remember.

Recent seasons have seen an improvement, winning promotion though a play-off in 2010-11, the first time Albion has left the bottom tier of Scottish football in 22 seasons. After managing to avoid relegation the following season, the first time they avoided going straight back down in almost 80 years, the club couldn’t deny football gravity in 2012-13 and was relegated.

Buy the Sound of Football from Amazon.