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Elgin City

Nickname: The Black & Whites

Ground: Borough Briggs

Stadium Capacity: 4,520

Song: Samba Di Janeiro

Since 1917 our sovereign has sent a birthday message to everyone celebrating their 100th birthday. In 1993 Elgin City celebrated its centenary. However, instead of a warm message from the Queen, all it got was a blunt message from the League Management Committee warning Elgin that the club was being stripped of its Highland league title. While birthdays are normally celebrated with cake and a party, Elgin had celebrated its century by cheating to win the Highland League.

Elgin City had ‘won’ the league by four points. Controversy erupted when it was revealed two players should have been ineligible to play Elgin’s final game due to suspension. The player’s suspension was set to begin on Saturday, 24 April, but Elgin had requested its game be brought forward 24 hours. At a League Management Committee meeting on Thursday, 29 April, the league decided that by failing to mention that two of the players faced suspensions when it asked for the change, Elgin had brought the game into disrepute. The Committee voted unanimously to strip Elgin of its title. The Queen, we imagine, was not amused.

Further controversy followed in 2012. Elgin was elected to the Scottish football league in 2000 and had maintained a respectable position in the third division. But, when Glasgow Rangers were required to start again in the third division in 2012, Elgin spotted the chance to raise some additional money by opening its ground to Rangers’ large travelling support by selling nearly 6,000 tickets for its first home game. One problem – the ground only held 4,520.

When the football league spotted the mistake, the game was postponed on health and safety grounds.

Postponing the game meant Elgin missed the chance to go top of the league. Elgin was just two points behind Rangers and would have leapfrogged the Glasgow club if it had won.

Apart from these infamous events, Elgin is famous for winning the Highland League 14 times and being the first and, as yet, only non-league side to reach the quarter-finals of the Scottish Cup.

Elgin’s badge has the Latin slogan ‘sic itur ad astra’, which means ‘thus shall we reach for the star’. Sadly, the team doesn’t use ‘Reach’ by S Club Seven. For the last few years,’ it has played ‘Samba de Janeiro’ whenever they scored, but this ended in 2012. It was probably when it realised that Elgin, as the second most northerly club in the UK, had more in common with the Arctic Circle than the beaches of Brazil.