Always next season : 125 years of Raith Rovers Football Club 1883-2008
Lister, John2008
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Raith Rovers Football Club was the first Fife club to join the Scottish Football League ; the first to be elected to the First Division ; the first to win the prestigious Scottish Qualifying Cup and the first to reach teh Scottish Cup Final. The 1937/38 team which won the Second Division championship also set a British League goalscoring record that has never been surpassed. The club has provided Scotland with five internationalists, and several more who were 'capped' after leaving the club, including two of football's all-time greats, Alex James and Jim Baxter. Despite these accomplishments, the club did not win anything of note until the Scottish league Cup in 1994 - 111 years after its foundation. Until then, its long-suffering supporters had only one thought to console them and sustain their devotion - there was ''Always Next Season''. This 384 page book tells the story of the first 125 years of the club's existence, in words, comprehensive, match-by-match, player-by-player statistics, and more than 200 illustrations. It tells how the club was formed, by 13 and 14 year old youths who lived within a two-hundred-yard-long area of Kirkcaldy's ''Links'', very close to its present home of 107 years, Stark's park. Their possession of that poorly located, ill equipped former grazing ground enabled them to outlast their many local rivals. They became the leading club in Fife, and in the East of Scotland, outwith the Scottish League, and took their ambition into that national competition. Since then, their fluctuating fortunes have brought delight and despair in turn to generations of loyal supporters. this book chronicles the ups and downs, and reveals fascinating tales of players and managers ; how the club evolved as the town expanded on the back of booming linen and linoleum manufacture, and how it struggled to cope with post-industrial recession. It celebrates the good and the great, explains the bad, and illustrates why, 125 years after its foundation by the youth of Linktown, for Raith Rovers there is ''Always Next Season''.
Main title:
Author:
Imprint:
Norwich : Programme Monthly, 2008.
Collation:
384 p. : photos., tables, map, ; 30 cm.
ISBN:
9780953468225 (hbk)
Dewey class:
796.334
Language:
English
Subject:
BRN:
3420977
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