Ayr United F.C.

Did You Know?

• Ally MacLeod, the club's most successful manager, was voted Ayr's Citizen of the Year in 1973.
• In 1988, a bid by fan Sir David Murray to buy the club was rejected by a vote of 60 to 56; Murray later became chairman of Rangers.

History

Ayr United came into existence in 1910 when two existing clubs, Ayr Parkhouse and Ayr F.C., merged. This makes them unique in the Scottish Football League as the only club formed by merging two sides that were already league members. Their trophy cabinet includes six Second Division titles, which were the second tier at the time, plus three more titles from the third tier, the most recent of which came in the 2017–18 season. They have never won a national cup, but they did finish as runners-up in the 2001–02 Scottish League Cup and lost in the Scottish Challenge Cup final in its first two editions, 1990–91 and 1991–92. On the local front, they have lifted the Ayrshire Cup 26 times, often beating fierce rivals Kilmarnock in the final. That competition has not been played since the 1996–97 season.

Jimmy Smith holds the club record for most goals in a single season, netting 66 times in just 38 league matches during 1927–28. That tally also stands as the British record for the most league goals in one season. The all-time leading scorer for the club is Peter Price, who scored 213 goals in competitive games between 1955 and 1962. The most famous and successful manager in the club's history is Ally MacLeod, who later managed the Scotland national team.

He led Ayr United over three separate spells totaling 15 years, racking up a club-record 214 wins and two league titles. In 1973, he was named Ayr's Citizen of the Year. Other notable managers include George Burley, who also went on to manage Scotland, and Gordon Dalziel, a former Scottish League Cup winner with Raith Rovers. Dalziel is the only manager to guide Ayr to a national cup final, which took place on 17 March 2002 and ended in a 4–0 loss to Rangers.

Although Ayr United have spent 34 seasons in Scotland's top division, they have competed in the second and third tiers since the 1977–78 season. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, they gained a reputation for knocking out higher-league sides in cup competitions. Their victims included Hibernian, Dundee, Dundee United, Motherwell, and Dunfermline Athletic, as well as four consecutive cup wins over their biggest rivals, Kilmarnock.

Crest and colours

For nearly seventy years, from 1948 until 2016, Ayr United’s badge featured a shield with a Scottish saltire and a scroll underneath carrying the club’s name. In 2015, a legal challenge was brought against the club, arguing that this crest was an unregistered coat of arms. When news broke that the badge was at risk, supporters launched a petition that collected 700 signatures within a single day. The campaign quickly drew backing from politicians, football personalities, and fans.

Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson said that if outdated rules were forcing a badge change, those rules should be reconsidered, adding that she was willing to take the matter to the UK Government after being alerted by John Scott. Former Ayr United and Bayern Munich striker Alan McInally, now a Soccer Saturday pundit on Sky Sports, also spoke out, noting that badges are deeply important to supporters, worn with pride across generations, and remain constant even as stadiums are built and renamed.

In 2016, the club held a fan competition for a new design. The winning entry kept most of the old badge’s features, and a slightly updated version was introduced.

Stadium

Ayr United play at Somerset Park in Ayr's New Town. The ground is one of the few remaining traditional stadiums, featuring an original Archibald Leitch stand, two covered terraces, and a newer stand on the north side built behind older terracing. The first match there saw the former Ayr beat Aston Villa 3-0. In the 1990s, chairman Bill Barr, whose company built modern stadiums for other UK clubs, got planning permission from South Ayrshire Council for a new 10,200 all-seated stadium at Heathfield in Ayr, along with a retail development.

The Scottish Executive then called in the application and overturned the retail part. Since the club needed that retail to fund the build, the project fell through. In November 2006, United agreed to sell Somerset Park to Barratt Homes after securing a 20-acre site in Heathfield. The plan was for a 7,650-seat, 29 million pound stadium as part of a sports and business campus. That project also never happened.