Cowdenbeath F.C.

Did You Know?

• Rab Walls' 54 league goals in 1938–39 is the second highest seasonal total in Scottish League history, behind only Jimmy Smith's 66 for Ayr United in 1927/28.
• The club's biggest home attendance is 25,586, set against Rangers on 21 September 1949.
• Grant Manzie made his debut for Cowdenbeath at 15 years and 357 days old on 11 November 2006, the youngest in club history.
• In June 2020, fans donated over £14,000 in three months via the 'Club 135' initiative to help the club during the COVID-19 pandemic.

History

Cowdenbeath Football Club traces its beginnings to a merger of two local sides, Cowdenbeath Rangers and Cowdenbeath Thistle, in 1881. However, the club’s own historian has found that the Rangers name was still used after that, and the true founding of Cowdenbeath F.C. came in 1882. That year, Rangers merged again, this time with a local club called Raith Rovers (formed in 1881 and not connected to the present-day Kirkcaldy side). This merger gave the town a single club at the same time the Fifeshire Football Association was created. Cowdenbeath is the oldest surviving football club in Fife. They lost the first Fife Cup final in 1883 but won the trophy for the first time in 1885.

The club moved to North End Park in 1888 and joined the Scottish Football League’s Division Two in 1905. They won the Division Two title in 1913–14 and again in 1914–15, but were not promoted to Division One either time. The league was suspended in 1915 because of World War I, and the club moved to Central Park in 1917. When Division Two was revived in 1921, Cowdenbeath was placed in it. After finishing as runners-up in 1923–24, they were promoted to Division One for the first time.

Cowdenbeath stayed in the top flight until relegation at the end of the 1933–34 season. They won their third Division Two championship in 1938–39, helped greatly by Rab Walls scoring 54 league goals. That total is the second highest in Scottish League history for a single season, behind only Jimmy Smith’s 66 goals for Ayr United in 1927–28. World War II cut short their return to Division One, and the club shut down for the war. When football resumed in 1946, Cowdenbeath was controversially placed in the new B Division, the second tier.

A 1949 League Cup win over Rangers at Ibrox was a highlight of the early post-war years, but the club struggled to get back to the top level. They finally did so under popular manager Andy Matthew in the 1969–70 season. However, the single season in Division One that followed remains their only top-flight campaign since the 1930s. More recently, promotion to the First Division in 1991–92 raised hopes, but the team soon dropped back to the bottom of the Scottish League after a run of 38 league games without a win at Central Park.