Revival of 3rd Lanark. The football team, not the rifle volunteers

There was mention in the Scotland in Sunday yesterday of the defunct Scottish fottball team 3rd Lanark.

The team folded in 1967 but seems to still hold a fascination for some Glaswegians to this day.

What has this to do with Scottish Military History? Well the 3rd Lanark F.C. took their name from a Volunteer Rifle Company. The team's original name was the 3rd Lanarkshire Rifle Volunteers Football Club.

The Rifle Volunteers were formed in 1859 and their football team was formed in 1872. The Volunteers actually stopped using the same name as the football team in 1881 when they became the 3rd Volunteer Battalion, Scottish Rifles.

In 1903 the fotball team changed their name too, to Third Lanark Athletic Club.

That wasn't the end of the association with their origins though. The team played in red, the same as the 1872 volunteers' uniform tunics until they ran out of money sixty four years later.