DOWN MEMORY LANE
One of Campbeltown’s most successful sports clubs is celebrating its centenary. Campbeltown Former Pupils Amateur Football Club, founded in 1919 as Campbeltown Grammar School Former Pupils Association, originally provided hockey for ladies and football for gentlemen. 1919 was the first year of competition after the end of the Great War, a catastrophic conflict that affected every community in terms of injury and major loss of life. Such was the carnage, Campbeltown’s senior football league was reduced from a pre-war membership of eight well-founded clubs down to the bare minimum of three. Into this void stepped a new organisation that would not only increase the number of teams available, but also allow the town’s young people greater sporting opportunity in the years that lay ahead. From humble beginnings, the club became the longest surviving and most successful local football organisation in the history of the beautiful game, competing and gaining major success at both local and national levels on a regular basis. The club’s top achievement was winning the Scottish Amateur Football League Premier Division in 2000, the first Argyll side to achieve the honour. The Pupils have counted among their numbers several amateur international players who represented Scotland, including the Reverend B B Blackwood (circa 1919), Keven Gilchrist (circa 1987) and Paul McWhirter (circa 2001). Other players who have kicked a ball for the club include: Johnny Moscardini, who was capped nine times for Italy at full international level, scoring seven times as centre forward; John Durnan, captain of Swansea in the English League circa 1920; Duncan McAulay, who played senior football at Greenock Morton, and Thomas Maguire at Aberdeen, both in the 1980s; and Donald McCallum at Dumbarton until 2018. In the modern era, the club shortened its long-winded title to Campbeltown Former Pupils AFC, but is still better known to one and all as the ‘Pupils’ Football Club. At present, the club is honoured to act as the parent organisation to all football in Campbeltown, a partnership that includes the juvenile association, Kintyre schools and ladies’ football under the umbrella of Campbeltown Community Football Club. As in the past, the future of football in the community looks secure at all levels. Celebration plans are in their infancy, but organisers hope to include a match against senior opposition, a dinner/dance and a pictorial publication to mark the occasion and history of football in Campbeltown through the years.