Five framed photographs hang on the walls of the clubhouse lounge at Holm Park: the Titan crane, the Singer sewing factory and Kilbowie Park, as well as the rubble-strewn streets of the Blitz and the long-lost Seven Seas pub. Together, they tell the story of a town, its triumphs and its traumas.
‘There’s an old Bankies song,’ says Clydebank FC chair Grace McGibbon, who had the pictures installed at the start of this season. ‘It goes, “We make ships, sewing machines, we build famous football teams, we’re the Bankies from Kilbowie Park”. It’s kind of a homage to that.’
To McGibbon, the pictures are a reminder of what Clydebank is and has always been.
‘Clydebank is not just a football team, or a shopping centre, or whatever else you might think,’ she tells Daily Mail Sport. ‘It’s so much more than any of that. This is a community that never gives up. There’s almost a defiance about the place. That’s what these photos represent.
‘Other people might look at it and go, “It’s just pictures on a wall, I don’t get it”. But we get it. It reminds us why we’re here and why we’re doing this.’
Without question, ‘this’ is one of the Scottish football stories of the season so far. As well as being in contention for the Lowland League West title – and with it, the chance of a Lazarus-like return to the Scottish football league – Clydebank have reached the third round of the Scottish Cup for the third successive season where Championship side Livingston await.
Clydebank finished top of a KDM Evolution Trophy league phase containing mainly senior sides
More immediately, they host League One strugglers Alloa Athletic in the last 32 of the KDM Evolution Trophy on Tuesday, the Bankies having qualified for the knockout stages of the Challenge Cup by finishing top of the league phase, unbeaten, and ahead of the likes of Ross County, Airdrieonians and Cove Rangers.
Be under no illusions: something special is happening in West Dunbartonshire just now. To fully understand how special requires a short history lesson. Between 1888 and 1931, three clubs bearing the Clydebank name came and went. It was in the 1960s that things changed materially.
Frustrated by poor attendances, and inspired by Major League Baseball franchise relocations, Jack and Charlie Steedman – the majority owners of East Stirlingshire FC – merged their club with Clydebank Juniors. ES Clydebank, as they were called, relocated to New Kilbowie Park in Clydebank, enraging supporters of the hitherto Falkirk-based East Stirlingshire.
A legal challenge brought by local shareholders saw the merger invalidated and the brothers being deposed. Undeterred, they formed a brand-new club, Clydebank FC, which successfully applied for entry into the Scottish football league in time for the 1966/67 season. A decade later, inspired by a 20-year-old Davie Cooper, the club was promoted to the Premier Division for the first time, narrowly missing out on the First Division title to Alex Ferguson’s St Mirren.
For a while, everything was gravy. The Bankies established themselves as a solid if unspectacular outfit, represented at various times by the likes of Owen Coyle, Tommy Coyne and Bobby Williamson. The ‘two Jims’, Fallon and Gallacher, became club icons alongside record-goalscorer Ken Eadie. Gary Teale rose through the club’s youth academy. They even lured Cooper home to see out his career.
Kilbowie Park was one of the iconic stops for away fans before it was razed to the ground
In 1996, the rug was pulled. The Steedmans sold New Kilbowie Park to developers who demolished the ground and built a retail park on top of it. That sparked a chain of events that included ground-sharing with Dumbarton and Greenock Morton, ownership changes, and ill-conceived plans to relocate to Dublin, then Carlisle, the Scottish Borders and more.
After the inevitable tumble into administration, the club was acquired by the newly formed Airdrie United, itself a product of the liquidated Airdrieonians. To all intents and purposes, Clydebank FC was renamed and relocated, leaving devastated Bankies without a club.
McGibbon remembers it well. ‘I’m Clydebank born and bred,’ she beams. ‘My husband had been a Clydebank fan all his days and, when we first met, he took me along to a couple of games. I immediately got the bug.
‘So, when the demise happened, you felt it. This thing that was so important to you was suddenly gone. It was heartbreaking. The season after it happened, you’d bump into people wandering around the shopping centre because that was the only place left to go.’
As Scottish football carried on without them, a group of fans formed a collective called the United Clydebank Supporters and recovered the club name and crest from Airdrie United. ‘At that point,’ recalls McGibbon, ‘we basically had to take a crash course in how to run a football club. People talk about starting again from scratch. That’s what this was. Absolute scratch.’
Scottish football icon Davie Cooper started and finished his playing career with the Bankies
Item one on the agenda was an application to join the Scottish Junior Football League. After that was accepted, and after a year out of the game, Clydebank returned in time for the start of the 2003-04 campaign. Club legend Billy ‘Budgie’ McGhee was named manager, a new home at Glenhead Park in Duntocher was secured, and an improbable new chapter began.
Fast-forward roughly a quarter of a century, and the progress made is quite remarkable. Via various rungs of the former Scottish Junior Football Association and ground-hopping arrangements, Clydebank joined the West of Scotland League – the sixth tier of the Scottish football pyramid – in 2020. In 2024-25, they won promotion to the Lowland League West to move to within a step of a sensational return to the Scottish football league.
Win the league and they will go into a three-way, end-of-season play-off with the champions of Lowland League East and the Highland League. The winner of that round-robin will advance to a two-legged, home-and-away play-off against the team finishing bottom of SPFL League Two, sometimes referred to as ‘Club 42’. Win that tie and you’re playing League Two football next season.
‘We have a three-year plan to be in League Two,’ says McGibbon. ‘Within five years, League One. And after that, who knows? The most important thing is that we remain sustainable and fan-owned.
‘We can’t sell out to a big money man. Do that and you sell the soul of the club. I know because we’ve been there before. We can never again be in a position where one person has sole ownership of this club. It just can’t happen.’
Which raises the question of governance. The ten-person board, chaired by McGibbon, is entirely voluntary. ‘We don’t take a penny out of the club,’ she insists. ‘No expenses, nothing.’
Pop group Wet Wet Wet sponsored their hometown club Clydebank between 1993 and 1997
Another 30 or so volunteers manage various other parts of club business, from running the social media accounts to curating the matchday programme to operating the club shop. If it feels as though the community is showing up for its team, that’s because it is.
‘I think it harks back to the town’s working-class roots,’ says McGibbon. ‘And we try to embrace it in kind. We understand that it’s difficult for people to buy season tickets and such like with the cost of everything these days. That’s why we’ve put things in place to help, like payment plans. If we know someone genuinely can’t afford a ticket, we try to make it happen. Sometimes, it’s more important to have that person there than bringing in an extra few quid on the day.’
Crucially, the club has also invested in the Bronze Licence required for promotion into the upper tiers of the pyramid, a significant outlay that has the full backing of manager Gordon Moffat.
‘The whole trajectory of the club is so positive,’ he says. ‘For me, my coaches and the players, it’s really reassuring to see the way the club is run. Grace and the board are basically lifelong fans and it’s obvious to anyone they’ve got the club’s long-term future at heart.
‘When I came in seven years ago, I said to Grace that we’d need to increase the playing budget if we wanted to be competitive and, to her credit, she’s managed to do that whilst keeping us on a sure footing. She’s not scared to say no but, at the same time, she’s a fan and she wants to watch a good team.’
Clydebank chair Grace McGibbon is proud of the way the club has battled through adversity
Currently, that team includes an eclectic mix of joiners, electricians, engineers, firefighters, a barber and more. There’s a potent mix of youth and experience, with leaders in every position. Nicky Low, for example. The former Aberdeen and Dundee midfielder joined the Bankies in February 2023, back when they were still in the West of Scotland Football League.
‘I knew a few boys who were there at the time,’ says the 34-year-old. ‘I said to them, “Listen, is it professional the way it’s run, because I’m not coming if it’s a bag of washing”. Honestly, they couldn’t have spoken more highly of the place, and they were right to.
‘It’s the volunteer aspect that really gets me. Clydebank’s lucky that a lot of people give up their free time to help out, and you see what it means to them when you win and they’re all high-fiving you. Just seeing people smiling at football is what makes it all worthwhile.’
For Low, playing for Clydebank also represents something of a ‘full circle’ moment. ‘I was brought up in Greenock,’ he says, ‘so when Clydebank were ground-sharing with Morton back in the day, I was their ball boy. I’ve had a soft spot for them since I was a kid.’
All of which is lovely but football – as we are constantly reminded – is a results business, and Low is determined to continue Clydebank’s momentum with a win over Alloa in the Challenge Cup.
‘We’re under no illusions about how difficult a game it’s going to be,’ he says. ‘Alloa are a strong team. They play good football and Andy Graham will have them well organised. They’ll be favourites but we’ll go in believing that if we can bring the best version of ourselves, we’ll have a chance of progressing.
Holm Park will play host to a cup clash against Alloa that could provide a real fairytale
‘As a team and as individuals, we’re playing well and we always believe we can score, so if we can keep it tight at the back, I believe we’re capable of giving anybody a game.’
Manager Moffat agrees. ‘We’ve shown against League One and League Two teams over the last few seasons that we can compete. People will say, “It’s a one-off game, anything can happen.” But we’ve got a decent sample size in our favour now. Sure, we’ll lose some games to SPFL opposition, but I think we’ve proven we’re more than capable of winning plenty, too.’
As for McGibbon, she’s mostly just happy to have her team back. ‘I work in retail,’ she says. ‘Monday to Thursday. Nothing exciting. My passion comes from this football club, from the people, the fans, the coaches, the players. Every single person at the club, I absolutely love them for what they’ve given. That’s what makes it all worthwhile. I mean, you wouldn’t do this if it didn’t mean something to you. But it does. It’s very special.’
And who knows? Maybe one day there will be space on the wall for a photo of the team that restores Clydebank to the Scottish football league. They, too, will have earned their place.
■ Clydebank FC face Alloa Athletic in the last 32 of the KDM Evolution Trophy at Holm Park on Tuesday, November 3. Kick-off 7.45pm.
