Queen's Park are at least still in senior football. They also have the unusual statistic of having an average home attendance which is exactly 1% of their home grounds capacity.

Dumbarton were also a powerhouse in Scotland once. Third Lanark won the league and the Scottish Cup in the 20th century. Vale of Leven won the Scottish Cup 3 years running but have a been a Junior club for a long time now.

Gretna qualified for Europe not that long ago.

I suppose Rangers need to appear in this list now too.

What was that English team who won the 'world cup', West Auckland or something?

Not that they were ever giants but I think apart from the East German teams Alaves are the only former European finalist playing at the third level.

Dynammso Kyiv wrote:

It is, though I'm not sure they've really "fallen" given that they're still where they were at the time, an amateur club playing in the Northern League. The more puzzling (and still debated) thing is why they got to play in the Lipton Trophy in the first place.

Probsbly don't count as 'giants' but Rushden & Diamonds were a league team and now a different club play at their ground.

Chester, Halifax and Scarborough are all teams I've seen play league football and are now 'phoenix' clubs at different levels of non-league football. Do Boston Utd still exist?

I remember Luton and Oxford being in Division One in the 80s - and in my Panini Stickers albums I colected as a kid. Seeing them drop to non-league is still a surprise.

Bradford City are the former Premier League team who have sunk the lowest, IMO.

That is falling into the "Premier League as ground Zero" trap. Even here, Swindon may have a call on that and, certainly, Wimbledon whichever way you look at it.

Rushden & Diamonds only came into existence in 1992, though.

Amor de Cosmos wrote:


Much as I'd love it to be us, I'm sure it isn't. Aside from the glory years of the Edwardian era, it's been a steady flotation between the second and third tiers, with periods in the basement feeling like forever.

As a point of pedantic order, Bury's highest finish is 4th in the top flight in 1924/25. It was the subject of my first letter in WSC when, in the corresponding Season In Brief, it was referred to as the club's highest finish "to date."

In Belgium :
- Union Saint-Gilloise, 11 times champions before WWII, 60 games unbeaten (I think it was once a European record), now struggling in Division 3 and having not played in the top division since 1972-73.
- RFC Liège, first ever champions of Belgium (in 1895) and European regulars in the 80s/start of the 90s, now in Division 4 and having been very close to extinction
- Beerschot : 7 times champions of Belgium and disappeared in 1999, The Antwerp club is now back under their old name (or close to) Beerschot AC thanks to Germinal Ekeren.
- The other Antwerp team, R Antwerp FC, the oldest club of the country, still in the second division and were quite close of disappearing last season.
- And my very own RWD Molenbeek, RIP 2002 but we are back this season (complicated story)

Re French clubs mentionned in this tread : Reims are back in the top flight for the first time since 1979 - they are technically a new club (refounded in 1992).
RC Strasbourg won their CFA2 group last season and will play in CFA, the fourth-tier.

StephL wrote:


Explain.

In the mid-90s, Cape Town Spurs won the domestic double, crowning a longish history as one of the city's two big clubs, alongside Hellenic, a club whose franchise was bought by one club and has since been traded several times. The third Cape Town team to play regularly in the top flight was Santos, who had played in the anti-apartheid league in the 1980s and early '90s, dominating it for many years.

Cape Town Spurs was dissolved in a franchise deal that also included Seven Stars, a Cape Town club that had just played its first season in the premier league.

Spurs' franchise was bought by the guy who once falsely accused Alex Ferguson of having "abused" his girlfriend. The team was called Mother City and was promptly relegated. Seven Stars' franchise was bought by Ajax Amsterdam, who named it Ajax Cape Town, ignoring my superior suggestion of Plastic Ajax.

Spurs fans, like a bunch of ignorant sheep, migrated to Plastic Ajax. Some of them even think that Plastic Ajax are a Cape Town Spurs by another name. It's not. Cape Town Spurs is dead. Their fans didn't protest much about the murder of their club because the reflected glamour of the Ajax association drew them in like a rotting corpse draws the flies.

Plastic Ajax has won no league title yet, unlike Santos, the team the local press likes to ignore and whose replica jerseys are not on sale in sport shops, alongside those of Plastic Ajax, Pirates, Chiefs, Moroka Swallows (great name for a porn actress) and, incongruously, Bloemfontein Celtic.

Santos have been relegated this season, having lost a play-off game against another Cape Town side: Chippa United, named after the investment arm of a construction and security concern and, guess what, another fucking franchise (though not of a top flight club, so that's not too bad).

Bored of Education wrote:


No, I didn't mean it like that, just that Premier League to fourth division in ten years is a more rapid fall than Division 1 to conference in 20.

Technically is Wimbledon a fall from grace? That was a franchising / relocation / betrayal of all that's good in football issue. Wimbledon ceased to exist but hadn't actually fallen very far before they did.