Elgin City and the club’s players of the ill-fated 1992/93 season have thrown their weight behind a fans’ bid to reclaim a lost title.
It is now 25 years since the Borough Briggs side were crowned champions only to be stripped of the honour days later.
The Highland Football League decided to void the entire championship after concluding a swashbuckling Elgin City had switched the date of a fixture to allow two otherwise suspended players to take the field and help them secure the title.
Some, including former star Alec Leonce and former player-manager John Teasdale, thought the decision was “personal” – an opportunity to throw an elbow at attacking but also brash football team boasting some big personalities.
It was nonetheless upheld by the Scottish Football Association.
Now an online petition, which has already attracted hundreds of signatures, has been launched by supporters of the Moray Club in an effort to return the championship flag to Borough Briggs and medals to a team widely considered to be one of the finest Highland sides assembled in the 1990s.
Alec, a serviceman who moved from RAF St Morgan in Cornwall to RAF Kinloss to star up front for Elgin that season, said: “Even now, I don’t understand the decision.
“In such a long season you win some games, you draw a couple, you lose a few, you represent your town or city. How can anyone just say ‘We’re taking the title off you’?
“Those players played the game in the true spirit of football.”
The Highland League’s contention was that Forres and Elgin, in attempting to bring forward their game to the Friday night from the scheduled Saturday kick-off, failed to apprise league officials of the implications relating to suspensions for Elgin’s John McDonald and John Teasdale set for April 24, the original date of the game.
Elgin required just a point to claim the title and won 6-0.
The bumper Friday night crowd – one reason supposedly given by Forres to league secretary John Grant for bringing the game forward – also ‒duly arrived, with 1655 packing into Mosset Park that night.
Elgin argued their motive for moving the game was to provide a day’s rest for players ahead of a scheduled Sunday friendly against top-tier side Dundee, organised to allow Dees boss Jim Duffy to judge first-hand Elgin’s 23-year-old talent Mike Teasdale, who went on to sign for Dundee for an Elgin record of £32,000.
Mike, who went on to star for Inverness and now lives back in Elgin, said: “When they first came after us, I thought it was a joke. It was a bit surreal and nobody could believe it.
“We had a good season, worked hard, and had a good team. Everything was done above board.
“Every player in that team deserves to get their medals back. Everybody I’ve spoken to says that Elgin won the league that year.”
Alex Schweitzer-Thompson is leading the fans’ campaign. He said: “Surely those now governing football in Scotland can see, in hindsight, that stripping a team of the title for an offence relating to one match does not represent punishment commensurate with the supposed crime.
“On the 125th anniversary of the Highland Football League and Elgin City Football Club, what better time to right a historic wrong and restore credibility to two of north football’s most successful organisations?”
Moray SNP MP Richard Lochhead added: “This new campaign led by fans will get everyone talking and provide an opportunity for the public to have their say on what was an astonishing period when Elgin City were chalking up an incredible run of successes only for it to all end in controversy.
“Even twenty-five years on, many Elgin City fans I know still feel the pain.”