It was in the Spring of 1909 that the Irish community in Dundee got together to form a football club following the demise of Dundee Harp three years earlier.

They initially called themselves Dundee Hibernian and took over Clepington Park, the home of Dundee Wanderers, thus displacing the previous occupants. Clepington Park was renamed Tannadice Park and that was the beginning of the great club we know today as Dundee United.

The Club's first game on 18 August 1909 was a friendly against the Hibs from Edinburgh in front of a sizeable 7,000 crowd and ended in a 1-1 draw with Docherty having the honour of scoring the first ever and equalising goal for the home team.

On 21 August 1909 the Hibs first ever competitive match was against Dundee Wanderers, previous occupants of Tannadice Park. The Wanderers won 2-1.

From this beginning Dundee Hibs went from strength to strength. The local Carrie Cup was captured on 23 April 1910 with a 1-0 win over
Forfar Athletic and after only one campaign in the Northern League
the Hibs were voted into the Scottish League on 7 June 1910 to fill
the vacancy created by the merger of Ayr and Ayr Parkhouse to form
Ayr United.

Tannadice was the scene for Dundee Hibs debut in the Scottish League and although opponents Leith Athletic won 3-2 Hibs quickly earned a reputation as cup fighters and on 25 March 1911 won the Forfarshire Cup, another local cup competition, at the first attempt

On 8 February 1913 Dundee Hibs began a long association with the Scottish Cup and the venue for the Club's debut was Hampden Park where they lost 4-2 to Queen's Park. The following year saw Hibs' first appearance in a national cup final when in December 1914 they lost in the final of the Scottish Qualifying Cup to Albion Rovers, but only after two drawn matches.

However, the advent of the first World War meant that Dundee Hibs struggled to survive the inevitable upheaval which the hostilities inflicted on Scottish Football. In 1915 the Second Division of which Dundee Hibs were members was abandoned in favour of regional leagues and the Tannadice club operated in the Eastern League for the duration of the war.

1915 also saw the first-ever derby game with Dundee F.C. when a friendly match at Dens Park heralded the inaugral meeting of the two city sides at first team level. Only 4,000 saw Dundee confirm their superior status of the time by winning 4-0.

As life returned to normality, the Scottish League continued with an extended First Division and moves to re-introduce Division Two were defeated. As a protest Dundee Hibs resigned from the League, the only club to take such action. They returned to the Eastern League which they won in 1919/20.

Though their exile from the Scottish League was to be short-lived it was highly eventful. Immediately after successfully re-applying for League membership in June 1920, the Tannadice side once again resigned from the League due to the repeated refusal by the First Division clubs to re-introduce Division Two. This time, however, it was no unilateral decision. The 16 excluded clubs resigned en bloc, so Dundee Hibernian found themselves quitting the Scottish League for the second time in the space of twelve months.

As a result Dundee Hibs went into the independent Central League which thrived to such an extent that it was instantly accepted back under the umbrella of the Scottish League as the Second Division with automatic promotion and relegation. Thus League football returned to Tannadice in August 1921 after a lapse of seven years.

This reunion was to prove all to brief as Dundee Hibs found themselves one of the first victims of the automatic promotion and relegation they had campaigned so hard for. Cast adrift from the League once more, procrastination by the club fuelled speculation that they may even disband. However, a stroke of good fortune determined their destiny. Celtic, with whom they had a close relationship, intimated to Dundee Hibs that they were withdrawing their Reserve Team from the Scottish Alliance League. The Parkhead side offered to nominate the Tannadice side as their replacements, a gesture which was readily accepted by the Dundee Hibs Committee.

This series of rather dramatic events and a poor 1922/23 season in the Alliance League led to a consortium of local businessmen taking over control of the club. Although offered a place in the newly formed Third Division, the new board had greater ambition and not for the first time in the club's history, launched an intensive campaign to gain Second Division status.

The lobbying worked because at the League's AGM in May 1923, Dundee Hibernian were re-elected to the Second Division and their membership of the Scottish League has been unbroken since those humble beginnings apart from the Second World War.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

next »