Full name | Downfield Junior Football Club |
---|---|
Nickname(s) | The Spiders |
Founded | 1904 |
Ground | Downfield Park Balgowan Avenue Dundee |
President | Alex Duncan |
Manager | Paul Marr |
League | SJFA East Premier League |
2015–16 | SJFA East Region North Division, 1st (promoted) |
Downfield Football Club are a Scottish junior football club based in the Downfield area of Dundee. Their home ground is Downfield Park.
Up until the end of the 2005–06 season, they played in the Tayside Premier League of the Scottish Junior Football Association's Eastern Region.
The SJFA restructured prior to the 2006–07 season, and Downfield found themselves in the twelve-team East Region, North Division. They finished third in their first season in the division.
Downfield are the current East Region North Division champions, winning the 2010–11 campaign by two goals from North End, and in terms of trophies won are second only to Tayport in the Tayside / North District roll of honour. The Scottish Cup, along with the more recently created East Region Cup and Tayside/Fife Cup are the only honours to elude the club. The Spiders side which won the Tayside League three times in a row at the end of the 1980s is generally considered to be the best footballing side in Tayside's recent history.
The club's name, "The Spiders", comes from the same term applied to Queen's Park. This is due to Downfield playing in the same narrow black-and-white hooped strip as Scotland's oldest club. When Downfield were first founded, Queen's donated a set of strips to them to assist with the start-up.
Downfield Park is situated in the Kirkton area of Dundee. The far side has a covered enclosure named after Eric Clark, a long-serving committee member now deceased. The south side of the ground contains the club's Social Club, incorporating the changing facilities. The west end has recently seen a flattening of the earth banking at that end, with a view to eventual construction of new facilities. The ground also occasionally plays host to Tayside Police's football side.