Sandy's Blog
Cromarty FC vs. Forres Mechanics
by Casagrandeblog - 23:06 on 30 June 2013
Lynn has been putting a lot of old sporting photos on our Facebook page recently. So I thought this week I would share a bit of local football history with you. It's got nothing to do with the 1955 team in the photo below - this story goes all the way back to 1888.
The North of Scotland Football Association was founded in May that year and proceeded to organise a knock-out North of Scotland F.A Cup. 
Cromarty F.C. wrote to the committee in September asking to be admitted to the Association, which they were, and were duly drawn at home against Forres Mechanics in the first round. A few weeks later, the Secretary of NOSFA read to his committee a postcard from Forres stating that they were unable to go to Cromarty to play the tie. A letter from Cromarty was also read out stating that they had tried to get a ground in Fortrose to play the match but had been unsuccessful. They also claimed that Forres had scratched to them and that they (Cromarty) were thus entitled to enter the second round. The committee discussed this and decided that all Cromarty ties, unless otherwise arranged, should be played in Nairn, ‘the club representatives present consenting to go down to Nairn rather than taking the chance of having to journey to Cromarty.’ Obviously Cromarty was seen as being at the back of beyond.
Two weeks later the committee met again and, according to the minutes, ‘a pile of correspondence was read in connection with the tie between Forres Mechanics and Cromarty, and also a protest from the latter club on account of the ball having been in touch before the goal was scored, and the action of the Forres captain in not allowing the referee to carry out his decision’. The matter was remitted to a sub-committee, which met with the referee - a Mr McGregor - and the Cromarty protest was dismissed. Cromarty were out of the Cup.
They didn’t go off in the huff right away, because a Mr John Fraser from Cromarty F.C. is listed among those attending a committee meeting in January 1889, but that’s the last we hear of Cromarty at that level of football. They never entered again for the North of Scotland Cup and they were not among those involved in setting up the Highland Football League in 1893.
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