Dundee II

On 13 August 2024, Dundee's second string travelled across the city to face Dundee United's B team in the Scottish Challenge Cup, and the tie went all the way to penalties before United came out on top. It was a minor fixture in a competition few outside Tayside follow, but it carried an old grudge along with it.

That match is about as close as Dundee II gets to a history of its own. The side turns out under different names depending on the competition — Dundee B, Dundee II, Dundee U21 — and its place in the Challenge Cup comes as an invited entrant from a Premiership club rather than as a member alongside the senior sides of the Highland League or the Lowland League. Sources disagree on how far back that involvement stretches: one account has the team debuting in the competition in August 2018 against Hibernian's under-20s, another traces the earliest confirmed appearance to 2021, when Jamie Richardson started against Peterhead. Either way, no trophy has followed.

It has no ground to call its own. Matches are played at Dens Park, the 11,850-capacity home shared with the first team, with the odd fixture shifted out to Brechin City's Glebe Park when the calendar demands it. The kit follows the parent club's dark blue with white shorts, and the badge on the shirt is the one worn at Dens Park on a Saturday by the senior side.

What follows the club at every level is Dundee United. The rivalry across the city runs through the first team's fixture list every season, and it does not stay confined there — when the reserve sides were drawn together in that penalty shootout, the needle still moved.