Stranraer

Stranraer's name appears once in the roll of Scottish national cup finals. It happened on 3 November 1996, when the club beat St Johnstone 1-0 to lift the Scottish Challenge Cup. The only other trophy of that stature came far earlier, in 1937/38, when the Scottish Qualifying Cup was won with a 5-3 defeat of Bo'ness.

League titles came in the Second Division, in 1993/94 and 1997/98, and a Third Division championship followed in 2003/04. A Scottish Cup semi-final in 2002/03 and a League Cup semi-final back in 1968/69 mark the closest the club came to a national final by any other route.

By 2009 none of that history counted for much against a debt of roughly £250,000 that put the club within sight of going under. It was a supporters' group, Friends of Stranraer F.C., that raised the money to keep it going. Promotion followed in 2012, though not through results alone — Rangers' demotion that year opened the door. Play-off finals for a place higher up ended in defeat both times, against Morton in 2014 and Ayr United in 2016. The fight ran the other way in 2024: a 3-1 extra-time win over East Kilbride kept Stranraer in the league at all.

Ayr United still carries the sting of that 2016 final whenever the sides meet, and Clyde turn up often enough on the fixture list to count as regulars, but the derby that matters most travels 75 miles down the coast to Queen of the South — Dumfries and Galloway's own contest, distance notwithstanding.

Stranraer itself was founded in 1870, and only Queen's Park and Kilmarnock had been playing football in Scotland for longer.