The Wilderness Years (Derry City F.C.)

The "wilderness years" was a period of time between 1972 and 1985 when the city of Derry, Northern Ireland had been without a senior footballing side participating in a senior national league.

Derry City F.C., the city's primary club since it was founded in 1928 and accepted into the Irish League in 1929, became victim to the 'Troubles' in the early 1970s when the Irish Football Association banned the use of their ground, the Brandywell near the notoriously volatile Bogside area, for security reasons. The club, forced into travelling an unsustainable journey to Coleraine to play their home-games each week and in the face a continuance of the ground-ban despite police forces eventually ruling the area safe enough to visit for opposing team's fans, decided to leave the Irish League, effectively having been forced out by what it perceived to have been a sectarian vandetta against a club based in a staunchly republican area in a mainly nationalist-Catholic city by a body which was traditionally seen as the footballing branch of unionism. Football supporters in the city often referred (and still do refer) to the period as the "wilderness years". [" [http://observer.guardian.co.uk/osm/story/0,,468041,00.html My team - Derry City by Martin McGuinness] ", "The Guardian", 08 April, 2001.]

The club survived as a junior team contesting in the local leagues on a weekend morning basis until 1985 when it applied for entry into the newly formed First Division of the Republic of Ireland's Football League of Ireland. The application was accepted and the club, despite being from Northern Ireland, has continued to play in the Republic's league structure to this day, first in the Football League of Ireland, and since 2007 in that league's successor, the FAI League of Ireland.

References