⚪ Our Story ⚫

Formed in 2012, and taking our name from the Famous Glenbuck CherryPickers just down the road in the former mining village of Glenbuck, our home village of Douglas and it's surrounding area.

Glenbuck & Douglas Valley are a local community based football club in Douglas, South Lanarkshire.

The club focus on developing kids from 4yrs+ in a fun and exciting environment. We have dedicated coaches, a great backroom team working hard to improve the club, the kids and the set up.

We also have begun working with adults at the club where we set up a walking football group back in 2021, evolving into an over 50s team and a social Sunday game.

We also introduced FITbaw, a Sunday hour of mixed ability, age and gender. Where players can get involved to improve fitness, mental health, weight loss and make friends.

The newest addition is our Vets team created from the FITbaw and younger guys in the Walking football sessions.

We currently run -

2008's
2012's x2 teams
2014's
U10's Girls
U12's Girls
2016's
2018's Minikickers
Walking football ( 18+ )
Walking football over 50's team
Glenbuck Vets

Glenbuck CherryPickers

🍒 A brief history 🍒

The Glenbuck Cherrypickers were notable for the high number of professional footballers that they produced, despite only existing for around fifty years. Between their creation in the early 1870s, and their demise in 1931, the team produced some fifty professional footballers. This is despite their home – the mining village of Glenbuck – having a population of around 1,000.

The club started its existence in the early 1870s as Glenbuck Athletic, founded by Edward and William Bone, with a strip of white jersey and black shorts. The name "Cherrypickers" is of obscure origin, beginning as a nickname in the first years of the 20th century, but may have derived from local men from Glenbuck or Muirkirk serving in the 11th Hussans (The "Cherry Pickers") in the Boer War. Another possible source was the fact that almost all of the men associated with the club, players and officials, worked in the local pits where one of the jobs was sorting the good coal from stones and other material as it passed on a conveyor belt. The lumps of good coal had to be picked out and the workers who performed that task were known as cherry-pickers.

The club won the first three Ayrshire Junior Cup competitions in 1889-90, 1890-91 and 1891-92.

The club's last entire season was 1930–31, and it folded following the closure of the town's coal pit, which was almost the sole source of local employment. The town of Glenbuck itself was abandoned thereafter, and no longer exists.

Douglas Amateurs FC

🟡 A brief history 🔴

Douglas Amateur FC were founded in 1965 from the nucleus of a team playing under the auspices of Douglas Miners Welfare. As a committee member and leader of the Youth Club in the Miners Welfare, Tam Smith was the main organiser of the team, arranging friendly games, securing changing facilities within the Welfare premises and generally pulling a team together. Games against Coalburn, Nemphlar, and the local D&A estate team, itself a useful outfit, gave encouragement for a bona fide club to be set up.

Neilly McFarlane a football enthusiast and interested spectator at the games, was approached, and he agreed to manage a team with a view to entering the Lanarkshire Amateur Football Association. Neil had Geordie Jeffries as his sidekick, along with Tam Shaw, Frank McMillan and Buster Stratford on the committee.

1974 was lhe last year of national trophies for DAFC, however the team continued to be among the top outfits in the country and won many competitions until its demise in 1977

Douglas Amateurs FC was probably the most successful team ever to have played in Scotland. They can surely be unique in winning, at some stage, every competition that they ever entered. Their roll of honour highlights the incredible success of the club in such a short history. The pivotal figure in the clubs success, Willie 'Shulf' McMillan was no blackboard technician. Shulf's attributes were in having an eye for a player, bringing new blood into the club at the right time, and in having each player play a specific role for the benefit of the team. With John Jackson bringing a high level of fitness to the players and Miller Mathieson overseeing a financial and fund raising organisation that many senior clubs would be proud of, DAFC had the perfect combination to ensure success. Sheena, Pat, and Allison, their respective wives, had to endure many a long day, and provide support when it was frequently required.

No successful club ever existed without a dedicated group of officials and committee members. At the peak of their success Douglas AFC had their own supporters club, filling several buses even to midweek games. In that respect great credit must go to Mary and Bill Rankine, Jock and Ina Simpson, Bobby and Ann Taylor, George McMillan, Frank McMillan, Buster Stratford, Tam Blackwood, Bob McMillan, Bobby Cornelius, Andrew Morrison, and Ian Johnston, who all gave the club tremendous support and help throughout what was an incredible journey.

Glenbuck Memorial

Situated on the village of Glenbuck, the ghosts of the past are very much visible in this amazing place. The village where the Shankly family were born and where over 80 of their residents played for the famous CherryPickers with 50 of them moving on and playing for teams across the UK.

Memorials and plaques take you around the once thriving village and take you on a journey to where it all began.

If you want to visit the birthplace of the Glenbuck CherryPickers and the Famous Shankly Memorial then here's the details -

Glenbuck,

Cumnock,

KA18 3SB