IN 1910, nearly 40 years after a ball was first kicked on Ayr’s Low Green, a merger was on the cards which would shape the history of football in the town.

Ayr FC, formed in 187,9 were about to unite with another professional club in the town, Parkhouse, formed in 1886. It would be the last of a series of amalgamations which led to the formation of Ayr United.

Ayr United historian Duncan Carmichael has produced a family tree which shows the original teams and how they merged.

Asthe sport began to grow in Ayr from the early days on the Low Green in 1872, numerous clubs began to pop up across the town and further afield with football fever taking hold.

Duncan told the Advertiser: “The story of the early club in Ayr is a series of amalgamations.

“You have the early days of Ayr Thistle and Ayr Academy, who switched their allegiances from rugby to football.

“Ayr Academy then merged with Ayr Eglinton to form Ayr Academicals who then merged with Ayr Thistle to form Ayr F.C.”

As the clubs began to form and merge, so did the playing fields with football moving from the Low Green further inland with Ayr Academicals playing at Mr Dewar’s cattle field and Ayr Eglinton playing football at the Racecourse (Now known as the Old Racecourse).

But it is Somerset Park where Ayr F.C settled and were supported by communities in Wallacetoun and Newtown, which were areas blighted by poor sanitary conditions.

Parkhouse, who played south of the river at Beresford Park, were seen as the more affluent club with a class division between the two sides.

But the merger of the two clubs is historic in itself, with a decision taken that together the teams who played in the second division could be strong enough to earn promotion to Scotland’s top tier.

Duncan said: “Ayr United are the only league club in Scotland that’s been formed by the amalgamation of two existing league clubs. Ultimately Ayr F.C were stronger than Parkhouse and it was done under the false assumption they weren’t.

“Ayr began life in the second division, it wasn’t automatic promotion like was expected. “

Elsewhere a football exploded across Ayrshire with mining communities and villages forming teams.

Duncan added: “In the 1870s you had clubs popping up all over the place,

“Football was prominent in Annbank. It evolved in the 1880s, mining villages, now defunct mining villages, had their own teams.

“There were some unusual names, in 1876 there was the early risers of Troon.

“It was like an epidemic of how they all sprung up.”