Early Years (1893-1914)

Early Years (1893-1914)

Carolina Port

Prior to their first competitive match on 12th August 1893 Dundee got West Craigie Park match ready and issued season tickets. The new club immediately engaged and enthralled an animated audience on that late summer’s afternoon, coming back from two goals down to grab a 3-3 draw and, their first ever league point. Despite ending the season in the bottom three, Dundee were generally well received and comfortably secured re-election to the following season’s Division One campaign. 

The 1894-95 season was the first at Carolina Port, with Dundee moving fast to secure the ground after Strathmore’s amalgamation with Johnstone Wanderers. Dundee moved their new grandstand to the harbour area and set to work improving the facilities:

“Great improvements have been going on lately at Carolina Port, the Dundee’s new ground, and visiting teams will no longer be able to grumble, either of a slope on the ground or of its narrowness. The dressing room accommodation is scarcely up to perfection point yet, but is to be seen to. The grand-standage has been doubled, and a real press-box is to be constructed – it is hoped with direct telegraphic communications to headquarters. The track has almost entirely been reconstructed and re-laid” Scottish Referee, 1894

The city now had a top class multi sports venue and Dundee flourished in their new home. Dundee famously defeated Celtic in the Cup here in 1895 to set up a semi-final date with Renton, and provide the first great ‘What if?’ moments in the fledgling club’s history. Renton, a side Dundee annihilated 8-1 the season before, took Dundee to two replays before reaching the final. Despite this Dundee at Carolina Port created a buzz among the Dundee public with the city now experiencing football crowds that surpassed anything the glory days of amateurism with its many keen, partisan rivalries.

In 1896, just over 20 years since that New Year’s Day match at Baxter Park which inspired an enthusiastic Dundee public to adopt the association code, there was another monumental exhibition when Carolina Port hosted the Scotland-Wales international. It was described as the most eagerly awaited game to have ever been played in the city and it provided additional local interest in Keillor and Thomson of Dundee wearing the thistle of Scotland. Keillor delighted the local crowd with a goal in a stirring 4-0 victory. 

Towards the end of the decade, Dundee fell on some hard times, on occasion finding it difficult to scramble a team together to fulfil matches. The club fought on and provided another ‘what if?’ in the 1898 Scottish Cup semi, losing a two-goal lead in a 3-2 defeat to Killie.

While the board were battling the odds to keep the club viable, they were hit with the devastating news that the Harbour Trustees wanted to change the use of the land on which Carolina Port stood from recreational to commercial. The Dundee custodians had been served with their latest Herculean labour in that they now had to find a new ground on top of everything else. The board are to be commended in moving as quickly as they did to find a patch of ground on the edge of town, and they were soon to find their enforced midnight flit was, in fact, a blessing in disguise. 

The First Decade at Dens

Securing Dens, and the footprint it sits on, allowed Dundee to grow at a rate that, perhaps, they would not have been able while playing in the confines of the harbour area.  With each passing season the club grew in stature and the fans came to see their team in ever increasing numbers. In 1902-03 Dundee made a real breakthrough when they finished runners-up in the league to Hibs and were edged out of the Scottish Cup semi-final by Hearts. 

While the club enjoyed a burgeoning presence on the national stage they continued to dominate at a local level, using the county competitions as an opportunity to give valuable game time to their reserves. Dundee supplemented their fixture list with games in the East of Scotland League against (mainly) Edinburgh clubs and the Inter City League against clubs from cities across Scotland. 

Continued exposure against the best teams in the country and the chance to develop a strong, experienced squad paid dividends. In 1906-07 and 1908-09 Dundee again finished second in the league and turned Dens into a fortress. Between Feb 1909 and April 1911 Dundee were unbeaten at home. This consistency was a huge contributory factory to Dundee’s first major success, the 1910 Scottish Cup. 

The club looked likely to repeat the feat the following season when, after disposing of Hibernian and Rangers at Dens, the Dark Blues drew Hamilton in the semi-final. Dundee beat their struggling opponents home and away in the league but would narrowly lose 3-2 in the cup, another semi-final, another what might-have-been. 

Dens was now equipped to handle crowds of over 30,000, a far cry from the rope-lined, sodden, uneven playing fields that the Dundee FC directors knew in their playing days, battling it out for local honours in front of a few thousand. It was duly recognised for the facility it had become by being awarded the League international against the Irish League (1902) and full internationals against Wales (1904 & 1908). The players, too, shared in the international honours with James Sharp, Peter Robertson, Fred McDiarmid, William Muir, Sandy MacFarlane, John Chaplin, Herbert Dainty, Jimmy Lawson, George Chaplin, John Fraser, John Hunter, Bob Hamilton and Thomas Kelso all representing either the Scottish League or the Scottish national team between 1900-1914. 

By any contemporaneous measure of the Edwardian age of Scottish football, the formative years of the 20th Century rank as some of the most successful for the club, however, aside from the Scottish Cup win, these years remain largely side-lined in favour of more recent conquests. 

Nevertheless, events in Sarajevo in June 1914 meant that football was to be a secondary concern for the masses over the next few years. The country was about to be dragged from its post Victorian idyll and ushered into a world that was forced to grow up fast.