Wishaw Wycombe Wanderers

Club History

Did you know that Wishaw Wycombe Wanderers, in their short history, can count a former SPL club captain as one of our former players? No? Well you know as much about the club as I did. That was until Pat O'Donnell suggested that we should have a page about the history of the club. So here goes.

Picture the scene. It's 1994, just one year previous Lanarkshire had been devastated by the loss of one of it's largest employers, Ravenscraig. During that period Wishaw suffered quite badly. Shops in the town centre disappeared one by one, with For Sale or To Let signs appearing all along Wishaw High Street. Former steelworkers were faced with a period of retraining if they wanted to get back into work, or nothing but the gloomy prospect of long term unemployment. Even those who weren't directly employed in the 'Craig faced an uncertain future as their customers had less money to spend than they had previously. The future looked bleak for Wishaw.

However from the devastation came a shining light. Charlie Sullivan and John Stewart were to form a football club for kids. They were going to get kids off the Buckfast, off the streets and onto the football pitch where they could damage the back of the net rather than the neighbourhood.

Credit to them too, because what they started has since become massive. Wishaw Wycombe Wanderers are now one of the largest Juvenille clubs in Scotland with teams covering from Under 8's to Under 17's and over 220 registered players - both boys and girls - from all over Motherwell, Wishaw, Carluke, Lanark and Shotts.

The first two teams - one for players born in 1984 and one for 1985 - were immensely successful. Both won numerous cup and league titles and one of the players, Paul Quinn, in the 1985 team has since gone on to play at the highest level - featuring recently for Motherwell in their recent UEFA Cup exploits.

Those teams were bolstered when Graham Murdoch set up a third side within the club structure and looking after the squad on his own, he managed to coach them to a Lanarkshire League Title and to Cup Final success too.

The club moved up another level when Mary and John McCann joined the committee and they introduced 7-a-side football to the club, opening up the club to youngsters right down to Under 8 level. It was during this period that the 1992 team was formed, bossed then, as now, by Stevie McCann.

Since then the team has gone from strength to strength. Two more players have made it to the professional ranks of the SPL - James Keatings at Celtic and Stephen O'Donnell at Aberdeen and we;ve got at least 25 more boys who are training at present at Pro Youth level. Last year the 1998 team were so good that Motherwell and Celtic added our players to their shopping list and signed SIX of the team to pro youth level.

All of our coaches these days are either qualified or in the process of qualifying as SFA coaches and all have been vetted under the current Child Disclosure scheme. We're also working towards Quality Mark accreditation with the SFA and we hope to achieve this by Spring 2009.

The club management team meet every month with at least one coach from each age group usually on the 1st Thursday of the month.

The current committee is