Who are Dunstable?
So, here’s the craic. Dunstable Football Club were formed in 1975 to take over the fixtures of the defunct Dunstable Town. The contention is that Wikipedia seems to treat the current Blues as a continuation as the old one. But we are not going along with that. The old side came a cropper not long after Barry Fry took over as boss in 1974. Given free choice of his signings to bolster their Southern League efforts, in came Jeff Astle and George Best. It secured them promotion to the Southern League Premier Division – but it also caused crippling debts.
The old club went bust midway through the 1975-6 campaign. And so onto the scene come this Dunstable; formed to take over Town’s fixtures. In doing so, they finished a credible eighth. Not sure how we feel about this arrangement in principle – but it’s long since done now. Mind you, that upper table finish didn’t spare them from relegation. We guess the Southern League weren’t happy about what happened and demoted them to Division One North.
After two seasons in Division One North and one in Division One South, Dunstable took up residence in the Southern Division created after a restructure. They’d remain there until suffering a similar fate as their predecessor at the end of the 1993-4 season. The town was now lacking a senior football club and that would last for four years; a new club called Dunstable Town formed in 1998. The new Blues have competed in the Isthmian and Southern Leagues – but it was most recently seen in the Spartan South Midlands League after relegation from the Southern in 2019.
