10 Things You May Not Have Known About Queen's Park Football Club

Despite being a modest footballing side currently plying its trade in Scotland's League Two, Queen's Park FC boasts an extraordinarily colourful history with which few can compare.

Here are 10 interesting facts you may not have known about Scotland's 35th best soccer team:

1. Queen's Park is the only fully amateur club remaining in the Scottish professional football league. Its motto is Ludere Causa Ludendi, which means "to play for the sake of playing".

2. Founded in 1867, it is Scotland's oldest club and the oldest outside of England and Wales.

3. The club was launched on 9th July 1867 with the immortal words: "Tonight at half past eight o'clock a number of gentlemen met at No. 3 Eglinton Terrace for the purpose of forming a football club".

4. Queen's Park is the only Scottish club to have played in an English FA Cup Final, which it did in both 1884 and 1885, losing on both occasions. It was customary in the early days of the competition for selected Scottish clubs to be invited to participate in the tournament.

5. Queen's Park has won the Scottish Cup more times than any other team except for Celtic and Rangers, although the last occasion was in 1893.

6. Home games are played at Hampden Park, also the home of the Scottish national side. The stadium's capacity is 51,866 although in the 2014/15 season Queen's Park's average home gate was 608.

7. Hampden was the largest stadium in the world until 1950 when the Maracanã was built in Rio de Janeiro.

8. In 2014 due to the Glasgow Commonwealth Games the team had to play its home fixtures at Airdrie's Excelsior Stadium.

9. Queen's Park are nicknamed The Spiders and some supporters call themselves the "Irn Bru Firm" and enjoy a close and friendly relationship with supporters of the German club SG Wattenscheid 09.

10. In a fixture held on 30 November 1872 Scotland played England at the West of Scotland Cricket Club ground in Hamilton Crescent. For the one and only time ever all eleven of the Scotland players were from Queen's Park. 4000 fans watched Scotland play with a 2–2–6 line-up and England in a 1–1–8 formation.

"Special" Betting

Small investors who are prepared to take a gamble could do worse than to keep an eye on some of the larger sportsbooks such as Bet365, Unibet and Paddy Power for what are usually simplistically termed “Special Bets”.

These are usually bets on non-sporting events such as elections, TV reality shows and film awards.

Because the sportsbooks by definition specialise in sport, these bets so often fall outside of their areas of expertise and can often therefore lack the shrewd insight which usually gives the bookies their built-in “house edge”.

Major betting exchanges such as Betfair, being customer-driven, will usually operate a book which reflects the odds on these events much more accurately, and often an opportunity will be created to lay off or “arb” an over-generous price offered by one of the conventional books, creating an opportunity for an immediate profit.

It is worth remembering that even multi-million betting operations with inside information and intelligence on horse racing and the world of football will often have less insight into the politics of your local electoral constituency, for example than you have.

Don’t always assume that the bookie knows best. Shop around, and take advantage.

Reproduced with acknowledgements to Money Making Ideas.