Morecambe Football Club was formed on May 7th, 1920, after a meeting at the West View Hotel, and the Shrimps took the place in the Lancashire Combination for the 1920-21 season.
Sharing grounds with the local cricket club during the first season proved popular, with crowds in excess of 3,000 for derby fixtures with Lancaster and Fleetwood.
A few years later, after the purchase of the ground by the then president Mr JB Christie, the name of the ground was changed to its current title Christie Park.
They claimed the league title in 1925 but the rest of the 1920s and 1930s saw a constant struggle to keep football alive on the North West coast, with poor results on the field and little investment off it.
The post-war years saw an up-turn in the Shrimps’ fortunes, with steady improvement in the late 1940s and early 1950s, particularly under the guidance of player-manager Ken Horton.
By the mid-1990s the club had progressed to the Conference and quickly established themselves as one of the leading teams in that division, indeed only Woking had a longer unbroken membership of the league at that time.
Runners-up spot was achieved once and the play-offs were also reached in 2006, only to lose 4-3 on aggregate to Hereford.
So, when former Manchester United midfielder Sammy Mcllroy took over that year, his remit was to take the club into the Football League.
And they didn’t have to wait long because 12 months later their dream was fulfilled after winning the play-off final at Wembley in front of 11,000 travelling Morecambe fans – and with it league football for the first time in their 86-year history.
The 2008-09 season saw a terrible start for Mcllroy’s men, winning only one of their first 14 matches, but they rallied in fine style to end the campaign in11th place, finishing just six points off the play-offs after a run of one defeat in 17 games between the end of January and the end of March.
