Peterhead prior to the 20^st century was a far different place to what it is now. According to old maps of the area there were only small hamlets residing around the harbour area and that is a far cry from what is present now.

The first mention of football in Peterhead appears to be in The Aberdeen Press & Journal from summer 1856 in an excerpt entitled ‘Notice of the Inhabitants’ where names on a petition were taken to stop an intended railway bill being passed. The notice claimed that residents should be free for sporting activities such as Football, Rugby, Golf and Quoits. It was thought that the building of the line would hinder sporting activities. Incidentally, two years later a bill was passed in parliament to open the, now defunct, Formartine & Buchan Railway.

Despite this setback the good people of Buchan went about their daily business and continued to use the Links as their primary place to conduct sporting and leisure time. It is here that football was born in Peterhead and many of the early games were played at this location. At that time football was just gaining in popularity from Rugby and before the SFA were formed, many games were played either by rugby rules or a combination of rugby rules and association rules. Players would know the rules of both, it was not organised in the same way as the modern game with many matches simply billed as a friendlies.

It appears that the first football match was announced on the 15^th November 1879 (above) by the newly formed Peterhead Football Club. To clarify any doubt this should not be confirmed as any direct link to the present day football club largely because when games were played at this time there were often confusing with more than 22 players on the pitch at any one time and often played by rugby football rules. It was only in 1891 when the present day Peterhead Football Club came into being that they adopted the 11 players v 11 players and played fully by football association rules.

Saturday 16^th February 1884 (above image) shows an advertisement in the Buchan Observer which details the players positions indicating that the match was played by Rugby rules. There is a similar match report in the same publication, 3 days later which details the scoring between Peterhead and Gymnasium “The game ended in a win for Gymnasium by one goal and two tries to two tries”. This looks like it was a combination of both rules (image below).

So while these details emerge of Peterhead Football Club, the evidence above, indicates we cannot in any way link the present day football club to this incarnation.