Scottish Amateur Football Association
The Scottish Amateur Football Association is the organising body for amateur football in Scotland
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About SAFA
The Scottish Amateur Football Association (SAFA) was established in 1909 to regulate and promote amateur football in Scotland. The SAFA is a truly national organisation, with members from all corners of Scotland, from the Shetlands to the Highlands and Islands to the Borders, all of whom are interested in open-age adult amateur football.
The Association was founded in 1909 with three original members, Queen's Park FC, Glasgow & District FP League and the Schools Association.
Q&A with the President and the National Secretary
History of SAFA
The history of the SAFL
The SAFL have been in existence for over 100 years and we are the oldest amateur league in Scotland.
The Scottish Amateur Football League exists quite simply 'to foster and develop the game of Amateur Association Football'.
That's what it states in article 2 of the league's constitution, and that has been the star which has guided the wise men of the league since its inception at the dawn of the 20th century. A series of irregular challenge matches occupied the early years of that first decade, and only when the gentlemen amateurs of Queens Park, desperate to find new and better opposition for their third and fourth Xls, put up a trophy for competition in 1909, fully expecting to win it, that formal league matches on a regular basis were started.
Queens did win that first league title, with their Victoria (fourth) Xl,but when Edinburgh Civil Service won the title the following year, Queens upped the ante and entered their Hampden (third) Xl for the campaign in year 3, and so the healthy competition, rivalry and camaraderie, that has become the trademark of the SAFL, was born.
Prior to the second world war, the league incorporated teams from across the central belt, but after world war 2, member teams were almost exclusively in the area from Hamilton westwards, the east of Scotland by now having embraced the football code as well. The SAFL is proud of the fact that it has embraced several Argyll clubs, which otherwise would have been isolated on the football map, and brought them into the body of main-stream competition. The SAFL remains the only league prepared to extend such a far-reaching hand of friendship. At its numerical peak, the SAFL ran 12 divisions (8 for first teams, four for reserve sides) in the early 1980s, and built on its reputation for innovative ideas by introducing the two-tier, premier system in 1990, an idea that has been copied, mostly in part, by other leagues since then. Well, they do say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!