Scottish Junior Cup
| Organising body | Scottish Junior Football Association |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1886 |
| Region | Scotland |
| Number of teams | 159 (2016–17) |
| Current champions | Beith Juniors (1st title) |
| Most successful club(s) | Auchinleck Talbot (11th title) |
 2016–17 Scottish Junior Cup
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The Scottish Junior Cup, known as The ETHX Energy Junior Cup for sponsorship reasons, is an annual football competition organised by the Scottish Junior Football Association for all its member clubs. The competition has been held every year since the inception of the SJFA in 1886 and, as of the 2016–17 season, 159 teams are registered to take part. The cup has an unseeded knockout format with semi-finals over two legs and the final played at a neutral venue, always that of an SPFL club.
From the 2006–07 season, the winners of the Junior Cup Final have qualified for the following seasons Scottish Cup for Senior football clubs.
Beith Juniors are the current holders, defeating Pollok 4–3 on penalty-kicks after a 1–1 draw on Sunday, 29 May 2016 at Rugby Park, Kilmarnock.
The Cup has been competed for since the 1886–87 season, when Fairfield Govan became the first winners of the competition. The SJFA purchased an exact replica in 2007, to replace the original which was showing its age.
Auchinleck Talbot are the most successful club winning the trophy 11 times to date including winning it three times in a row between 1986 to 1988.
The record attendance for a Junior Cup Final is 77,650 for the 1951 final between Petershill and Irvine Meadow XI.
In 2010, Linlithgow Rose lifted the Scottish Junior Cup for the fourth time in their history and third in a decade. They now join a small group of teams that have managed to lift the cup more than three times.
The cup's long-term sponsor, the OVD Demerara Rum company, who, as of 2006, had an eighteen-year-long association with the competition, withdrew their backing before the start of the 2006–07 competition. Unlike most other sponsored contests whose names change often, OVD had become so ingrained into the Scottish Junior Cup that it was often simply referred to as the "OVD Junior Cup". The Scottish Junior Football Association announced in 2006 that they would provide the sponsorship and prize money themselves, meaning the cup will be known simply as the Scottish Junior Cup. A new sponsor was found during the 2006–07 competition for the Semi-Finals and Final - Scottish Citylink, a long distance coach operator. The competition was sponsored by Emirates between 2009 and 2013. The tournament was without a sponsor in 2013–14 with construction company Barr sponsoring the final only, then the SJFA entered a partnership with Dementia Scotland for the latter stages of the 2014–15 competition.
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