old ground of Merchiston Park in 1920. In the same year, a record home attendance of 12,000 was set when the club played eventual champions, Partick Thistle, in the Scottish Cup in February 1921. The club was relegated to the newly created, but short lived, Division Three in 1922–23, earning promotion back to Division Two after one season; setting a record of 23 home games without a loss. A decade later, East Stirlingshire won promotion to Division One, Scotland's top flight, for the first time. En route to promotion, the club spent 32 weeks at the top of Division Two, ending the season equal on 55 points with St Johnstone, with East Stirlingshire winning the championship on a superior goal average. East Stirlingshire spent one season in its first spell in the top flight, ending the year bottom of the league in 20th with seventeen points. Back in Division Two in the 1935–36 season, the club's heaviest league defeat of 12–1 was inflicted by Dundee United in April 1936. In 1938–39, the final season before the league was suspended due to World War II, East Stirlingshire finished second-bottom of the league, ahead of only Edinburgh City, but despite finishing low, Malcolm Morrison became the club's highest league goalscorer in a single season with 36 goals. The club was excluded from a wartime league in 1939 and was also denied re-entry to the Scottish Football League Division Two at the end of World War II, along with six other small league clubs. As a result, the clubs competed in a newly created Division C along with the reserve teams of some of Scotland's top clubs. In the second season in Division C, East Stirlingshire won the league and was promoted back to Division Two, now renamed "Division B", but finished last after one season in 1948–49, and were relegated back to the "C Division". After another six seasons competing in "Division C" the club rejoined Division Two in 1955–56 when the " C Division" was abolished and the number of teams in the Scottish Football League was expanded. The club sold many young players to larger clubs, including defender Eddie McCreadie to Chelsea in 1962 who earned 23 international caps for Scotland and is tenth in Chelsea's all-time appearance list with 410. The money earned from the transfer helped attract new players and in the 1962–63 season, the club won promotion