The common has seen football played continuously since the late 1800s. In 1887 a meeting was held to amalgamate  three clubs, Tayport, Our Boys & Craigmount, to form the Abertay Club.  Football was a booming pastime for that generation of young men and in the last decade of the 19th Century other teams were being regularly established such as Oddfellows FC, Union FC, Perseverance FC, Engineers FC, Thistle FC, Fiery Cross FC and Victoria FC, the mussel dredgers team. Things did not always run smoothly as reported by the Dundee Advertiser in 1890 – “ A dispute arose in reference to a goal claimed, and a blow was struck at an opponent which severely injured his nose. The matter was put in the hands of the police.”   Although these matches were played on the East Common parallel to the Edinburgh to Dundee railway line, some games in the early years were played on the area known locally as The Sudan, near the Spinning Mill and the Garpit Park. In the 1950s and 60s the main East Common pitch was nearer the Esplanade, where the changing facility was a hut previously used by the town’s swimming club with the limited facilities of gas lighting and a cold water Belfast sink. Tayport’s football clubs had enjoyed intermittent success on a local level throughout the years but from 1953 only one club remained and success was limited to a Bremner Cup and two Carne Trophy wins. A new young guard of local teenagers took over the club in 1968 and with an ambition to further the town’s football heritage, drove the club onto new horizons, eventually reaching the pinnacle of the non-league football in Scotland in the early 2000s.

The Canniepairt had formerly been a small farm leased out by Scotscraig Estate, but had been left unused and overgrown for a number of years. In 1970 the British Army was engaged locally in a large exercise to refuel RAF Leuchars overland from the harbour and as they removed their equipment from the area, they cleared the remains of the scrub and  piggery. It has been the home of Tayport Football club since 1975 when a lease agreement was reached with the former Town Council, in recognition of the ambitions of the committee. With the aid of grant support, a great deal of fundraising and the sterling efforts of committee and townsfolk, they laid out a pitch, built a pavilion and subsequently extending it on several occasions, whilst also erecting fencing, planting trees and building an enclosure.  Throughout the 1970s and 80s there were matching on-field achievements including twice reaching the Fife Amateur Cup Final and also the semi-final of the Scottish Amateur Cup at Dens Park, whilst also enjoying success on a local level in Fife and Tayside. The Club acquired Junior/semi-professional status in 1990 and the efforts were rewarded with unprecedented success, which elevated the town to national prominence through live television broadcasting of six Scottish Junior Cup Finals between 1993 and 2005. Winning on three of those occasions saw Tayport arguably become the top Junior Club in Scotland during that era, with many of the players gaining representative honours at both local and national level as well as a number moving on to Senior Clubs.