In the as yet unwritten chronicle of the world’s finest urban underpasses there will be a place for the one that sits beneath Dumbarton town centre. The visitor enters a clean, well-lit cavern adorned with a series of mini-murals depicting the town’s rich history and the natural beauty which surrounds it.

Here you learn that the Clyde mudflats are amongst the largest in the UK and that Havoc Meadow “is one of Scotland’s best sites for rare butterflies, insect, plant and wildflower species”. Another tells you that Dumbarton became world-famous for shipbuilding and aviation during the 19th and 20th centuries. You discover too that the town had been home to Europe’s most advanced grain distillery, producing 25 million gallons a year.

Perhaps the time has come to add another mural. This one would record the feats of Dumbarton FC, founded in 1872 and one of the first senior football clubs in the world. It would also tell you that the club lifted the first ever Scottish league title in 1891, eight years after it won the Scottish Cup. Dumbarton FC now needs all the help it can get to prevent it following the fate of the other two great clubs from this area: Renton and Vale of Leven. In the first 15 years of the Scottish Cup, these three clubs featured in 12 finals.

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Last week, the club entered administration following a series of financial ‘events’ which are now the subject of a police investigation. A pattern is evident in this wretched trajectory that’s become familiar to supporters of dozens of other hallowed old football clubs across the UK: claims of asset-stripping, covert land deals and a chronic lack of communication with the supporters.

The venerable Lennox Herald, which pre-dates the football club by 21 years is doing what all good local newspapers do by helping lead the grassroots campaign to preserve the long-term future of Dumbarton FC. In last week’s edition it carried a QR code on its front page directing you to the Save Our Sons support campaign. The intro on the paper’s splash is a quote from Sonstrust: “What began as one of the grimmest of weeks is steadily turning into one of the greatest.” In just four days, the support campaign has raised £90,000 which virtually guarantees that players and staff wages can be paid until at least the end of the season.

On Saturday afternoon in Dumbarton town centre you sense a wee pulse around these streets fired by something more than the Christmas lights. The previous night, Dumbarton had staved off a fightback by Alloa Athletic in the Scottish Cup third round to prevail 3-2. It’s a result that will deliver a few grand more into the club’s depressed accounts, with the prospect of a bigger payday were they to meet Celtic or Rangers in the next round … or any of the other ten Premiership sides.

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On a street corner, a chap “just call me Davie” is discussing last night’s cup win with his chum. “Look, this area has a population of around 50,000. If people think the football club matters then now’s the time to step up,” he says.

Jackie Baillie, the town’s local MSP raised concerns about the stewardship of Dumbarton FC ten months ago and was rebuked by the club’s owners for having done so. Ms Baillie is also Deputy Leader of the Labour Party in Scotland. In politics, she knows where many of the bodies are buried because she helped bury them. You don’t mess with her.

"I am very proud to support Dumbarton FC, but this is much more than a football club,” she tells me. “It’s a place where families across the generations get together on the terraces; where the local community celebrates important events including weddings and where the ‘sons and daughters’ of the rock come home to support their team.

It’s a much-loved institution at the foot of Dumbarton Castle where the Clyde and the Leven meet. The Sons Trust has worked hard to champion the interests of the fans but the current owners have been more interested in selling off the Club’s assets than investing in the Club. It’s a measure of how well the Club is regarded that a GoFundMe page has already generated more than £80,000 when the initial target was much less.”

Ms Baillie is an optimistic chiel too. “The fact of administration might now be an opportunity to get rid of the owners who have failed the Club and attract new investment to make Dumbarton, once again, the best football club in Scotland.” Later, she will message me to tell me that the fund has now reached £90,000.

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Dumbarton’s old league and cup heroics might forever remain the preserve of late Victorian history, but to paraphrase GK Chesterton, this club also had its hour, fierce and sweet, when there were shouts about its ears and palms before its feet.

In 1980, Dumbarton, then coached by Sean Fallon, the legendary former Celtic player and assistant to Jock Stein launched an audacious bid to lure the Dutch superstar, Johan Cruyff to its old Boghead Stadium on a pay-per-game basis. In a glorious saga that BBC Scotland’s drama department should be looking at, Cruyff the three-time Ballon D’Or winner was visited by a Dumbarton delegation as he recovering from a serious injury. He had spent the previous decade playing for Ajax and Barcelona but gave due consideration to Dumbarton’s offer.

He said: “I was tempted. Of course I was. Playing in Britain was something I had always wanted to do. But I thought I was too old to go to Scotland, where you know the weather will be difficult.”

Cruyff eventually re-joined Ajax and played for them two years later against Celtic in the European Cup. The Scottish champions defeated Ajax thanks principally to the efforts of a former Dumbarton player, Graeme Sinclair, who never gave the Dutch maestro a sniff of the ball.

The theatre producer and past president of the Scottish Rugby Union, Ed Crozier was born and raised in Dumbarton and emphasises how much the football club means to the community. “My late dad, George was Chairman when his client Sir Hugh Fraser bought the Club. Both were acutely aware of the club’s responsibility to the town as well as to the Scottish Football Community. They were never in the red and developed players like the Scottish internationals Murdo MacLeod, Ian Wallace and Graeme Sharp as well as the McAdam brothers, Colin and Tom who went on to play for Rangers and Celtic.

“It’s not too late to start again for Dumbarton as there is so much goodwill here for them that we can build on. Even when I was at the SRU, the first result I looked for was The Sons’. I have wonderfully happy memories as a teenager attending the old Boghead and remember Dumbarton getting to the Scottish Cup semi-final. This club should be solvent and not treated merely as another investment opportunity to be exploited. We can’t let Dumbarton RFC sink and we won’t.”

The Sons of the Rock are awake and the community is hopeful about its football club once more.