Originally Posted by
stann
I think there's no valid reason not to push the formation year back to 1927, as it goes. Waterford Celtic were formed in that year, and played three seasons in the Munster Senior League before applying, and being accepted, to the Free State League under the same name. They only changed it to Waterford AFC just before the 1930/31 season kicked off, and were still referred to as Celtic in many newspaper reports for months afterwards.
The 1940s hiatus is interesting. Unlike the earlier gap from 1932-34, the club had dropped out of senior football altogether for four seasons, but when they returned to the League of Ireland it was with some of the same players, staff and directors, and it was not seen in the national press as anything other than a return of the old club.
A report from June 1945 in the local paper did talk of a "meeting of shareholders of the newly-formed Waterford Association Football Club," which presumably is where Waterford AFC (1945) comes about, but the very next paragraph begins: "The sub-committee submitted a report of their work in connection with the club's re-admission to the league," and there is further mention of a successful "request for re-admission to the League of Ireland."
So it seems, despite a new legal (or business) entity being formed, that in the view of the national press (local press a little more ambiguously), and more importantly the League itself, it was a continuation of the old club.
A general meeting in September 1982 saw a vote to disband the board of Waterford FC (1945) and form a new group under Waterford United FC (1982), with the club rebranded and re-badged as a result. Some indeed see this as a new entity, but certainly on the playing front the change-over here was seamless from one season to the next, way more so than in 1945 (six of the team that played the last league game of 1981/82 featured in the first one of 1982/83, for example).