Sarawak FA State Football Team () was a defunct football team which represented the Malaysian region (formerly state) of Sarawak from 1974 to 2020 in the Malaysian football league. It was one of the 14 Malaysian state teams of the Malaysian football structure before the Malaysian football league demanded all teams competing in the country's top two leagues to be run as or changed to professional clubs by 2021. It is also important to note that Sarawak FA is a football team that is not run as a professional football club, but rather a team that was funded and run by a Malaysian state football association that relied mostly on state government grants. How the team was run was much like all the other Malaysian state football teams competing in the old Malaysian football system before the year 2021 too. To outsiders who are not familiar with the Malaysian football system or league (before the year 2020), the team was simply known as Sarawak FA because it was run by the Football Association of Sarawak (FAS). To those who follow Malaysian football on the other hand, the team was simply known as Sarawak or the Sarawak State Football Team.
The team's home matches used to be played at the 26,000 capacity Sarawak State Stadium in Kuching, the capital city of Sarawak.
Having won a few major Malaysian football honours and trophies, the team had won the Malaysia FA Cup in 1992, the old Malaysian Premier League in 1997 (which was Malaysian top-tier division league at the time) and the Malaysia Charity Shield in 1998. In 2013, the team won the second-tier division league, the Malaysia Premier League, which is their first domestic trophy in 12 years, in which they were promoted to the Malaysia Super League, the Malaysian top-tier division league, the following year.
The team last played in the third-tier division in Malaysian football, Malaysia M3 League in 2020 but due financial constraints faced by FAS at the time, the team's parent body which runs the team, Sarawak FA did not register to compete in the Malaysia M3 League the following year. As the team did not compete in the 2021 Malaysia M3 league, many football fans in Malaysia saw this as the end to a once legendary team from Sarawak. Although there is a club, supported by FAS, which started to use the name Sarawak United to compete in the second-tier division in Malaysian football, the Malaysia Premier League, from the year 2020 onwards, Sarawakian football purists only accepted the team as a "reincarnation" of the old Sarawak FA team, and not its successor.
History
Early years
Early incarnations of the team really existed after the creation of the Crown Colony of Sarawak. Although there were football activities which existed in present-day Malaysian region of Sarawak before World War I, most of the activities focused on local football league or cup competitions created by Europeans, mostly British, who settled in Sarawak at the time. It was not until the creation of the Borneo Cup football cup competition in the 1950s, that the world would see a football team representing Sarawak and using the name of Sarawak appearing in a tournament. Sarawak would go on win the tournament six times before the tournament was last held in 1988.
After the formation Malaysia in 1963, the team simply became known as the Sarawak State Football Team because it is a team funded by the Malaysian state government of Sarawak to compete and represent the state of Sarawak in the Malaysian football system. It was one of the 14 Malaysian state football teams that existed in the Malaysian football system before 2021. All the 14 Malaysian state teams operated just like the Sarawak State Football Team before 2021, in which they are not professional clubs but rather teams representing the Malaysian states or a Malaysian state football associations, funded by their respective state governments to compete in Malaysian football competitions. Outsiders who are not familiar with the Malaysian football system before 2020 would come to recognise these teams as state FA teams, hence Sarawak State Football Team was also known as Sarawak FA.