Scottish Football History
Scotland was one of the earliest modern footballing nations. The game started to become popular in Scotland following the development in London in 1863 of the first ever rules of soccer, established by The Football Association. Scottish football clubs started to be formed towards the end of the 1860s and 1870s. Queen’s Park was Scotland’s first football club and was founded in 1867. It is the oldest existing soccer club outside England. In its very early years it played in the English FA Cup, reaching the final twice.
In the late 1860s football rules in Scotland still allowed the ball to be handled by all the outfield players, as well as the goalkeeper, whereas in England only the keeper was permitted to handle the ball and then only in his own area. According to the Scotsman newspaper on the 2nd December 1872 at this time there were only about ten Soccer clubs in Scotland.
Starting in 1870 a series of four matches between representatives of England and Scotland took place The Oval, London in London. England was the winner of these two games and a letter by C. W. Alcock in The Scotsman on the 28th September 1870 challenged Scotland to a football match which would draw upon the best players “north of the Tweed” rather than those based near London. Scotland was therefore host of the world’s first official football international. This match was the brainchild of C. W. Alcock and it was noted in the FA’s minutes of October 3, 1872: ‘In order to further the interests of the Association in Scotland, it was decided that during the current season, a team should be sent to Glasgow to play a match v Scotland’. The world’s first official international match would take place between Scotland and England on November 30 1872. This match was played under the Football Association rules. Over the following decades soccer was to become the most popular sport in Scotland.
There is a tradition in Scotland that there was a slight clash of styles in 1872 when Scotland played England in the first official international as a result of the teams adopting different ways of exploiting the Off-side rule. This had been introduced in the 1866 revision of the rules by the Football Association. This rule stated that: “If the ball has passed a player and has come from the direction of his own goal, he may not touch it till the other side have kicked it, unless there are more than three of the other side before him. No player is allowed to loiter between the ball and the adversaries’ goal.” . This rule had been part of the 1856 Cambridge Rules, but had been not included in the 1863 Football Association rules. At the match England played a a 1-2-7 formation and favoured dribbling the ball at the opponents and passing the ball up field (”passing on”) before being tackled. One of the seven forwards, following behind, would chase the ball. Scotland played a slightly more defensive 2-2-6 formation, with forwards divided into pairs. Certainly, by the early 1870s there had evolved in Britain the tactic of ‘passing and running’ which became known as the “combination game”. Exactly where this happened is contentious. Critics of the theory of Scotland as the origin of the passing game note that there were many Scottish people living and playing football throughout Britain in the 1860s (i.e. prior to the first official international match) and given this it is unlikely that such a technique would evolve in isolation. They attribute any difference in playing style to the fact that the players in the Scottish side came from one team and knew each other well, whilst the English team consisted of players from nine teams. Despite the clash of tactics the game still resulted in a 0-0 draw, suggesting that any benefit of the Scottish style was minimal. Certainly the defensive, passing game continued to undergo much development in later years, as is shown by typical modern football formations of 4-4-2. There are other places and teams which claim the innovation of the combination game.
In the next international in 1873 Scotland lost away to England in London, but in 1874 Scotland had their first international victory, beating England 4-2 in Glasgow. In 1875 the two nations drew again, but after this there followed a period of Scottish dominance for the following ten years, with only one defeat against the English.
Association football quickly became the most popular sport in Scotland, particularly in Glasgow and the west. The Scottish Football Association was formed in 1873 and is the second oldest in the world.
William McGregor who grew up in Perthshire and lived most of his life in Birmingham is credited with the establishment in 1888 of The Football League in England, which is the world’s oldest and richest soccer league.
In the late 1880s significant number of Scottish players participated in English football clubs Payments to players had been made legal in England in 1885 and professional footballers were paid decent salaries. Ironically this attracted many Scottish players southwards to ply their trade in England. Some earned the epithet “Scotch Professors”. English football teams with Scottish players included Preston North End which fielded eight Scots in one team and Liverpool Football Club, founded in 1892 with eleven Scots. In Scotland the game remained, in theory anyway, an amateur game until 1893.
In 1894 soccer was taken to Brazil by Charles William Miller, who was of combined Scottish-English descent. He had not lived in Scotland and learned to play football whilst at Banister Court School in Southampton, England.
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The article, which I imagine from the title should be a postive assertion of Scotland’s contribution, appears to play down Scotland’s contribution somewhat. The birth of club football in Scotland (and arguably everywhere) can be dated to 1824 with the foundation of the Foot Ball Club of Edinburgh. Although Queen’s Park is an exceptionally important club in relation to the development of football they can not, and do not, claim to be Scotland’s first football club - they do rightly maintain to be the first Association club in Scotland. Football in Scotland was also being played in schools, universities and amongst workingmen’s teams long before the FA was formed - the game therefore did not start to become popular after the formation of the FA in 1863, it was already being widely played prior to this date although the first international of 1872 and the establishment of knockout cup competitions was exceptionally important in establishing the Association game over rival codes, in England and Scotland.
The comments about the goalkeeper also make out the Scottish game to appear somewhat backward - if I remember correctly goalkeepers are not mentioned in the FA Laws of the game until 1870 (and this only states that it is the defending player nearest to his goal line at that time) while it is the late 1870s before goalkeepers are specifically referred to as a player position. There are a lot of peculiarities with playing rules north and south of the border during the 1860s and early 1870s, not just in Scotland.
The quote from the Scotsmen newspaper about 10 soccer clubs being in existence in Scotland is fair enough but why not mention the fact that the FA only five years earlier had only 10 clubs in its membership. The point is also missed that Alcock proposed the internationals and created the FA Cup because the Association game was struggling to take off beyond London - the implication made in the article is that the international was purely a missionary attempt to promote the game in Scotland.
If early playing rules like Cambridge rules are being menioned within this Scottish article then perhaps reference to Hope’s Edinburgh rules of 1854 should also be mentioned to provide evidence of regulated football north of the border prior to the formation of the FA and the FA’s Laws of the Game.
The comment about a ‘tradition’ in Scotland of a clash of styles implies that this view is a ‘myth’ - ie not based on factual accounts. This misreads the facts behind the game, in particular a direct contemporary account to the Scots being ‘adepts at passing the ball’ in the Graphic Newspaper as well as an eyewitness account from Walter Arnot which was later printed in Association Football and the Men Who Made it. If there really are critics to the Scottish interpretation of this game then they are choosing to be blind to factual evidence - and this is not therefore an objective approach. The fact that it is used in an article which I imagine should promote Scotland’s story makes it all the more frustrating.
The notion that Scotland’s specific style of passing game could not have developed in isolation goes against the evidence too. There are of course claims that rudimentary forms of combination were also developing under the Royal Engineers and in Sheffield (and they should of course be presented in the article for English football) but they do not stand up to a proper and detailed comparison to the overwhelming superiority of the Scottish short passing game during the 1870s. London based Scots who played Association football did not play a passing game in the 1860s or even the early 1870s. Culturally their style of game was the individualistic game of the London clubs (where they lived). The distinctive Scottish short passing game can be dated to 1872 and to one club - Queen’s Park FC. Their remarkable control over the embryonic Association game in Scotland ensured that the short passing game became a Scottish style and this type of game began to filter over the border as early Scottish clubs played against English teams and as the Scotch Professors started to ply their trade in the Midlands and north of England. A wealth of information can be produced to support these points. An important point here is legacy - there are innumerable accounts of the Scottish form of combination thoughout the 1870s and history books from English clubs like Notts County, Aston Villa, Preston NE and from individuals like William MacGregor give a clear insight into the importance of the Scottish passing game. Beyond a few individual and understandably subjective assertions from members of the FA this legacy cannot be matched when comparisons are made for the Royal Engineers of the Sheffield teams of the period.