At this year's Football History Conference in Belfast, I gave a talk on the Netflix Series The English Game, which came out five years ago. I was interested in exploring whether and how the series has influenced the study of football history.
   You can read my full illustrated talk by clicking on this link (which will open a pdf).
   Much of my involvement in the programme went back to my previous research on Fergie Suter and Jimmy Love, the Scottish protagonists of the story, and my biography of Arthur Kinnaird. You can read about them in my blog, or just look for 'Suter' or  'Kinnaird'  in the search box top right.

I would be interested to hear your thoughts. Do you think The English Game has been a force for good, and brought more people into football history, or has it simply muddied the waters, provoking needless arguments?
   More widely, is drama the best way to cover football history, or do you think it would be better to focus on factual, and accurate, documentary?
   And finally, what topics or stories are crying out to be covered by the big screen?
   Please leave any comments below.

Today I gave the second of my talks on early sport in Scotland's capital, with The Birth of Rugby in Edinburgh.
   It covers the origins of the handling game, from medieval beginnings through the haphazard games of the early 19th century, to the rapid developments that kicked off in the 1850s.
   Rugby football arrived in Edinburgh in 1854 almost by accident, and by the end of the decade it had been adopted by the major schools because of the influence of Tom Brown's Schooldays and the cult of Muscular Christianity. 
   The event at the City Art Centre was part of the Edinburgh 900 celebration, and attracted a large audience.
   For anyone unable to attend, I have now put the full illustrated talk into a single pdf document, which can be opened by clicking on this link.
   You can also read my first talk, on The Birth of Football in Edinburgh at this link.​

Today I gave a talk on The Birth of Football in Edinburgh, describing the early development of the sport in Scotland's capital up to the formation of the city's first association football clubs in the 1870s.
   It is a fascinating story which ranges from medieval times to developments in the Victorian era, covering not just those pioneers who played football in the 19th century but the social changes that brought the game to a wider audience. The 1850s were crucial, as the Meadows were opened up to the public for sport, while the Saturday half-holiday gave working men the time to play.
   The event at Edinburgh's City Art Centre, part of the Edinburgh 900 celebration, attracted a large audience - all tickets were allocated several months ago.
   For anyone unable to attend, I have now put the full illustrated talk into a single pdf document, which can be opened by clicking on this link. 
   I will be giving another talk next week, on the birth of rugby in Edinburgh, and will also put it online afterwards.

This month sees a significant milestone for the Scotland women's football team, which plays its 400th international since the journey began in 1972.
   Match 400, the Nations League tie against Austria on 30 May, is also significant for several other reasons, not least it being the first Scotland game under new coach Melissa Andreatta, who has just been appointed by the Scottish FA. She joins at a time when the team has lost its last five matches, although it was unbeaten in its previous eleven.
   That night at Hampden the Scottish FA will also be presenting retrospective caps to some of the pioneers of Scottish women's football, players from the 1970s and 1980s who did not receive recognition at the time. This is a continuation of a project which I have been working on: I have been part of a small team of historians, endeavouring to compile a full record of the early Scotland matches and identify the players who took part.
   I wrote before about this project in 2022 and since then there have been a few updates and corrections, even in fairly recent times. For example, a fascinating story by Sarah Crilly led to the discovery of missing appearances which are not recorded in the Scottish FA archive. In fact, the SFA archive leaves a lot to be desired, only going back to 2008 and with a number of errors since then.
   For the first time I am publishing match-by-match records of the Scotland team from 1972 to 1997, together with illustrations and programme covers. During those years, the team was administered by the Scottish Women's FA. The information is still incomplete and it has been a challenging task to get this far, as many records have been lost and most matches had little or no media coverage. In several instances there is a squad list but no known teamline, and even some goalscorers remain unidentified, so this is very much a work in progress. I remain hopeful that further records can be uncovered so that the history can be improved.
   If you think you can contribute to or correct these statistics in any way, please don't hesitate to get in touch through my Contact Form.

Essential records

Click on each of these headings:

An overview of all Scotland women's international matches, 1972-2025. [Excel spreadsheet]

The complete record of Scotland under the Scottish Women's FA, 1972-1997. [pdf]

The complete record of Scotland under the Scottish FA, 1998-2025. [pdf]

For many years I have had this rather lovely postcard of a Scottish swimming champion, but only recently did I manage to find out who she was.
   The  photo shows a long-haired young woman in a swimsuit, holding her cap, posing with a silver rosebowl trophy. On the back there is a tantalising caption 'With fondest love, Peg. x.' She has then added the vital detail: 100 yards Ladies Championship of Hamilton.

There is no further information, so it took some time to work out who she was, with the only clues being her name, Peg (a short form for Margaret), and the location, Hamilton.
   The card appeared to date from before the first World War, so I trawled through the British Newspaper Archive to unearth swimming reports. As Hamilton Public Baths opened in 1909, that narrowed down the timespan.

That meant I could confidently identify 'Peg' as Margaret Moore, who was born on 9 May 1895 to Thomas Moore, a spirit salesman, and Emily Faller. It was clearly a sporty family as her father was a director (and briefly chairman) of Hamilton Academical FC, and they lived in Burnbank Road, a few minutes' walk from Hamilton Baths as well as the football ground.
   In 1919, Margaret married William MacNeish, an architect, and a few years later they emigrated to the USA. She spent the rest of her life in New York State and died in Woodbury on 14 August 1973, age 78. 
   Winning that championship was a memorable event in the life of a 17-year-old swimmer, and I am delighted to have finally put a name to the photo that marked her achievement.

* She was not the only 17-year-old Scottish swimmer called Moore to make a splash in 1912. Bella Moore from Govan won a gold medal at the Olympic Games in Stockholm, as part of the British 4x100 metres relay team. As far as I can tell, she was not related to Margaret.

Dewar's Temperance Hotel in Glasgow holds a special place in Scottish football history. It was there on 13 March 1873 that eight clubs resolved to 'form themselves into an association for the promotion of football according to the rules of the Football Association'.

That founding meeting of the Scottish FA took place in the hotel at 11 Bridge Street, just south of the river Clyde. It followed two Scotland v England encounters which were organised by Queen's Park FC, who realised that they could not continue on their own and it was time for a national body. Their appeal for clubs to join them attracted representatives from Clydesdale, Vale of Leven, Dumbreck, Third Lanark, Eastern and Granville, while Kilmarnock sent a letter of support.
   Between them, they chose Archibald Campbell of Clydesdale as President with William Ker of Queen's Park as treasurer and Archibald Rae of Queen's Park as secretary. The eight committee members were James Turnbull (Dumbreck), Donald Macfarlane (Vale of Leven), Ebenezer Hendry (Clydesdale), William Dick (Third Lanark), John Mackay (Granville), James McIntyre (Eastern), Robert Gardner (Queen's Park) and William Gibb (Clydesdale). Apart from 49-year-old Campbell, all of them were active players and three of them (Ker, Gardner and Gibb) were internationalists.

The committee laid down a set of rules and while the Scottish FA took on the role of organising future internationals, its primary focus was the inauguration of a national competition, the Scottish Cup, which was played for the first time the following season.
   So, who was Dewar, where exactly was this hotel and why was it chosen as the venue?
   There is nothing there now to mark the spot: Dewar's Hotel is long gone, having been demolished in the 1930s, and a later building stands on the site. The Scottish FA did commission a plaque to commemorate their founding meeting, but they outsourced the work and rather ineptly it was put on the wrong side of the street.
   The story goes back to 1840, when Alexander Dewar married Jane Wylie, not long after he arrived in Glasgow from his native Perthshire. Shortly after their marriage they opened the Railway Arms Tavern in Clyde Place, the first of four businesses, all with the same name and all in close proximity to the newly-built Bridge Street Station which was then the southern terminus for Glasgow.
   After five years the Dewars moved their business briefly to Jamaica Street, then in 1847 they opened the third Railway Arms at 16 Bridge Street. This was in a prime position, right next to the station entrance and it proved to be a popular venue, expanding in 1852 and with further improvements in 1857. By this time the Dewars had six daughters who helped run the hotel, but in 1863 Alexander Dewar was declared bankrupt. He told the bankruptcy court that business had recently fallen off, and although he was discharged six months later the hotel closed in 1864. It was later taken over as railway offices.
   Undeterred by this setback, the family moved across the road to more modest premises at 11 Bridge Street, on the upper floors of a building which had shops and a restaurant at street level. This time it was on a no-alcohol basis, hence the name Dewar's Temperance Hotel, although it was formally still known as the Railway Arms. 

As well as providing rooms for visitors, its function room hosted a wide range of meetings and proved particularly popular for sporting associations and clubs. The Scottish FA certainly liked the environment as it held committee meetings at Dewar's Hotel regularly through the 1870s until it acquired its own premises, and others who met there included Rangers, Third Lanark and numerous smaller football clubs, as well as cricketers, bowlers and shinty players.

When the Scottish FA first met in 1873, however, Alexander Dewar was no longer there. He had died in October 1868 aged 57, and his widow Jane was left to carry on the business with the support of her daughters, so they were the hosts for the inaugural meeting.
   Even after Jane's death in 1875 the hotel remained in the family, with the daughters in charge until they gave it up in 1880. That was shortly after the opening of the much larger Glasgow Central Station on the other side of the river, which diminished the status of Bridge Street Station as trains could now cross the Clyde directly to the city centre. Although a reconfigured station was created a few yards to the south, it had much less traffic and that meant the hotel lost much of its viability.
   It carried on under new management as Fleming's Temperance Hotel until the turn of the century, then appears to have become rented apartments. With the slow decline of the Gorbals, the whole block where Dewar's Hotel stood, from 5 to 15 Bridge Street, was demolished in the mid-1930s. 

On the site today is Cumbrae House, an attractive deco building with contrasting black and cream tiles, built in 1937 as a furniture showroom. Now used as offices, it faces onto Carlton Court, with a prominent façade on Bridge Street, although the building is need of attention and has been shrouded in scaffolding for the past couple of years. This is the place where that Scottish FA plaque should be.

John Crichton and the Old Hampden Bar

Curiously, directly beneath Dewar's Hotel there was a football-related pub at street level. The Old Hampden Bar at 9 Bridge Street was for many years run by John Gray Crichton, who had played for Third Lanark against Queen's Park in the 1876 Scottish Cup final and appeared in a Scotland trial match.

​He sounds like a great sportsman and a character. After leaving Thirds he was a player for Alexandra Athletic and Queen's Park, but had particular prominence as an athlete with a speciality for sack racing. While this may sound like a novelty event, the sack race was a staple of athletics meetings in the late Victorian era, and Crichton was virtually unbeatable until he gave it up in 1881.
   The Athletic News paid tribute to his abilities, describing him as 'the cleverest sackist I ever saw … and, above all, he is every inch of him a gentleman.' After he retired, Crichton's natural successor as Scotland's leading sack racer was another footballer, Tuck McIntyre of Rangers.
   There had been a pub or restaurant at 9 Bridge Street since the 1870s, and when Crichton took it over in 1887 he named it the Old Hampden Café as he provided food as well as drink. He decorated the walls with portraits of theatrical, political and sporting celebrities, and among the photos was an original image of the 1873 Scotland team that faced England a week before the Scottish FA was formed. Sadly, many of the photos were destroyed in a fire in 1916 but it is a measure of his popularity that he received over a hundred letters of support from his customers.
   Crichton's influence extended far beyond these shores as he was made an honorary patron of Thistle Football Club in Fremantle, Western Australia, and supplied them with a set of strips and then a gold medal for their top scorer. The reason for this unlikely link is that his daughter had emigrated there with her husband, who played for the team.

John Crichton continued as landlord until 1920 when he sold up and retired to Surrey, where he died eight years later. However, the Old Hampden Bar remained open for at least another decade and had a prominent advert in the Scotland v England match programme in 1927, still boasting a photo gallery of footballers past and present.

It's a word which was invented in the Victorian era as the short form of association football and has spread around the world, but the origins of 'soccer' remain shrouded in obscurity.
   For a long time, the earliest printed example that the Oxford English Dictionary could find was in 1891. With digitisation of many Victorian publications that date has now been pushed back to 1885, when 'soccer' surfaced at the same time as its counterpart 'rugger'.
   But this discovery has only served to muddy the waters as there are no fewer than three examples of 'soccer' or 'socker' in late 1885, all printed a few days apart in school magazines from different parts of the country. There is no obvious connection between them, so the mystery remains – where exactly did the word spring from?

The accepted wisdom is that 'soccer' was coined by students at Oxford University who had developed a slang which involved adding the suffix -er to common words: hence 'fresher' for freshman and 'brekker' for breakfast, among many others. Football was shortened to 'footer' but this could mean either code so they came up with a convoluted diminution of 'association' in response to the more easily-understood 'rugger' for rugby.
   More specifically, soccer's invention has often been attributed to Charles Wreford Brown, an Old Carthusian, captain of the University football eleven and an England internationalist (pictured above). However, he can be ruled out as he was still at school when 'soccer' first appeared in print. In any case, the story was not published until 1952, a year after his death, when Geoffrey Green, the legendary football correspondent of The Times, told the anecdote but added the caveat 'Or so the story goes'.
   The theory that soccer owes its origin to Oxford University takes a further dent as The Oxford Magazine offers the first printed use of 'Socker' in February 1887, three months after it first used 'Rugger'. Nothing earlier at the University has yet been found.
   Nor is there anything to confirm that 'soccer' began life as 'assoccer' before being shortened, which may appear logical but there is no known contemporary usage of 'assoccer'. I believe this speculative explanation surfaced only recently, in the current century.
   Let's have a look at the hard evidence, which points to 'soccer' and 'rugger' being created at the same time. 

By a whisker, the earliest known publication of 'soccer' was in The Marlburian, the fortnightly magazine of Marlborough College in Wiltshire, in its edition dated 25 November 1885. An anonymous pupil wrote: 'I can't help thinking it a great pity that there has been no 'Association' on the Common this term. It must improve the forward play and is certainly a pleasant change occasionally from everlasting Rugby.' He signed his letter 'Soccer', and clearly expected readers to understand what he meant by his pseudonym.
   Intriguingly, Marlborough was a rugby-playing school, and although there were other letters in its magazine around that time promoting the merits of association football, only this one used the word 'soccer'.
   Amazingly, within days, the word appeared in two other school publications, with a different spelling as 'socker'.

At Radley College, five miles south of Oxford, a jocular article in the December 1885 issue of The Radleian used the word twice, comparing 'Socker' to 'Rugger' – which is the first known printed use of the latter – then stating: 'The patriotism of Old Radleians and their enthusiasm for 'Socker' reached such a pitch on All Saints' Day that they floated an Old Radleian Football Club.'
   Also that month in Shropshire, at Old Hall School in Wellington, The Oldhallian contained an 'Oxford Letter' from a former pupil who wrote: 'The Varsity played Aston Villa and were beaten after a very exciting game; this was pre-eminently the most important 'Socker' game played in Oxford this term.'
   So, in late 1885, correspondents to three geographically diverse schools all felt comfortable in using a new word for association football, and one of them used its equivalent for rugby. Yet there is nothing to link them and it is implausible that they all came up with the same idea simultaneously.

My hunch is that that 'soccer' and 'rugger' were already in verbal use and had been committed to print earlier that year in another journal – which has not yet been identified – and that this was picked up by these three contributors. Whatever their origin, the new slang took a surprisingly long time to gain traction as 'soccer' and 'rugger' were used only a few times in print in the second half of the decade.
   After detailed searches, I have managed to find just a dozen or so instances of 'soccer' by 1890, mainly in school magazines. The Carthusian (Charterhouse) talks of the school’s soccer internationalists in October 1886 and the word appears again in December that year. There are further sightings in The City of London School Magazine in November 1886, The Lancing College Magazine of June 1887, and once more in The Radleian in February 1889.
   On a national level, the terminology was picked up by the Boy's Own Paper in April 1889, with an article about 'Football at Oxford' which explained: 'In Varsity patois, Rugby is yclept Rugger while Association has for its synonym Socker.' 

​Interestingly, the principle of adding a suffix to common words can be traced with some certainty to Harrow, where The Tyro published an article about school slang in 1864: 'Our great predilection is for shortening words connected with the school into their roots, with the addition of er. For example, we speak of ducker, fouler, speecher etc where our fathers would have used the more decorous phrases of 'duck puddle', 'foul copy', 'speech room' as the case may be. But by far the most striking instance of this termination is in the short 'footer'.' 
   However, Harrow boys appear to have had no need of an alternative to 'footer' as 'soccer' did not make its first appearance in The Harrovian until March 1889. 

​As the new words gained popularity during the 1890s, the divergence in spelling settled as 'soccer' rather than 'socker', and by the end of the decade soccer and rugger were so much part of the mainstream that in 1899 the Daily Telegraph reflected: 'Who now speaks of Association or Rugby football, and who does not welcome the abbreviated forms of 'Soccer' or 'Rugger'?'
   The writer went on to ponder the origin of soccer as a word but was unable to come up with an answer: 'On whose lips Association first changed into Soccer, history is silent.'
   That mystery remains the case today, and whether soccer started out as 'Varsity patois' or public school slang, there is no proof as yet.
   For now, the credit for its first use goes to an unknown boy at Marlborough College, but I am confident that more about soccer's origin will, one day, be uncovered.
​

A couple of football match reports from 1869 caught my eye.
   Dollar and Alloa, neighbouring towns in Clackmannanshire, were playing 15-a-side to rugby rules, and what really stood out was the name of the Dollar captain, which the papers gave variously as Bombajee Dadabhoy or Bomont G Daddabhoy.
   He was clearly of Asian origin, and having previously written about the multi-ethnic nature of Scottish team sport in its earliest days, I was intrigued to find out more about a man who appears to be the first recorded Indian rugby player.
   The correct spelling of his name was Bomanjee Dadabhoy, and he was one of three Parsi boys from Bombay [Mumbai] who had been sent to Scotland to finish their schooling at Dollar Institution (now Dollar Academy). They all feature in the school registers although Bomanjee does not appear to have devoted much time to study, only taking classes in Mathematics and Drawing.

However, Bomanjee certainly made an impact on his fellow pupils, and a flavour of this comes in letters written by Alice Cadenhead, a 12-year-old boarder at the school. In November 1868 she told her parents about the newly-arrived Parsis: 'They look so funny, they wear splendid ties all worked in every colour and little black caps of velvet with blue tassels coming over their shoulders.'
   Another contemporary, Archibald Gibb, also recalled their arrival in a letter he wrote to the school magazine many years later: 'We had several Parsees from Central India, grown-up men they were who, when they arrived in Dollar, wore frock coats and fez caps, and were naturally objects of great interest to all the other boys.'
   Bomanjee quickly got involved in social activities and was given a part in the school play, The Rose of Amiens. He then took up dancing, albeit to the despair of young Alice Cadenhead: 'I got that great fat Parsee for a Madrille. I could hardly dance for laughing and Boman didn't know anything about the dance, he just trotted about after me.'  Two weeks later she wrote: 'I am oppressed by a Parsee who will dance with me, and he can't dance one bit but does nothing but tread on my toes.'
   He was also active in sport, recorded as a cricket umpire and coming second in Throwing the Hammer at the school sports. But he must have been a keen rugby player as by the autumn he was named captain of the Dollar team, which was founded in 1868 and notionally independent of the school.
   Bomanjee's team first travelled to Alloa on 23 October 1869, where the home team won comfortably by a goal and four tries to nil. Four weeks later, on 20 November, the Dollar side got their revenge, winning by a single goal (a converted try), helped by an 'uncommonly short' pitch of just 70 yards length.
   The only other player named in either report was Matthew Brydie, the Alloa captain. Born in 1846, he was a solicitor who had recently graduated from Edinburgh University but sadly he went bankrupt in 1883. A couple of years later he was committed to an asylum in Edinburgh where he remained until his death in 1912.

I have been trying to establish more about the life of Bomanjee Dadabhoy, who may well be the first non-white rugby footballer. However, tracking him down has proved a challenge, not helped by the variations in spelling his name.
   However, what is clear is that after he left Dollar he went to London, where he can be found in the 1871 census lodging in Ladbroke Grove. He also signed up for The Marquis of Dalhousie masonic lodge, and from their records it can be established that he was born in Bombay about 1850, and had embarked on a career as a civil engineer.
   Thereafter, the trail goes cold. He is listed in other masonic records, in Lahore in the 1880s and in Meerut a decade later, but I have been unable to find any records of Bomanjee in newspapers or family history sites. A Parsee Foot-Ball Club was active in Bombay in the early 1870s, but again he is not mentioned.
   Bomanjee must have come from a prominent family to have been able to afford to go to Dollar, and was perhaps related to Dadabhoy Naoroji who became a British MP, but there are no obvious leads – nor have I found any photos. Any information would be welcome!
   Two other Parsi boys went to Dollar at the same time, both of whom featured in the school prize lists. A little more is known about them: Hormusjee Pestonjee Cola spent some years at a boarding school on Merseyside before coming to Scotland, then returned to Bombay; and Sorabjee Cursetjee Cama attended University College School in London prior to Dollar, but sadly he never went home as he died of a fever in March 1870, aged 20.
   The cosmopolitan nature of life at Dollar Institution at that time was emphasised by the presence of three Chinese pupils, Wei Ah Yuk, Wong Ching and Woo Ah See. They all performed well academically but do not seem to have been active on the sporting front.
   While Bomanjee Dadabhoy's fleeting appearance in Scottish rugby gives just a tantalising glimpse, the wider picture of the story of Dollar Football Club's Parsi captain is that this is further evidence of Scottish sport being considerably more ethnically diverse than other parts of the UK in the 1860s and 1870s.
   Prominent black and Asian sportsmen in Scotland of that era included James Robertson (Gambia, rugby), Alfred Clunies-Ross (Malay, rugby), Andrew Watson (Guyana, football), Robert Walker (Sierra Leone, football), Thomas Marten (Java/Chinese, football) and William Forman (USA, athletics).
   Bomanjee Dadabhoy's name can be added to that list, and I have little doubt that more will be discovered.

 
I would like to thank Janet Carolan, archivist at Dollar Academy, for her kind assistance in checking school archives and supplying contemporary records.

A mistake in the allocation of a Scotland cap has come to light, with John McPherson of Hearts finally being credited for his international debut in 1890, rather than his namesake of Cowlairs.
   Thanks to the detective work of David Speed and Davy Allan at Hearts Heritage, the confusion over the two players with the same name has been resolved.
   The issue relates to two consecutive Scotland matches in 1890, just a week apart. The games against Ireland on 29 March and against England on 5 April both featured a John McPherson in the forward line, and in recent years both caps have been credited to the man from Cowlairs.
   However, a close look at the evidence in the newspapers and annuals of the time has revealed that the player in the first of these was actually John McPherson of Hearts. He was previously recorded as winning a single cap, against England in 1891, but his tally can now be doubled.  As for the Cowlairs player, who later starred for Rangers and was known as 'Kitey', he made his debut in 1888 and his caps total over the following decade can now be confirmed as eight rather than nine. 

In some respects it is an unusual mistake because the publications of the time, including the Scottish FA annual, were all correct. In fact, I have been looking at later annuals and the correct attribution appears to be in place until about fifty years ago. However, recent publications and online guides contain the mistake.

John McPherson (Heart of Midlothian)
Scotland v Ireland 1890, v England 1891.

John McPherson (Kilmarnock, Cowlairs and Rangers)
Scotland v Wales 1888, 1892; v England 1889, 1890, 1894, 1895; v Ireland 1895, 1897.

This month marks the bicentenary of the world's first football club, founded in Edinburgh in December 1824.
   To celebrate Scotland's role in helping to create the modern game of football, I gave talks in Edinburgh and Glasgow to reveal how members of The Foot-Ball Club played the game and wrote the first known rules of the game (pictured above).
   While football has been played for centuries, the Foot-Ball Club was the first known organisation devoted to the sport. Precisely two hundred years ago, on a winter's day in 1824, the founders bought a football – a leather casing with an inflated pig's bladder inside – and set up goalposts in a field just outside the city boundaries.
   They met once or twice a week for almost two decades, and the city's young men flocked to the Foot-Ball Club to play the game they loved. Some of them went on to influence the early development of our most popular sport, long before it split into the different codes like rugby and association football.
   The club's founder, John Hope, managed the Foot-Ball Club throughout its existence until it was wound up in 1841. Because he was a pedantic hoarder, the club records survived within his unique and extensive archive, now held at the National Records of Scotland where the first of the talks took place. The second talk was at the Scottish Football Museum in Glasgow.
​   Please join me in celebrating the birthday of The Foot-Ball Club!


To read the text of the talk, click here for a pdf of my presentation.

To view my talk in its entirety, click here for the National Records of Scotland's YouTube channel.

And to buy the book '1824: The World's First Foot-Ball Club' by John Hutchinson and Andy Mitchell, click here.