Edwin Oxley was one of Scotland’s leading rugby players in the 1930s, captain of Edinburgh side Heriot's FP, yet he was never capped by his country. According to some accounts, including his old school, the reason for this snub was that he was black.
   However, while he was undoubtedly discriminated against in a time of endemic racism, there is perhaps a more prosaic reason for his non-selection for Scotland: he was born in England. In fact, he spent the first 13 years of his life in Staffordshire before he was able to join his birth mother in Edinburgh.
   His father was James Oxley, a black medical student from Trinidad at Edinburgh University. While in Scotland he had a relationship with Isabella Nichol, the unmarried daughter of a local joiner, and when she fell pregnant she went far away to Burton-on-Trent to have the baby, presumably to avoid the inevitable stigma of an illegitimate child, and a black one at that.

Born on 4 May 1907 in a small terraced house in Burton, the infant Edwin was fostered to a local family, his foster mother Mary Lukin taking care of him until he was 13, while he attended school in the town.
   Meanwhile his parents did marry in Edinburgh early in 1910, using the Scottish system of 'marriage by declaration' but it appears to have been purely for practical reasons as six weeks later his father sailed for America, never to return. Dr James Edwin Tyndall Oxley, who had just graduated with first class honours in medicine, settled in Pennsylvania, where he married for a second time in 1919 (apparently without seeking a divorce) and raised another family. He died in 1927 of pneumonia.
   Edwin's mother, meanwhile, remained in Edinburgh and he finally joined her there in 1921, enrolling at George Heriot's, a fee-paying school. Clearly her financial circumstances had improved and it may be that the father sent money to cover the boy's education.
   At school he was given the nickname Sam, short for 'Sambo', which went unquestioned at the time and stuck throughout his life. He stood out as probably the only black pupil but, as an athletic and personable young boy, he fitted in well, and ended up captaining the school rugby team as well as playing for its cricket eleven.
   When he left school in 1927 it was a daunting time for a black man to enter adult life in Edinburgh. This was the year of the infamous 'colour bar' in the city, imposed by some bars and restaurants against African and Asian students. Although that racist ban caused such condemnation that it was soon withdrawn, it reflected a society where feelings about race could run high.
   It was little surprise that he stuck to the people he knew, and continued to play rugby with Heriot's FP. They were then one of Scotland's top sides, and were the country's unofficial champions in 1928 and 1929. A wing forward, he remained with the club throughout the following decade, captaining the team for three seasons and regularly praised in the media, but whenever representative sides were named, he was never in the mix.

It is easy to speculate that the Scottish Rugby Union, a notoriously reactionary body, would have baulked at the idea of picking a black man for Scotland. At the time, it was not the done thing to challenge the selectors, yet one wonders if they knew he was English-born and had a simple excuse at the ready.
   At the very least, he would have been a natural fit for the Edinburgh team in the annual inter-city clashes with Glasgow (and would not have been the first black player for Edinburgh, as James Robertson did so in the 1870s). But perhaps because the inter-city matches were seen as trials for the international team, he never got the nod.
   His only honour was being picked for a one-off Glasgow & Edinburgh Select which faced the All Blacks at Old Anniesland in October 1935. The match was narrowly lost 8-9 but although he did well he was not named in the next Edinburgh fifteen – 'a notable omission' according to one newspaper.

One area where Oxley excelled was Rugby Sevens, and he led Heriot's to a superb haul of medals in the prestigious Borders tournaments. With him in the team, they won at Jedforest three times, Melrose twice, Langholm four times, Hawick and Selkirk once each.
   He finally retired from the game in 1939 and was immediately taken onto the Heriot’s selection committee, retaining his link to the club for many years.
   Meanwhile he went into business as a commercial artist, running Oxley Studios in Cockburn Street, and his work sometimes turns up at auction. In 1947 he married Inga Peace, a fashion illustrator, and although they had no children they remained together until his death. Sadly, he died early in 1969, aged 61, after taking an overdose.

While Oxley's story is little known, thankfully he has not been forgotten, and the Heriot's School Magazine The Quadrangle recently published a lengthy article about him. They paid tribute to his achievements: "We know that Eddie Oxley was a great player who was undoubtedly deprived of an international career because he was black; that this charismatic man was a gifted artist and a creative and successful businessman. What we don't know is how he coped with and felt about the social mores of the time; with being a black man operating in, and apparently embraced by, polite Edinburgh society; a person patronised with what we now know as the 'casual racism' of his popular moniker 'Sam', and yet loved and revered by so many people."
   From my researches in recent years, it is clear that Eddie Oxley is just one example of Scotland's hidden history of black sportsmen and women, who overcame discrimination to make their mark in sport. I hope that bringing their achievements to a wider audience will inspire a greater appreciation of the challenges they faced, and I am convinced that there are more stories waiting to be uncovered.

Edwin James Oxley, rugby player.
Born 4 May 1907 in Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire.
Died 19 January 1969 in Balerno, Edinburgh.

After buying a copy of a rare football handbook, I was intrigued to find out more about the author and his other sporting books.
   The little volume by 'Straw Hat' on Rugby & Association Football was one of Dean's Champion Handbooks, which had attractive cover designs and were published to capitalise on the growing desire of the population to take up sport. They came out in the 1890s, and are now very difficult to find.
   'Straw Hat' was the pseudonym of James Jeffery, who had an interesting story as a talented sportsman who combined school teaching with journalism.

Jeffery, born in 1834, went to school in Clapham and then qualified as a teacher at Battersea Training College. In 1858 he was appointed as Assistant Master at Epsom College, where his duties included running the school cricket team and he probably also played football. He held the post until 1879 when he set up a private Preparatory School for the College, which he ran until about 1900. He died in Epsom in 1907.
   Meanwhile, he also carved out a career as a sports writer, initially concentrating on angling as 'Straw Hat' in the Licensed Victuallers' Gazette. His enthusiasm for sports must have appealed to Dean & Son Ltd of Fleet Street, who had started a series of sporting handbooks in the early 1890s based on previously published works about cricket, cycling and swimming. To expand their range, they employed Jeffery and he churned out several books including Football, Croquet, Tennis and Rowing, with an adaptation of the book on Swimming. The cheap editions sold for sixpence, while the hardbacks with colourful covers were a shilling.

Jeffery was not just an enthusiastic writer, he also tried to improve the sporting experience and invented various gadgets such as a new type of batting glove, a kind of cricket practice net, and a spinning reel for angling.
   While most of his book about football is about playing technique, he does provide an interesting anecdote about the early days of football before codification, describing a match played at Wimbledon in the 1860s when his team, which was a 'non-hacking club', came up against a school which did play the hacking game. I believe, from his description, that 'Josh' was the athlete GR (George Richard) Nunn, who was schooled at Epsom.

At the end of the day, James Jeffery was not a hugely important writer on sport, but his work in the Champion series does provide an interesting insight into the late Victoria era. And if nothing else, the attractive cover designs deserve to be appreciated by a wider audience.
   Illustrated below are three more of Dean's Champion Handbooks, on billiards, swimming and golf. The images come from dealer catalogues, so they are not particularly sharp.

There used to be a strict rule in British international football, that you had to be born in the country you would represent. That's why Scots such as John Goodall and Joe Baker played for England, while English-bred players such as Alex Donaldson and Jack Lyall were capped by Scotland. Until the agreement changed in the 1970s to allow parental birthplaces to be considered, very few slipped through the net - I wrote recently about the cases of Willie Watson and James McKee.
   However, there was one notable exception when the Scottish Football Association was quite happy to break the rule. Jimmy Wardhaugh of Hearts was capped twice for Scotland and nine times for the Scottish League despite a birthplace on the 'wrong' side of the border in Northumberland.
   Wardhaugh was a goalscorer supreme in the outstanding Hearts team of the 1950s, part of the 'Terrible Trio' alongside Alfie Conn and Willie Bauld. Known as Twinkletoes for his quick feet, he scored no less than 376 goals for the club, a record that stood until it was beaten decades later by John Robertson.
   Not surprisingly, Wardhaugh came into contention for international honours and his first call-up was for the Scottish League in January 1951. This prompted a lively debate in the press: was he really Scottish?

Wardhaugh himself confirmed he had been born in the hamlet of Marshall Meadows, the first settlement south of the Scotland-England border. He had moved to Edinburgh as a young boy and spent virtually all his life there, stating unequivocally: 'I am a Scot'. In football and geographical terms, however, despite spurious claims that the cottage where he was born was actually a few yards inside Scotland, there was no doubt about it: he was English.
   Then, to general surprise, George Graham, the Secretary of the SFA, weighed into the debate with a curious piece of logic. He told the press: 'The SFA does not work to a foot-rule or feel itself bound by a matter of a few yards which are debatably English or Scottish ground. We have always regarded the Tweed as the border. Berwick Rangers are a Scottish club - they are playing at Brechin in the Scottish Cup next Saturday. And Wardhaugh is a Scotsman who I can say quite categorically will be brought into the selectors' reckoning when future teams are being chosen.'
   George Graham, normally a pedantic stickler for rules, gave no explanation for this policy of blurred national boundaries. He also managed to contradict himself in his statement, as Berwick Rangers' home at Shielfield Park is actually south of the River Tweed, in Tweedmouth.
   However, there were no complaints from the FA about his eligibility, and Wardhaugh scored on his debut for the Scottish League, against the League of Ireland. Despite his goal-scoring prowess he had to wait a while to be selected for the full national team, and finally made his Scotland debut against Hungary at a packed Hampden on 8 December 1954. He was capped just once more, against Northern Ireland on 7 November 1956.
   Curiously, however, Wardhaugh was not born in Marshall Meadows, even though he claimed he was. Accounts of his life have always stated that was his birthplace, but they are all wrong. I recently ordered up his birth certificate and it clearly says James Alexander Douglas Wardhaugh was born on 21 March 1929 in Berwick itself, at 65 High Street (now named Marygate). This was the home of his mother's family, the Egans, who lived in a flat above a chemist shop; the building is still there although the business is now a charity shop. 
   Winniefred Egan had married Alexander Wardhaugh at Berwick Barracks in January 1928. Alexander, born in Tweedmouth, was a career soldier who had been in uniform since 1912 and was serving with the Royal Scots Greys, based at Redford Barracks in Edinburgh, by the time Jimmy was born. Winnie was born in northern India while her own father was serving there, and was brought up in Berwick.
​   When Alexander retired from the Army in 1933 the family remained in Edinburgh, where Jimmy was brought up and spent the rest of his life. ​There is nothing to indicate that the Wardhaughs ever lived in Marshall Meadows, although it is possible the mother and baby stayed there for a short time.

The SFA's recognition of Berwick as part of Scotland, for footballing purposes, appears to have been a one-off. Later internationalists to have been born in the town, Trevor Steven and Lucy Bronze, have played for England without any quibble. Also born in Berwick was Thomas Burn, who represented the 'Great Britain' football team in the 1912 Olympic Games; he played for the England amateur team yet his club side was London Caledonians.
   In Jimmy Wardhaugh's case, England's loss was Scotland's gain. There is nothing unusual today about an English-born player with Scottish connections playing for Scotland, but in the 1950s he was a unique exception, thanks to the SFA's loose grip of geography. 
   Although he only won two caps, Jimmy remains a legendary figure at Tynecastle. His goals and teamwork helped Hearts to win the Scottish Cup in 1956, the Scottish League in 1958, and two League Cups. After retiring in 1961 he remained in football as a journalist until his sudden death on 2 January 1978, aged just 48.


* With thanks for David Speed, historian at Heart of Midlothian FC, for his input.  I also recommend reading Tom Maxwell's book The Lone Rangers on the issue of nationality for a football fan in Berwick.

It's amazing what can turn up. This silver buckle, attached to its original belt, was presented in 1865 by the 14th Earl of Eglinton for competition by cricket clubs in Cunninghame, north Ayrshire. I believe this was the world's first knock-out cricket tournament, a distinction which has apparently not previously been recognised. 
   In fact the Earl presented three prizes that summer: a silver ball for the winners, the silver-mounted belt for the runners-up, and a cricket bat for third place. Having added the belt to my collection following a chance find on eBay, I decided to look into its history, and the wider sporting patronage of the Earls of Eglinton in the Victorian era. 

It was first announced in the Ardrossan and Saltcoats Herald on 13 May 1865: 'CRICKET - The Earl of Eglinton has resolved to come out as a patron of this fine manly game and has intimated to the cricketers in the district of Cunninghame that he intends giving them three prizes, to be competed for annually.'
   The prizes attracted five local cricket clubs to enter the competition. It was an awkward number for a knock-out competition, but the ties were drawn and in the first round Ardeer beat Kilmarnock Junior on 3 June, then Kilwinning Monkcastle beat Kilmarnock Winton on 17 June, while Irvine Eglinton were given a bye. In the second round, effectively the semi-final, Irvine Eglinton beat Ardeer on 1 July while Kilwinning Monkcastle received a bye.
   This set up a final which was played on 22 July at the Earl's own cricket pitch at Eglinton Castle. Kilwinning Monkcastle took the honours, and the silver ball, by beating Irvine Eglinton by 45 runs after two innings.

There was still a need for a third place match, and Ardeer won the silver-mounted bat on 19 August, defeating Kilmarnock Winton by 17 runs.
   The Eglinton prizes for Cunninghame clubs continued each year until 1882 when the silver ball was won by Beith. by this time, there was no mention of a silver belt for the runners-up, and the current whereabouts of the silver ball is (I believe) unknown. 
   Hence the little belt and buckle, which I now own, appears to be Scotland's oldest surviving cricket trophy. There were earlier cricket cups in England, but only for direct competition between two teams. I can find no earlier instance of a knock-out tournament. 
   The original winners of the belt, Irvine Eglinton, had been founded in the town in 1858, and not surprisingly the club's patron was the Earl of Eglinton himself. The club was one of the leading sides in Ayrshire in the 1860s but had a chequered history, having to bounce back from losing its ground to coal mining in 1867 and then became homeless again in 1874, after which it was wound up.
   The 14th Earl was clearly a cricket enthusiast and delighted at the success of his tournament, so in 1867 he went one bigger and provided a trophy for the whole of Ayrshire (or more formally for Carrick, Kyle and Cunninghame). He had announced the previous summer that he would offer a silver cup, value £40, and the first edition of the competition attracted eleven entries. The first winners were Irvine Eglinton, defeating Ayr in the final. In succeeding years the winners always came from Ayr until Ayr CC won it three years in a row to take permanent possession of the trophy in 1875. It was in fact three trophies, a silver gilt claret jug with two goblets, all in the same velvet-lined box.
   The Eglinton Cup, still held by Ayr CC, came back into public view in 2017 when it took pride of place at a Scottish cricket exhibition within the Football Museum at Hampden Park. 

At that time, the Eglinton cup was hailed as the world's oldest cricket trophy but I think I can now dispute that claim by two years (although whether a silver belt can claim to be a trophy is another question).

While the 14th Earl, who died in 1892 aged 50, can be credited with creating the first cricket tournaments, it has to be said he was a sporting lightweight compared to his father, who had an extraordinary record of patronage that endures to this day.
   The 13th Earl of Eglinton (1812-1861) is perhaps best known for his extravagant Eglinton Tournament which he hosted in 1839. However his lasting legacy was in sport. Described as 'the generous patron of every manly exercise', over the following two decades until his death he lavished his wealth on a huge variety of prizes which encouraged sporting competition in Scotland and far beyond.
   His personal passion was horse racing and he kept a large racing stud, the greatest exponent being Flying Dutchman which won the Derby and the St Leger in 1849. The Earl also provided the Eglinton Cup at the Curragh racecourse in Kildare while he was Viceroy of Ireland.
   In bowls, he donated the Eglinton Gold and Silver Bowls for clubs in Ayrshire (1854) and the magnificent Eglinton Silver Jug (1857) for annual competition between Ayrshire and Glasgow. These are all still competed for today.
   In curling, he presented the Eglinton Jug in 1851 for Ayrshire clubs and it is also still going as a vibrant competition.
   In golf, the Earl was a founder of Prestwick Golf Club in 1851 and provided the silver belt which was won on the course by Willie Park at the very first Open Championship in 1860. It continued to be the prize for the winner of the Open each year until Tom Morris junior won it outright in 1871, and it was replaced with the famous claret jug. The belt now resides in the R&A World Golf Museum in St Andrews.

Those are the best known Eglinton trophies but he also provided a silver cup for Glasgow Regatta, a silver cup for shooting by the West of Scotland Volunteers, and a gold belt and quiver for Irvine archers. He founded the Eglinton Hunt and gave the Eglinton Hunt Cup to Ayr races. What is more, Eglinton Castle was superbly equipped with a rackets hall, a cricket pitch, a curling pond and a croquet lawn. Most of the castle is now ruins in the country park, but the rackets hall is a rare survivor, the oldest indoor sports building in Scotland.
   Overall the patronage of the 13th Earl of Eglinton helped to encourage Scottish sport in many fields. After his death, the 14th Earl was less extravagant but he still made a key contribution to cricket and I am delighted to have discovered one of his original prizes. 

A chance purchase of an old tankard on ebay led me to delve into the history of one of the classic football television shows, Quiz Ball. It ran from 1966 to 1972 on the BBC and can be considered a forerunner to A Question of Sport which opened in 1970.
   My pewter tankard is annoyingly lacking in detail, as it simply reads 'BBC TV Quiz Ball, Challenge Match 1972'. It turns out there were actually two challenge matches that year, and I cannot find any report of who won them and who might have been presented with the souvenir. But no matter, my research did reveal the fact that Scotland won Series 7 of Quiz Ball and then took part in a challenge match against the British Lions rugby team. Later that year, Northern Ireland met a team of Olympic medallists in another challenge.   

The story of Quiz Ball is punctuated by legendary performances by the 'brains' of football, notably the Scots John Cushley, Ian Ure and Jim Craig, and a number of other famous names turn up during the series, such as Alex Ferguson while he was at Falkirk. The teams always had a 'guest supporter' and unusually for the time a couple of them were women, notably Lady Isobel Barnett who once scored five for Leicester City.
   Among a few oddities: Terry Neill was a Quiz Ball stalwart who featured in the very first programme in 1966 for Arsenal and the very last one in 1972 for Northern Ireland; his team won both series. Rangers manager Scot Symon appeared in the show in 1967 but had been sacked by the time it was broadcast. Dr Who actor Jon Pertwee was roped in for Dunfermline Athletic as a last-minute substitute for Jimmy Logan in the 1971 final, and came away with a winner's medal.
   There are several online articles about the series, and perhaps the most comprehensive is by Vince Cooper at The League. There is also the story of Celtic's victory in 1970 on Celtic Wiki.
   Few videos of the show survive, although the very first edition in 1966 between Arsenal and Nottingham Forest is on YouTube. Recorded at Hornsea Town Hall, it is remarkable for all sorts of reasons, not least the pipe-smoking Forest team. As the show featured four 'own goals', it quickly led to a change of format so that goals were more likely to be scored by getting questions right rather than getting them wrong. 
   Quiz Ball was originally devised by Bill Wright, the show's producer, who was in charge of the BBC Quiz Unit and who also came up with the concept for Mastermind. That perhaps prompted another link, as Magnus Magnusson appeared twice on Quiz Ball as a guest supporter for Kilmarnock, despite later admitting that he had no connection with the team.

Scotland's internationals in 1898 were played on three consecutive weekends, with Scotland using a total of 28 players. The series starting in Motherwell on 19 March with eight debutants in the line-up against Wales: William Watson (Falkirk); Nicol Smith (Rangers), Matthew Scott (Airdrieonians, captain); William Thomson (Dumbarton), Alex Christie (Queen's Park), Peter Campbell (Morton); James Gillespie (Third Lanark), James Miller (Rangers), James McKee (East Stirlingshire), Hugh Morgan (St Mirren), Robert Findlay (Kilmarnock).
   The game drew a small crowd of around 3,500 to Fir Park, and they saw a comfortable victory for the home team. Scotland went four goals up, two from Gillespie and two from McKee, before the Welsh got one back just before half-time through the delightfully named Thomas Thomas. In the second half Gillespie completed his hat-trick and Morgan-Owen scored from a corner to make it 5-2.
   Only two of the Scotland eleven would win a second cap that season (Thomson faced Ireland and Miller played against England) and most would never be selected again, including Watson, McKee and hat-trick hero Gillespie.
   For Watson, indeed, this was almost his final football act. He gave up the game in the summer of 1898 and returned to Shotts, where he lived with his wife and a large family, employed as a hewer down the coal mine. It was heavy work which probably contributed to his early death of chronic bronchitis in 1929, aged 56.

The first football match in Scotland under Association rules was played in Glasgow on 1 August 1868 between Queen's Park and Thistle. But while the foundation and history of Queen's Park is well known, it takes two sides to play a match, so who exactly were their opponents, Thistle? And was this really the starting point for football in the city?
   The answers lie in the hidden history of football in Glasgow before Queen's Park came on the scene, with a man called John B Connell claiming to have brought the first football to the city several years earlier.
   The traditional version of events was written by Richard Robinson in the Queen's Park jubilee history, where he asserted that there was no serious football in the city before the club was founded on 9 July 1867: 'Football was played in a more or less happy-go-lucky fashion in the Queen's Park and Glasgow Green. Play with the round ball was then comparatively new, and had not yet been systematised in Scotland.'
   Robinson described how Queen's Park was founded after a few young men from the north of Scotland were engaged in athletic pursuits near to a group of YMCA members who were playing football. Sometimes the game spilled over into the athletics area, so the northerners challenged the YMCA boys. They enjoyed football enough to start playing regularly 'to amuse themselves, among themselves, in their own way,' and then decided to form a proper club. The rest is history as Queen's Park blazed a trail for association football in Scotland.
   However, it is clear that football was already a popular recreation in Glasgow long before 1867, although frustratingly for historians there are only tantalising glimpses of football in the press and written records.
   For example, in the summer of 1862 the Glasgow Abstainers' Union took over Gilmorehill Recreation Grounds to promote outdoor activities, and top of their list was football. Although it was initially described as 'the ancient and praiseworthy pastime of football', the activity was soon disparaged by an English observer in a letter to the Glasgow Morning Journal: 'Football as we play it in England, with two sides, and a goal to be kept by one of them, is a noble game. Here there was no game. By the English eye a mob of people kicking a ball about quite aimlessly and at random could only be regarded as a pitiful congregation of blockheads working off their superfluous physical energies in a particularly insane and stupid manner.' (7 May 1862)
   This drew an angry riposte from 'A Scotchman' who wrote: 'Failing to discover the drunkenness over which he would have gloated with delight, he gives vent to his bile in a scurrilous attack on the play at foot-ball, which was not managed, he says in the English style. It may be right, perhaps, to let this conceited Englishman know that the game of football is as well understood in all parts of Scotland as England.' (9 May 1862) 
   However, it appears the Abstainers' Union were scared off by the bad publicity and they abruptly ended the short-lived experiment with the stark announcement: 'Foot-Balling has been discontinued in consequence of interfering with the comfort of visitors'. The game was simply too popular.

The only other meaningful announcement about football is an advert for members of the St Andrew Football Club, placed in the Glasgow Herald in November 1865. However, apart from the location of their ground on Great Western Road, which was also the home of cricket clubs including Caledonian, Bellegrove and Blythswood, nothing is revealed about the club, not even whether they played with a round or oval ball.
   Although the city's first rugby clubs were founded at West of Scotland (1865) and Glasgow Academicals (1866), there are precious few mentions of football in the press until Queen's Park advertised the start of their first summer season in March 1868, shortly followed by their annual meeting on 4 April.

The club was quickly growing in a stature, as a letter to the Glasgow Evening Citizen on 6 June confirmed. The writer stated the need for dressing rooms for sportsmen at the Queen's Park Recreation Ground and described the football club as 'the most influential in numbers, well organised and respectable, and with their flags, goal posts, putting stones, hammers and balls.' This was quite an accolade for a club which was less than a year old.
   That summer they decided to broaden their horizons beyond their own membership and, according to Robinson: 'It was found that there were in existence other clubs in exactly the same position as the Queen's Park, on the lookout for opponents.'
   Two challenges were received: one from Ayr FC, the other from the Thistle FC, whose headquarters were on Glasgow Green. A trip to Ayr was deemed impractical on financial grounds, so the game with Thistle was arranged and a letter from Robert Gardner, accepting the challenge, is in the Scottish Football Museum. It was addressed to Andrew Holmes, secretary of the Thistle Football Club, which indicates a properly organised club.
   A few days later, the teams met at the Queen's Park Recreation Ground, with Queen's Park winning by two goals to nil. Association football had arrived in Glasgow.
   What of their opponents? To establish the story of the Thistle Football Club one has to depend on later reminiscences, some of which contradict what Robinson wrote in the Queen's Park history.
   I was first alerted to an anecdote published in a 1934 book, The Mighty Kick. The authors wrote that 'John Connal [sic] brought the first football to Glasgow in 1862, having been brought up on the traditions of Hansel Monday in Callander, and helped to found the Thistle Football Club at Glasgow Green. Callander boys came to Glasgow and played football at Monteith Row, Glasgow Green, where the People's Palace now stands, paying a penny a week to take part. They wore the colours of Drummond Castle, which was owned by Baron Willoughby d'Eresby. This included tartan caps.'
   I found more of Connell's story in a couple of newspaper articles which described how he made the transition from the rural football of Perthshire to the organised game in Glasgow.

The Scottish Referee (29 June 1914) had an article titled 'A Football Pioneer' which was based on a conversation with John B Connell. It told how he came to Glasgow from Port of Menteith in 1863, and brought his football with him, one that had been used in the annual game at Callander on Hansel Monday (the first day of the traditional new year).
   'He was the only individual in the city who possessed a public ball, and the charge for the use of it was a penny a week. The games were played on Glasgow Green, the boundaries being from Geordie Geddes's house [ie the Glasgow Humane Society] to Monteith Row, and the objective was to kick over the boundary on either side. Both hands and feet were used. There was no limit to the number of players who joined each side, once the penny was paid. These games ultimately culminated in the formation of the Thistle, in which Connell took a prominent part, though prior to that there was the Drummond Club, composed of Callander men.'

However, the accounts do reveal something of the nature of early association football in Glasgow. They also provide a documented direct link between Scottish rural football and association football, as first described by Dr Neil Tranter who told the story of Callander’s Hansel Monday football game over twenty years ago (click on link and scroll to page 143) and it was then reported in The Herald. ​The traditional new year match continued in the town until 1885, and overlapped with the formation in 1877 of Callander's first association football club, Rob Roy.

Connell was no mean player and was rated in the first Scottish Football Annual: 'Powerful back; kicks well, although rather nervous when pressed.' In 1875, while with Eastern, he played for Glasgow v Sheffield and a year later featured in an international trial.
   His full name was John Burns Connell and he was born in Doune in 1846, then brought up on a farm near Port of Menteith, a few miles south of Callander. He clearly took part in the annual football match there and after coming to Glasgow to work in the early 1860s he continued to enjoy the game and appears to have been the captain of both the Thistle and the Drummond teams.
   Later he played for Callander (a Glasgow club) in the first ever Scottish Cup tournament in 1873, after the club subscribed £1 for the purchase of the trophy. He then joined Eastern, a club which produced many prominent players, notably the Scotland internationalists Peter Andrews, JJ Lang, Alex Kennedy and WS Somers. Ultimately Eastern became one of the forerunners of Clyde FC.
   He remained in Glasgow for the rest of his life and worked for over 50 years as a draper and warehouseman with J&W Campbell. He died in Scotstoun in 1930, aged 84, and although he and his wife Louisa had two children, there are not thought to be any living descendants.
   There are no known photos of Connell, which is unfortunate as he is a key figure in the early development of football. Similarly, there is no documentary evidence of the Thistle or Drummond clubs.
   As research into the story of early Scottish football continues, I hope that, in time, the contributions of John B Connell and his fellow players from Callander will become better known and appreciated.

It was back in 2012 that I wrote of the need for a new Scotland who's who. Already by that time I had started to research the many internationalists who deserved to be better known, but I had little idea of the size of the job I was undertaking.
   Now, after countless hours of research the book is finally published. The men who made Scotland contains detailed biographies of 615 players, in fact every player who represented Scotland between 1872 and 1939.
   It is on sale from amazon or directly from me, and purchases of copies have quickly gone into three figures, but while I welcome any sales I have to clear that this was never going to be a profitable project. My aim, all along, was to ensure that footballers who reached the pinnacle of their profession by pulling on the dark blue of Scotland should be known about and celebrated. For too long, many of them were lost to the winds and I am delighted to have put that right.
   After devoting the best part of ten years to completing the research and getting this book into print, the big question is: what now? In fact, I have a list of projects, large and small, which I can now get my teeth into.
   Watch this space, I hope you continue to find much of interest on this website.

In Scottish Cup final week there are all sorts of souvenirs available to mark the occasion. But in years gone by, fans could celebrate victory with a drink from a special glass that commemorated their team's success.
   I have managed to collect quite a few of these glasses, which date from the 1920s to the 1960s. They cover teams from all over Scotland and came in different styles and sizes, with the last three being tankards with the players' signatures printed. The tankards are more robust and have survived in reasonable numbers, but the early glass ones are fragile and rare.
   Here are photos of the ones in my collection although I know there are more examples out there, for example the earliest I have seen was for Morton in 1921. And there is even one, pictured at the end, for Troon Athletic who won the Ayrshire Junior Cup in 1922.
   The only clue to who made them is on the 1928 glass when Rangers won the league and cup double. It has Crocket & Son of Buchanan Street printed below the graphics, but whether they made them or just sold them is hard to say. That year is also different as there is Scottish League flag printed on the back.
   Needless to say, I would be interested to know of any further examples.

I'm grateful to guest contributor Douglas Gorman for his article on the story of the careers of two very young footballers who hold records for their achievements.
   16-year-old Norrie Corbett was the youngest player to captain the Scotland Junior team in 1936, while 17-year-old Joe Fascione was the youngest ever to win a Scottish Junior Cup winner’s medal in 1962.

Both players went on to senior clubs, Corbett spending most of his career with West Ham United on both sides of WW2, and Fascione went to Chelsea in the swinging sixties.
   You can read their full story by clicking here to open the pdf.
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