I recently came across a remarkable collection of Scottish sports programmes dating back to the 1880s, many with a strong football connection. They are held at National Records of Scotland, having been deposited there by the renowned athletics historian, John Keddie.
   The programmes include the earliest known issues from several football clubs, including Hearts, St Bernard's, Falkirk and Dunfermline Athletic, and there are later issues from Hibs and Aberdeen. There are programmes from a variety of other clubs, whether athletics, cycling or football, and the common feature of nearly all of these meetings is five-a-side football contests. Sometimes the player names are given.
   The earliest are from 1883, and while the early issues are the most interesting, the extensive collection goes right up to recent times.
   They give a fascinating insight to sports meetings of a long-forgotten amateur era, where prizes for the winners ranged from cutlery sets to silver cups, clocks to butter dishes, but never money.
   The programme pictured above is from the Heart of Midlothian FC Sports of 1884, a flimsy four page issue which you can read in full by clicking here. This is thought to be the earliest known event programme from Hearts.

Across the city, the 1880s also saw the start of a series of annual sports at St Bernard's FC, and follows them as they moved around grounds, from Powderhall to Logie Green, back to Powderhall and then to the Royal Gymnasium. The programmes cover over three decades, from 1883 to 1904, and you can read the full St Bernard's issue from 1884 - which included five-a-side teams from Hearts and Hibs - by clicking here.

It was not just the football clubs which realised the crowd-pulling potential of five-a-side competitions. Edinburgh Northern Bicycle Club, for example, invited Hearts and St Bernard's to play in their competition in 1883, pictured here.
   Their programmes are filled with adverts for bicycles, tricycles and tandems, for racing or for everyday use, at a time when the mechanics of cycling was in its infancy. There are some weird and wonderful illustrations of these contraptions.

While much of the collection relates to Edinburgh, there are a few from further afield. The Falkirk FC Sports of 1883 was held at Blinkbonny Park, their home before they moved to Brockville two years later. It is a four page programme [click here], as is the issue produced by Dunfermline Athletic in 1890 at East End Park [click here]. Again, both teams had five-a-side competitions, with an interesting selection of entrants. 

Pictured above are the Hearts programmes for 1886, when they had just moved to their current ground at Tynecastle Park [click here]. There is also one for 1894 [click here], then a gap until the series resumes in the 1920s. One interesting item is the event in 1924 when Eric Liddell ran at Tynecastle, shortly before heading to Paris to take part in the Olympic Games, winning a famous gold medal. A full set of Paris Olympic athletics programmes is also in the collection.