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.

This article is based on a talk I gave to the British Society of Sports History conference in Edinburgh, on 27 August 2026.

​Why do footballers use their head? It might seem a daft question: in association football, the act of heading the ball is an essential part of the game, from defence to attack. Nearly one in five goals at this year's World Cup came from headers, and Spain's winning goal in the final came from a headed knock-down.
   It's a universally accepted feature, but that wasn't always the case, as players didn't start heading until nearly a decade after the Laws of the Game were drawn up in 1863.
   The origins of heading have had only a cursory examination in academic and sporting literature, so in this article I will outline the story of how and why this particular skill arrived on the scene.

First, it has to be said that heading in association football is an outlier, a quirk. The head is not used to propel a projectile in any other widely-played sport, and more specifically it does not play a part in any other code of football, and never has – the shape of the ball or the heavier weight make it impractical or downright dangerous.
   Even in soccer, it is barely mentioned in the Laws of the Game, except tangentially – for example, you can head a pass-back to the goalkeeper without sanction, your head could put you offside in these days of VAR scrutiny, you can be guilty of violent conduct for head-butting, and there are protocols for head injuries. But in the normal course of the game, heading is essentially unregulated.

On the other hand, perhaps it should be regulated. It is now generally accepted that heading carries an element of risk, and several high profile players have suffered an early death from neuro-degenerative disease, with heading a ball during their career being an attributable cause. The sad examples of Jeff Astle and Gordon McQueen are illustrated above.
   Recent research from Loughborough University even determined that heading a ball creates a pressure wave energy transfer to the brain which is comparable to some military gunshots and blasts.
   Consequently the last few years have seen attempts to redesign the ball to make it safer, while new medical protocols have been put in place - for example, the Scottish FA has banned heading in training the day before and after a professional match, and there are moves to exclude heading completely from youth football.
   The risks are clear, but there is little prospect of heading being banned completely as it is too deeply ingrained in the game. So the question remains, why do it?
   The answer to that requires an analysis of changes in football laws and playing styles that led to its adoption, as it is clear that heading was not a part of the game when the Football Association was founded in 1863.
   It did not emerge until the following decade, and only in 1871 do we have the first reports of deliberate heading. So, what happened?

A simplistic answer is that heading was an innovative ploy which was an unintended consequence of the abandonment of the 'fair catch', a feature which survives in other codes of football. But it's not as straightforward as that, as heading was not taken up universally in response to that rule change.
   Let's have a closer look at the fair catch, which was a relic of various school codes of football, and which equates to the 'mark' in rugby. The fair catch survived the drawing up of the Laws of the Game in 1863 but the FA soon realised their mistake and, as part of their drive to distinguish the association game from rugby, they dropped it in February 1866. The pioneers at Cambridge University did not even go that far, and having had it in their 1856 rules, it was gone in 1863.
   Despite that, in London and Cambridge there is no known evidence of a player using those changes to start heading the ball. Was it because the idea simply did not occur to anyone? I think it is more likely that they were in thrall to their old school games, where the ball must be kicked and dribbling was king.
   Further north, however, the story is different. When we talk of Sheffield Rules, that means a changing landscape. First, we had Sheffield FC who published theirs in 1858, and they went with the fair catch. Then the Sheffield Football Association redrafted those laws when it was founded in 1867 and dropped the fair catch to align with London. But a year later, due to popular local demand, they brought it back again, and it survived until 1871.
   As for Glasgow, the other early hotbed of football, they never had a fair catch rule. When Queen's Park were founded in 1867 they adopted the FA's laws of the game, then took it a step further by formally joining the FA in 1870.
   What Glasgow and Sheffield had in common, and set them apart from London, was an expansive style of football that encouraged passing, facilitated by a more liberal interpretation of offside. This essentially meant that the ball was more likely to be kicked in the air, to travel a distance, and that appears to be the genesis of heading when catching was no longer an option.

It was in Sheffield that we have the first record of a headed goal, but it was a lucky accident. In October 1870, a Mackenzie player whacked the ball clear only for it to rebound back into goal from the head of William Booker of Broomhall. It wasn't a deliberate act, so the only thing that can be taken from this is that it shows there was no problem in the laws with the ball hitting the head.
   I should point out that match reports in Sheffield were often more comprehensive than elsewhere at this time, making details such as this accessible to researchers.

Two weeks later, on 23 January, the Sheffield FA changed their rules so that the fair catch was deleted, on a trial basis to the end of the season.
   It was not universally welcomed locally but almost immediately you read of Sheffield players attempting to deliberately head the ball, albeit not with much success. What is interesting is that the examples illustrated were games against non-Sheffield teams, from Nottingham and Manchester, whereas in games involving Sheffield clubs only, there are no such reports of heading around that time.
   The fair catch rule was scrapped definitively by the Sheffield FA on 10 October 1871, but only by a 44-36 majority, after a fiercely contested debate among the member clubs.

It took until almost the end of the year, on 5 November 1871, for the first report anywhere of a deliberately headed goal begins scored. In a practice match to choose the Sheffield select to face London, Henry Ash, an Attercliffe player, 'judiciously headed the ball through'. But while the potential was now recognised, it still does not appear to be widely practised as there was no mention at all of heading when the Sheffield faced London in December, under Sheffield rules.
   However, a few weeks later, on 27 January 1872, Henry Ash was in the Sheffield team to face London in the return at The Oval, under Association rules, and by now, Sheffield players were clearly becoming more used to the idea of heading.

It caused a minor sensation – the Londoners thought this was hilarious, not football as they knew it. The press described heading as 'ingenious' and it was such a novelty that they even had to describe the act as 'stopping the ball with the head, so placed as to make the ball rebound in the direction it came from'. 
   I've seen it said that this proves that Sheffield invented heading. But how about this: just five weeks later, Queen's Park travelled outside Scotland for the first time to play Wanderers in the FA Cup semi-final, at the Oval on 5 March 1872. There had been no prior contact between the footballers of Glasgow and Sheffield but the Scots were also well versed in heading. The Field reporter wrote that 'their method of driving the ball with the head is precisely the same as that adopted in Sheffield'.
   So by early 1872, Sheffield and Glasgow footballers were adept at heading, whereas it was unknown in London.
   The start point for Sheffield is reasonably clear, related to their abandonment of the fair catch, but the genesis for Queen's Park is harder to pin down. Although the club was founded in 1867, this was the first time there was any kind of detailed newspaper report on their style of play. I would argue that Queen's Park had probably adopted heading early on, because they never had the fair catch rule, nor did they have the inherited baggage of public school rules and etiquette. However, the lack of reports makes it impossible to prove.

Later that year, on 30 November 1872, we have the first illustration of a player heading the ball, an unidentified Scotland player against England in the first international, described rather incongruously by The Graphic as 'making good kicks off his head'. For me, that drawing is a clear indication that heading was now a well-practised skill – a skill that the English players did not possess, with the possible exception of their one player from Sheffield. Combined with the Scots' ability to pass the ball as a team, this momentous occasion really did bring two very different ways of playing football face to face.
   You might think that was that, and heading swiftly became a universal part of the game, with everyone following the example of Glasgow and Sheffield, and that is demonstrably true in Scotland and the North of England.
   However in London, where the public school amateurs still dominated and clung on to football's dribbling roots, heading was perceived as a dark art, somehow against the spirit of the game. There was a marked reluctance to learn and to change, which remained in place for a generation and I found a couple of examples from over a decade later.
   Norman Coles Bailey, a Westminster School old boy who captained England 15 times, suggested in the Football Annual for 1885 that heading (or butting, as he called it) was taken to excess, and wondered whether it might be better for the game if it was outlawed, on the same lines as handling the ball. He went on to describe heading in front of goal by a forward as 'detrimental' and a waste of time. Try telling that to Erling Haaland.

And Bailey was not alone. In 1887 Charles Alcock, Secretary of the FA, so often an innovator, wrote disparagingly of 'half a dozen men hitting up the ball like so many goats'. He was firmly of the opinion that the foot was made for kicking and the head was made for thinking. Not a fan!
   But in essence, Norman Bailey and Charles Alcock were swimming against the tide, and with the decline of the amateur influence and the rise of the professionals came the recognition that heading was here to stay.
   To conclude, heading was a late starter in football, an unintended consequence of a law change, but only where it fitted with the local style of play. It was not invented by any one player or in any one place, although patchy newspaper reporting makes it difficult to see the full picture. Heading spread from Sheffield and Glasgow around the country but was derided by some as being unsporting.
   Today, having been part of the game for 150 years, the wheel has now gone full circle, and this universally admired skill is also recognised as a potential health hazard. So this may not be the end of the story, and there may be restrictions ahead.

I will leave you with this lovely 1882 cartoon of Charles Campbell, a Queen's Park and Scotland star, described as 'a handy man with his head at football'. It was one of a series of humorous drawings in the book 'Free Kicks at Football'.

When Edinburgh hosted an International Exhibition in 1890, the organisers knew that they would have to put on special entertainment to draw the crowds through the summer and autumn months.
   Alongside the displays of new technology, the balloon rides and the fireworks, a key part of their strategy was to stage a series of top class football matches at the exhibition’s recreation ground at Meggetland, in the west of the city. Over a dozen attractive fixtures featured all of Edinburgh's clubs as well as guests from the west of Scotland and from England.

This built on the success of the Exhibition of Industry, Science and Art, which was staged on the Meadows in 1886 and concluded with a short series of football matches.
   In 1890, football was a much stronger element of the Exhibition and the large crowds of visitors could be whisked to the ground by electric railway from Haymarket Station, or by launch on the Union Canal. The series kicked off in August with two local derbies, Hearts v Hibs and Leith Athletic v St Bernard's, before branching out to include teams from far and wide.
   It was still the amateur era in Scotland so the organisers made sure the players were rewarded with something tangible. The winners of the first three matches – Hearts, Leith Athletic and Dumbarton – were presented with silver cups, the first of which is in the Hearts Museum at Tynecastle; also, the players in every game were awarded medals, a couple of which have come up at auction in recent years.

Another collectable souvenir of the matches was the daily events programme which contained full line-ups of all the big games including Hearts v Nottingham Forest and Rangers v Sunderland Albion, not to mention those featuring Dumbarton, Queen's Park and Third Lanark.
   A bound volume of the programmes is held in Special Collections at the National Library of Scotland, and for several of the clubs these issues represent their oldest known match programmes. If any individual programmes ever turned up at auction they would surely fetch a high price.
   Hearts, who won all three of their matches, even played a home Scottish Cup tie at Meggetland rather than Tynecastle and their 3-0 victory over Methlan Park (from Dumbarton) in October is in the programme collection.

For Hibs the Exhibition was less memorable as the club was then struggling for existence due to the recent exodus of players to Celtic and the impending loss of their ground. Their 2-0 defeat to Hearts was followed by a humiliating 9-0 reverse at the hands of Queen’s Park, and few were surprised when Hibs effectively went out of business before the year was out (they re-formed in 1893).
   Among other interesting ties, the organisers scheduled matches to coincide with local holidays elsewhere in Scotland, which explains why Rangers came to Edinburgh on a Thursday afternoon, and the same applies to visiting teams from Kilmarnock, Moffat, Dundee and Kirkcaldy. Some games were distinctively parochial, such as those featuring local butchers and grocers, while the Exhibition staff pitched in to provide the opposition for three games, including one where Kirkcaldy FC failed to turn up against Raith Rovers.
   Although football was the main attraction, the Exhibition also hosted a rugby match in September between Hawick and Stewart's College, while the pioneering Lady Cricketers played a three day match in August.

Edinburgh Exhibition matches 1890
 
6 August: Heart of Midlothian 2 Hibernian 0
13 August: Leith Athletic 3 St Bernard’s 1
20 August: Dumbarton 3 Leith Athletic 1
27 August: Queen’s Park 9 Hibernian 0
30 August: Third Lanark 2 Our Boys 1
10 September: Butchers 1 Grocers 3
15 September: Heart of Midlothian 1 Nottingham Forest 0
17 September: Kilmarnock 8 Wishaw Thistle 1
24 September: Exhibition Attendants v Leith Butchers
2 October: Rangers 2 Sunderland Albion 0
6 October: Exhibition Attendants 0 Raith Rovers 7
9 October: Moffat 6 Kirkintilloch Athletic 4
13 October: Lochee 4 Edinburgh Postal 1
17 October: Dumfries Wanderers 8 Exhibition Attendants 0
18 October: Heart of Midlothian 3 Methlan Park 0 (Scottish Cup tie)
29 October: Cameron Highlanders 0 Lancashire Fusiliers 1 (Army Cup tie)

The pages above show the team pages from the daily events programmes at the 1890 Edinburgh Exhibition. They are all held at the National Library of Scotland. Note that the numbering of matches is not correct!

Below, some programme covers from other exhibitions in Edinburgh and Glasgow, all of which featured football.

A remarkable find in a family archive has shed new light on the earliest days of Scottish tennis. The minute book of the Glasgow Lawn Tennis Club, founded in March 1877, has resurfaced after years at the back of a drawer, and is now with the Mitchell Library in Glasgow having been donated by a descendant of an original member.
   As no other tennis club north of the border is known to have existed this early, the discovery of this leather-bound book could give Glasgow the honour of being Scotland's first lawn tennis club.

The Glasgow Lawn Tennis Club was established by men who were members of the city's prestigious Western Club and they were soon flooded with subscriptions from prospective members, with equal numbers of men and women being allowed to join.
   The committee ordered two sets of equipment from London, and the minutes record carefully all their early activities as the club got under way. It will surprise many to learn that they played primarily indoors, renting Burnbank Drill Hall, off Great Western Road.
   They were clearly a vibrant organisation, playing for at least a decade, and were unusual for a Victorian sporting body as they gave equal playing status to male and female members. Gentlemen had to be over 21 years old and their subscription was one pound, while ladies were 17 or over and paid ten shillings, and they were all clearly of the prosperous middle classes, with many who were or became prominent citizens.
   While many of the meetings focussed on administration and finances, the minute book also has some fascinating social detail.
   In February 1878, one can almost hear the gasps of horror when the Chairman informed the committee that complaints had been made by ladies that some gentlemen had been playing in their shirt sleeves, without coats! Decorum had to be restored, and the Honorary Secretary was tasked with placing a notice in the Gentlemen's dressing room: 'In deference to representations by some of the lady members of the club, the Committee request that gentlemen removing their coats for play will substitute a light jacket while ladies are present. By order.'

The club held its first tournament in 1879, although sadly the winners are not recorded, and the minute book continues to detail meetings up to November the following year. After that, member subscription lists are detailed up to 1885, but what happened to the club after that is not known.
   Lawn tennis was still a new sport when the Glasgow club was set up, invented by Major Walter Clopton Wingfield, an English sportsman who patented his invention in 1874 and called it Sphairistike. He marketed it as a boxed set costing upwards of five guineas and although he sold over a thousand sets in the first year, because of the expense it went primarily to the well-heeled country house set. Lawn tennis was seen initially as a summer recreation for garden parties rather than a competitive sport.
   However, tennis developed rapidly as it captured the imagination and the first clubs were established in England, leading to the creation of the All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club. By the time the first national championship was held in the summer of 1877 – the forerunner of the Wimbledon we know today – the modern game was taking shape with a rectangular court, where the cloth-covered ball and the modern racket shape had been introduced.

In Scotland, the earliest known recreational players were in Edinburgh. Sir James Patten McDougall KCB – then plain James Patten, a young lawyer – recalled sending off to London for a tennis set in 1874 and setting it up with some friends at the Grange Cricket Ground in Raeburn Place. He described the game as it was then: 'The racquets were light, longer in the head and shorter in the handle than now. The balls were uncovered rubber, about two thirds the diameter of the modern ball, with a hole in them. The court was shaped like a sandglass, narrower at the net than the backline.'
   After experimenting outdoors, like the Glaswegians they played indoors at a specially constructed hall at the Grange Club, built by the Edinburgh Lawn Tennis Company and known as the 'old tin hut'. It was there, in the summer of 1878, that Patten won a tournament which was later recognised as the first Scottish championship, even though it was a purely Edinburgh affair.
   Over in the west, the Glasgow Lawn Tennis Club played an important role in getting tennis off the ground in the city, and was clearly a success, but what happened after the first decade remains something of a mystery: there are no known mentions of the club in the newspapers of the day or in tennis histories, and its existence might never have been discovered had it not been for the chance survival of the minute book.
   The handwritten records of this pioneering club show that there are still significant discoveries to be made in the history of Scottish sport.
 
 
* I am immensely grateful to Jamie Donald, great-great-nephew of club member Thomas Francis Donald, for recognising the significance of the minute book which had been kept in the family for generations, and for letting me read and photograph it on its way to the Special Collections Department of the Mitchell Library in Glasgow.
 

Glasgow Lawn Tennis Club
Founding Committee, March 1877
 
Donald Matheson (1832-1901), Chairman. East India Merchant, later Brigadier-General Sir Donald Matheson KCB.
Captain Robert Mercer-Tod (1839-1903), Honorary Secretary. 43rd Light Infantry.
Captain William Bannatyne (1839-1925). 8th (The King’s) Regiment.
Robert Martin Barklie (1846-1903). Architect, Royal Engineers.
William Richard Buchanan (1847-1901). Wine Merchant.
William Crouch (1840-1927). Civil Engineer.
Thomas Robert Johnston Logan (1837-1913). Iron and Coal Master.


More tennis reading on this blog

Herbert Lawford, Scotland's forgotten Wimbledon winner.

In search of Mr Laing - Hill and Adamson's famous Edinburgh tennis player

I recently spoke at the International Football History Conference in London, about the significance of the Meadows for the early development of football in Edinburgh.
   It is well known that Hibs and Hearts took their first steps on the Meadows, but in fact the story goes back much further. This historic green space was formed in 1855 as Edinburgh's first public park, and one of its most surprising features is that the City Council specifically mentioned football as one of its key attractions.
   In my paper, I explain how and why the Meadows was so important for football in the capital, outlining the social and economic changes that enabled young working class men to take up the sport, long before association rules came along in the 1870s.
​   The full illustrated presentation can be read by clicking on this link, which will open up as a pdf.

For further reading, have a look at some of my earlier blogs:

The birth of football in Edinburgh.

How Edinburgh could have been a 'home of football'

For a more detailed history, the book '1824: The World's First Foot-Ball Club' is available on Amazon.

The buried remains of a football pavilion at the first Hampden Park are to be protected from the threat of development, thanks to the timely intervention of Historic Environment Scotland which plans to designate the site as a scheduled monument.
   The foundations of the pavilion, which stood at Hampden for just five years between 1878 and 1883, are the only tangible surviving elements of what is thought to be the world's first stadium which was purpose-built for association football. It is a fascinating story that deserves to be examined in detail.
   Hampden Park, in the south of Glasgow, opened in 1903 and is well known as Scotland's national football stadium, but it is the third stadium of that name and its origins go back three decades earlier to the summer of 1873. That was when Queen's Park Football Club took the inspired decision to build a ground of their own.
   Founded in 1867, Queen's Park had previously played on open recreation ground but the rapid growth in football's popularity, demonstrated by the crowds that flocked to the first international match in 1872, convinced them they needed somewhere to call home. A dedicated ground would also enable them to charge for admission, providing money for further development.
   After much lobbying, they persuaded Glasgow Council to lease an area of open ground off the Cathcart Road called Hampden Park after the nearest street to the south, Hampden Terrace. The club put up a wooden fence to enclose their playing area, built a modest wooden pavilion, and opened for business with a Scottish Cup tie against Dumbreck on 25 October 1873, winning 7-0.
   Hampden Park was unique, a place where football was king, unlike other grounds which had been created primarily to host sports such as cricket and athletics, with football only allowed as an afterthought. As such, the Queen's Park innovators created a template which was quickly copied as other football clubs saw the benefits of having their own ground, where they could cash in on the growing fervour for football.
   Queen's Park continued to invest in improvements, notably in 1876 when they built a grandstand along the length of one side, where they could charge extra in return for an improved view of the pitch. And the next thing they needed was a better pavilion, to replace the small stripping hut which had stood since the beginning.
   They found the answer thanks to the misfortune of others: in the autumn of 1877 Caledonian Cricket Club, which also played football and lacrosse, was ejected from their ground at Kelvinbridge as the landlords had sold the site for the new Glasgow Academy buildings.
   Caledonian CC had erected a superb new pavilion just two years earlier but it was now surplus to requirements. Queen's Park knew it well as they had played a Scottish Cup tie there in October 1876, so they saw an opportunity. They made the cricket club an offer of £65 for the building - surely much less than it originally cost - and undertook to dismantle it and move it to Hampden. It was a brave but inspired decision, as although the cost of removing and rebuilding eventually added up to £239, it meant that in February 1878 Queen's Park had a pavilion to be proud of.
   It was completed just in time, as Hampden Park was shortly to host its first international matches: against England on 2 March 1878, then against Wales three weeks later. Both ended in comprehensive victories, with scores that would be unthinkable today: 7-2 v England, 9-0 v Wales.
   The pavilion was opened with little fanfare, and although there is a single surviving photo (above) which probably shows the opening ceremony, there was no mention of the new building in the press. However, it is possible to build up a picture of its layout and style.
​​   It was an impressive construction, raised on an embankment with solid foundations, a timber-clad frame and a slate roof with decorative woodwork. A few steps led up to a large entrance vestibule, which had doors to two spacious dressing rooms, each with running water and windows facing the pitch.

Some views of the pavilion and its surroundings at Hampden Park were published in 1882 in a humorous book, Free Kicks at Football, which is available at Glasgow University Special Collections.
   The building was erected just in time, as the original wooden pavilion fell down in September 1879, when spectators sitting on its roof caused it to collapse.
   With the best facilities and a capacity for over ten thousand spectators, Hampden Park had become the principal football stadium in Scotland, and continued to host the internationals against England and Wales, which came along in 1880 and 1882. In all, Scotland played six matches at first Hampden and won them all, never scoring less than five goals in any of the games. It was also the venue for Scottish Cup finals in 1874, 1875, 1877 (second replay), 1878, 1879 and 1883, not to mention numerous high profile Queen's Park games.
   More broadly, having a 'home of Scottish football' gave the game considerable impetus and allowed it to develop rapidly, beyond all recognition. This was a period when Scotland dominated football on the field of play, the English in particular having no answer to the passing game that, in time, came to characterise the 'Scotch professor'.
   However, the life of first Hampden was cut short in 1883, when the Caledonian Railway published its plans for a new route that would cut right through the football ground, which the club still leased from the Council. The last major match to be played there was the Glasgow Charity Cup final on 19 May 1883, when Queen's Park beat Rangers 4-1 in front of a crowd estimated at over 10,000.

The pavilion's life came to an end in 1903 when Queen's Park moved once again, constructing the gigantic arena that we now know as Hampden Park, the third to bear that name.
   The club was forced to sell the pavilion piecemeal after misguidedly turning down an offer of £350 from Third Lanark for the building. It was broken up for its materials,  fetching just £73 and 10 shillings, much less than its market value. 

Footnote: Hampden Bowling Club and its pavilion

It had long been claimed by members of Hampden Bowling Club (now closed) that their pavilion was the same as the original football pavilion. This has now been proven to be a myth, as it was built new in 1905. HES have recognised this, and have turned down a request to designate the Bowling Club pavilion as a listed building.
   The HES proposal to designate the site of the first Hampden pavilion covers only a part of Kingsley Gardens, and the area occupied by the bowling club grounds has been excluded.

​
Thanks

This article would not have been possible without the input of a number of football historians, and I acknowledge with thanks the work done by Phil Martin, Frank McCrossan and Ged O'Brien in particular.


Update - 13 May 2026

Historic Environment Scotland has confirmed that the site of the Hampden pavilion has been designated as a scheduled monument, following a public consultation.
​ See https://www.historicenvironment.scot/about-us/news/historic-site-of-first-hampden-scores-scheduled-status/ 

Many years ago I bought this attractive belt buckle at an antique fair, engraved for presentation to Hugh McColl junior by the members of West End Cricket Club for the highest bowling average in 1871.
   At the time I had no idea where it came from, in fact initially I thought that West End may have referred to one of the ancestors of Newcastle United. But recently I finally uncovered the full story about Hugh McColl, and his little buckle has taken me on a fascinating journey of cricket and football from Scotland to South America.
   Thanks to the online digitisation of old newspapers and other publications, I established that West End was a Glasgow cricket club which took up football in the winter months and was one of the early members of the Scottish Football Association. McColl was not just a player at both sports, the SFA's first annual in 1875 listed him as the club contact, which was an important breakthrough as it gave his home address.

By a strange quirk, I found that Hugh McColl was later credited with being one of the pioneers of football in Chile, while his namesake Hugh MacColl had come to notice as one of the founders of Spanish football in Seville. My initial thought was that this could possibly be the same man, but it turned out to be a remarkable coincidence with a slight variation in spelling. So, who was the West End man, and how did he end up in Chile?
   Hugh McColl was born in 1852, the fifth child of Hugh McColl and Lillias Inglis Mackie who had married in 1841 and lived in Glasgow. His father was a skilled tradesman as an engine pattern maker, and the family home was in Richard Street in Anderston, now long gone but at the time a respectable area of town.
   As a young commercial clerk Hugh enjoyed cricket in his free time and around 1870 was one of the founding members of West End Cricket Club. He was clearly a decent player, as the following year he won the prize for bowling, but just how good is hard to tell as West End was a minor club whose matches rarely appeared in the press, nor did they trouble the Scottish Cricketers' Annual.
   In 1873 the club took a big step forward by securing the lease of Burnbank, the Glasgow Academicals ground on Great Western Road, and also formed a football section for the winter months. That spurred them on to join the Scottish FA, which enabled West End to enter the Scottish Cup in 1874, beating Star of Leven in the first round before going down 7-0 to the mighty Queen's Park in the second.
   They had to leave Burnbank in 1875 (with Rangers taking over the lease for a year), which appears to have prompted the cricket section to wind up, but West End carried on as a football club and took up residence at Avenue Park in Cowlairs.
   Hugh McColl was not just a player, appearing at full back, he held an integral role as club secretary for 1875-76. West End continued to enter the Scottish Cup and in 1876 they reached the third round after defeating 4th RRV and Govan, but were thrown out of the competition following a 1-1 draw with Edinburgh side Swifts, as the SFA ruled that West End must be disqualified for not scheduling the match on the due date.
   Like many clubs of the day, West End’s existence was brief. Their final Scottish Cup tie was in September 1877, a 5-1 loss to Strathclyde, and the club's last known fixture was in March 1878. They disbanded at the end of the season.
   That might have been the end of Hugh McColl's involvement with football, as he embarked on a career in the import/export trade, got married and started a family.  However, a decade later he crossed the Atlantic and set up in business in the Chilean port city of Valparaiso with his family.

There was already an established British community in Valparaiso with a long-standing cricket club, and that gave him the opportunity to resume his enthusiasm in football, which presumably had never gone away. In 1889 he was a founder of the first organised football club in Chile as an offshoot of the cricket club. Although details are sketchy it appears that Hugh McColl was a driving force, elected as its first president, one of several Scots involved on and off the field.
   The Valparaiso club took a while to settle, not helped by a civil war in 1891, then in 1892 was established as a standalone entity and began to promote football in the port city. The following year it elected a board of directors to became the first constituted football club in the country, and went on to be a founding member of the Football Association of Chile in 1895. Valparaiso was undoubtedly the most important team in the nascent football association, known simply as 'The Club' or 'The Senior Club' until the outbreak of the First World War forced it into a hiatus, as most of its players left to defend the British Empire.
   Meanwhile, Hugh McColl played an active role not just in Valparaiso but in the early development of football in Chile's capital, as he is seen in a photo of the first Santiago football eleven, which had been founded in 1893 by the Santiago Cricket and Athletic Club to play in the first intercity match between Valparaiso and Santiago. It is not clear how he was involved, and perhaps had been recruited to coach the new team. This is presently the only known photo of McColl.

Not long after, Hugh McColl and his family returned to Glasgow, having spent at least five years in Chile, with his daughter Lillias born there in 1891. Back home, he went into partnership in a shipping agency with John Crosbie Rogers (1839-1921), who had spent a long time in Chile before returning to Glasgow, where he was Chilean vice-consul. The business prospered and that meant several return trips to Valparaiso for McColl over the next two decades, as he developed trade between Chile and the UK. His company McColl and Rogers were described in the Glasgow directory as ship and insurance brokers, commission agents, export and produce merchants.
   After the War, the company became known as McColl and Sons, operating from an office in Wellington Street until his death in 1928.
   At the time, nothing was said about his role in football, and even today Hugh McColl is one of those little-known exporters of Scottish football, who learned the game at home before taking it abroad.
   He is now recognised as one of several Scots who were pioneers of Chilean football, and it is remarkable that his story has come to light thanks to a chance find at an antique fair.
 
Hugh McColl
Born 28 April 1852 in Glasgow
Died 13 October 1928 in Glasgow


With sincere thanks to Chilean football historian Sebastián Núñez Mardones for his input. Director of CEDEP, the Chilean Centre for Sports Studies, his book Selección Chilena 1910 - Duelos del Centenario is the definitive story of the first Chilean international team. 

See his comprehensive article on the early years: The background to the founding of Santiago Wanderers

Further reading:
Scots Football Worldwide - Valparaiso.
Scots Football Worldwide - Santiago.
How John Hamilton played for Chile in 1910.

One of the pioneers of Danish football was a man from Dundee who was top scorer in the country's first football league. James Young Smart, a player and administrator with Strathmore FC, went to Copenhagen in 1885 and made a huge impact through his skills on and off the field.
   Smart's influence was recalled when Queen's Park went on tour to Copenhagen in 1898. Scottish Sport magazine carried an interview with former player Alexander Hamilton, in which he stated that the honour of introducing the game in Denmark belonged to a former Dundee Strathmore player called JT Smart (they got his middle initial wrong). See Matt McDowell's fascinating research paper and an article on the Scottish Football Museum website.
   However, although Smart was an important figure he was not the actual founder of the game in Denmark. The first football was a birthday gift in 1878 for Johannes Juhl Raahauge, whose father was a merchant based in Hull; he then introduced the sport to his fellow students at Sorø Academy. And in 1879, KB (Kjøbenhavns  Boldklub) took up association football, three years after being founded as a multisport club, 
   James Young Smart was born in Dundee in 1862, the eldest surviving son of a jute mill manager. In the summer of 1878 he was elected secretary and treasurer of Strathmore FC, aged just 16, and played regularly for them over the next few years, rising to become club president in 1882. Strathmore had been founded early in 1877, named in honour of its patron the Earl of Strathmore, and its ground was at Rollo's Pier, off Magdalen Yard Road at the west end of the city.
    He remained still president until he left Dundee to go abroad, as reported in the Evening Telegraph on 18 February 1885: 'On Monday evening a number of gentlemen met in the Queen's Hotel and entertained Mr J.Y. Smart to supper on the occasion of his leaving Dundee for Copenhagen.'
   Soon after he arrived in Denmark, he joined KB and gained quite a reputation for his skills. An early history of Danish football said Smart was: 'an excellent player in almost every position… a crowd favourite, especially among the boys, jovial and playful, teaching them tricks and ball skills.'
   In the winter of 1886–87, he helped to translate the laws of association football from English into Danish, working with Ludwig Sylow and other KB committee members.
   In 1888, KB instigated the country's first knockout cup competition, and won it convincingly with Smart in the forefront. Then a year later, he was the top scorer in Denmark's first league tournament in 1889-90, scoring 12 times for KB although they finished second behind Akademisk. The following season, KB did win the league and Smart showed his versatility by sometimes playing in goal.
   Even after he left Denmark he was not forgotten and the creative Danish midfielder August Lindgren, who played in the 1908 Olympics, was nicknamed 'Smart' in tribute to the Scot.
​   In 1892, Smart went to New York for a while, then returned to Dundee to join the family business at Rosebank jute mill. He kept up his football interest as a member of Dundee FC's match committee, helping out in December 1898 when the club got going again after liquidation, and in December 1899 his sisters ran a stall at the football club's fundraising bazaar.
   Thereafter, things get a bit hazy. His father had died in 1896 and in March 1900 the Dundee Courier carried a company advert to announce that Mr James Young Smart was no longer employed at Rosebank mill. Although he was still listed as a jute factory manager in the 1901 census, there is nothing to indicate that he was still involved in the family business; yet his brother and two sisters were directors.
   It appears his life had started to go into a downward spiral and Smart died at Duke Street Hospital, Glasgow in 1921, age 59 and unmarried. The death certificate gave his usual residence as the Great Eastern Hotel, politely known as a 'working man's hostel' but in reality a doss-house; cause of death was myocardial degeneration and chronic nervous congestion (ie heart disease and stroke). It was a sorry end for a Scottish sporting pioneer whose impact on Danish football is remembered to this day.

​James Young Smart

Born 18 March 1862 in Dundee
Died 8 May 1921 in Glasgow

Update: in June 2026, a remarkable medal which was won by James Young Smart came up at auction. It was awarded for his success in Denmark in season 1887-88, and after fierce bidding it sold for well over the pre-sale estimate, realising 1600 euros plus commission.

Over a decade ago I wrote a blog about the biographies of Danish footballer Carl Hansen, who had played in Scotland for Rangers in the 1920s. 
   Better known as Carl Skomager ('shoemaker'), Hansen spent several harrowing months in prison during World War 2 when Denmark was occupied by the Germans. After the conflict ended he wrote a book about his experiences, Carl Skomager i tysk faengsel (in a German prison). Of course, the book was written in Danish and I thought it would be a great project for a translator to bring his story to a modern audience.
   I was delighted to be contacted by Rangers supporter Ian Hogg who took up the translation challenge and he has just published an ebook with Hansen's story in English, which he has made available free. Ian has kindly given me permission to post links to the book here, in the hope it will reach as wide an audience as possible.
   You will also be able to buy and download the ebook on Amazon, with any profits going to the Erskine Veterans Charity.

Epub file: click here
PDF file: click here

One of Musselburgh's earliest football trophies, the Simpson Shield, has come home after turning up at auction recently.
   I was lucky enough to be the winning bidder and have sold it on to Musselburgh Athletic president Kevin Liston, who has put it on permanent display in the clubhouse at Olivebank.
   The Simpson Shield was presented in 1891 by local publican William Simpson for Midlothian junior teams and it soon became a prestigious annual prize. Simpson ran the Forester's Arms in Fisherrow which is no longer there but stood on the corner of Bridge Street and North High Street.

The first winner of the Shield was Niddrie Blue Bell but local sides soon got in on the act with Musselburgh Windsor in 1894 and Musselburgh Fern in 1897. Other famous teams had their names inscribed on it including Arniston Rangers, Bonnyrigg Rose and Newtongrange Star before it returned home with Musselburgh Athletic – in a previous incarnation – winning it three times in 1912, 1914 and 1915.

There is a wonderful team photo after the 1912 victory, with the legendary Hearts captain and Scotland internationalist Bobby Walker sitting in the centre as honorary club president, with three trophies in front: the Dalmeny Cup, the East Lothian Cup and the Simpson Shield.
   However, the last of Musselburgh Athletic's wins, a 2-1 win over Loanhead Mayflower at Tynecastle on 22 May 1915, was played in a sombre mood as news was just coming in of the Quintinshill Rail Disaster that morning. It was the worst rail disaster in British history, leaving 226 dead, mainly from the 7th Battalion of the Royal Scots, most of whom came from Leith, Portobello and Musselburgh.

After Simpson died in 1922 the shield competition was wound up and the East of Scotland Junior FA donated the trophy to the local juvenile association, who continued to use it until at least the late 1950s. Records are sketchy but local winners included Musselburgh Imperial in 1932 and Inveresk Athletic in 1945.
   William Simpson left a local legacy that extended beyond football. He served Musselburgh town council for 33 years, many of them as Treasurer, and for a while he was Provost. He spent his life in the pub trade and gave up the Forester's Arms in 1895 when he married Catherine Montgomery, the owner of the Volunteer Arms, a wonderful historic pub now known as Stagg's and which was recently voted as CAMRA Scottish Pub of the Year.