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.

If you have watched the Netflix series The English Game, you will know all the main characters. Arthur Kinnaird and Fergie Suter are celebrated for their football exploits and are both famous enough to have entries in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
   But what about Jimmy Love, Suter's partner who came with him from Partick to Darwen? Love is a crucial figure in football history, yet so little is known about him that he doesn't even have a Wikipedia page.
   This is the sad story of Jimmy Love's short and memorable life.

In the spring of 1883, a package arrived at the Love family home in Glasgow, addressed to Mr James Love. It contained the campaign medal - just like the one pictured above - awarded posthumously to his son Jimmy, a Corporal with the Royal Marine Light Infantry, who had died aged 24 of enteric fever while on active service in far away Egypt.
   Jimmy Love never won any medals during his lifetime, but he did earn many plaudits for his achievements as a footballer. Just a few years earlier he was Darwen's top scorer in their epic FA Cup run that pitched them against the mighty Old Etonians. 
   He was born in 1858 on the south side of Glasgow to James and Janet Love. His mother died when he was five, and his father remarried soon after. The family moved to Greenock, where his father was a coal merchant and general contractor, then about 1876 they settled in Partick, a Glasgow suburb.
   Jimmy set up his own business in Partick as a street cleaning contractor, and at the same time started playing in the forward line of the local football team. However, his business was not a success and in 1878 he found himself in deep financial trouble. One of his creditors petitioned for sequestration of his assets, a forced sale of his equipment was ordered, and on 28 October he was summoned to the Sheriff Court to face bankruptcy procedures. However, he didn't turn up and the proceedings were adjourned for a month. When he failed again to appear on 21 November, Sheriff Walter Spens issued a warrant for his arrest.    

The warrant was never served as Love had run away from his debts. He had found a new home in the Lancashire town of Darwen, not an obvious choice but an escape route which was open to him thanks to his skills as a footballer. Jimmy had friends there, having visited the town with Partick at New Year 1878.
   Going straight into the Darwen team in October 1878, he formed a right wing partnership with Tommy Marshall and soon there was a steady diet of goals, cup ties and an admiring public. He scored twice against Eagley in the FA Cup second round, by which time Fergie Suter had also arrived in town, got two more in the third round victory over Remnants at the Oval, and was in top form when Darwen faced Old Etonians in the famous 5-5 draw on 13 February 1879. With Darwen 5-1 down at half-time, the comeback was well and truly kick-started by Jimmy Love, who scored twice in the second half.
   He was an integral part of the team, but it was not to last. Early the next season he played three times for Darwen, but after the defeat of Haslingden in the Lancashire Cup on 25 October, he disappeared from the team. 
   He cropped up once the following month in a friendly for local rivals Blackburn Rovers, when 'Jimmy Love of the Darwen club assisted Rovers on the right wing'. Then nothing more until what appears to be his last football match, on 10 January 1880 for village side Haslingden.
   What went wrong in Darwen may never be known, although perhaps his past was catching up with him. He had an income from the football club, which even played a benefit match for Love and Suter in April 1879, and he may also have done some odd jobs, but without those he was lost. Unlike the man portrayed in the Netflix series, he was not married. What is more, he could not go home because of the arrest warrant hanging over him.
   He took perhaps the only escape open to a fit young man: he joined the army. To be precise, he signed up with the Royal Marines in Liverpool on 24 February 1880 and I found his attestation papers at the National Archives.   ​

James Love 
Born 17 March 1858 at Gushetfaulds Cottage, Glasgow.
Died 27 September 1882 at Ismailia, Egypt.


To read more about the connections between Partick and Darwen, read my earlier blog, From Partick with Love. 

This article is based on a paper I presented this week to the British Society of Sports History conference in Edinburgh, and follows on from my previous blogs about the early relationship between Partick and Darwen football clubs.

In the autumn of 1878, two Scottish footballers moved to Lancashire.  James Love and Fergus Suter left Partick to join Darwen, where they became, almost certainly, the first professional players.
   That much is recorded in histories of the game. But what is not explained is why those particular men chose that particular moment to move between those particular clubs. In this paper I will demonstrate that it was not a random event, outlining the specific circumstances that led to Love and Suter exchanging a Glasgow suburb for an East Lancashire mill town, 200 miles away. And I will also, for the first time, reveal the identity of James Love.
   To begin with, however, some context. It is a challenge for historians to say definitively who the first professional football player was, as payments were made illicitly in various round-about ways, and nobody ever confessed. Some claim it was the Glaswegian JJ Lang, who went to Sheffield Wednesday in 1876, but he seems to have benefitted from a benevolent employer giving him time off, rather than taking any direct payment from the football club.
   To complicate matters, in fact many players moved across the border, in both directions, usually because of their work. To take just one example, the Smith brothers, Robert and James, had both been founders of Queen’s Park in 1867, and moved to London for work a couple of years later; both played for Scotland in the first international match of 1872, just a week after turning out for South Norwood in the FA Cup. But there is no question that they were amateurs.
   Cross-border connections such as these were crucial for the spread of association football. Queen's Park was first club from Scotland to undertake matches against English sides but it was not until New Year's Day 1876 that a second Scottish club fulfilled a match in England. That team was Partick, who travelled to face Darwen.

   It seems an unlikely pairing. Partick (nothing to do with Partick Thistle) had only been founded a few months earlier, and would never be one of the leading lights of Scottish football; no major trophies came their way and they provided no internationalists. Darwen, more formally Darwen Cricket and Football Club, had only just converted from rugby to association rules and played football as a winter pastime for cricketers.
   The explanation for the link lies with a footballer who crossed the border, going north. He was called William Kirkham (1854-1909), born and brought up in Darwen but who had gone to Partick for work - he was a colour mixer in the textile industry, a skilled job. While in Scotland he was a founding member of Partick football club in 1875, and when he returned south a couple of years later, he resumed playing for Darwen. Kirkham was the catalyst for inaugurating the relationship between Partick and Darwen, and it quickly developed, on and off the field. But there is much more to this than the personal link with William Kirkham, which was only the first piece in the jigsaw.
   That first match in 1876 launched a series of matches between the two clubs, which gave rise to further contacts in Lancashire as Partick also played Blackburn Rovers three times in 1878 and 1879, and later faced Turton and Bolton:
1 January 1876  Darwen 0 Partick 7
10 November 1877  Partick 5 Darwen 0
1 January 1878  Darwen 3 Partick 2
2 January 1878  Blackburn Rovers 2 Partick 1
9 November 1878  Partick 2 Blackburn Rovers 0
1 January 1879  Darwen 0 Partick 7
2 January 1879  Blackburn Rovers 2 Partick 4
1 January 1880  Turton 3 Partick 5
2 January 1880  Bolton & District 3 Partick 3
2 October 1880  Darwen 4 Partick 1

   Through these games, Partick became extraordinarily influential by supplying players for Lancashire football. They effectively acted as a 'shop window' for talented Scots who would become the earliest paid players in England. Have a closer look at the teams from 1 January 1878:

Darwen: J Booth, J Duxbury, A McWetherill, R Crookes, T Hindle, T Marshall, R Kirkham, J Knowles, J Lewis, T Bury, J Hayes.
Partick: E Suter, F Suter, A Stewart; R Love, A McGaw; J Love, J Keay, WH Kirkham, WG Struthers, W McLachlan and JN Boag.
 
Of the Partick players I have highlighted, five played for Darwen before the end of the decade – the Suter brothers Edward and Fergus, Jimmy Love, William Kirkham and William McLachlan – and for good measure William Struthers went to Bolton Wanderers, while John Boag later married a Bolton girl. In subsequent years several other Partick players also joined clubs in Lancashire.
   And among the Darwen players was Tommy Marshall, a future England football international who won numerous cash prizes as a champion sprinter on the professional athletics circuit, and Ralph Crookes, employed as the club's cricket professional.
   Clearly, Darwen was open-minded towards the morality of rewarding sporting talent with payment.  And crucially, the club also acquired the means: as early as March 1878 they played local rivals Turton and drew a gate of £18, which prompted the local press to remark that the Darwen committee 'were almost at a loss as to what to do with such an enormous sum'. The answer soon became apparent, especially as that £18 figure was soon dwarfed by gate receipts which reached well into three figures within the next couple of years.
   So, we come to the 1878/79 season, which was memorable for a number of reasons. Jimmy Love was first to arrive and a few weeks later Fergie Suter made his Darwen debut at full back. Their presence had a revolutionary effect as they were schooled in passing and combination play, which not only raised standards, it took Darwen to the FA Cup quarter final, the first northern team to reach that stage.
   They faced Old Etonians over three matches, all played in London, and the story is well known. In the first game, Old Etonians led 5-1 at half-time, but a whirlwind response levelled it at 5-5 including two goals from Love. The Etonians, fearing defeat if the match carried on, refused to play extra time. In the replay Darwen drew 2-2, and it was only at the third attempt that Old Etonians prevailed. A fortnight later they won the FA Cup itself.
   That cup run brought nationwide publicity for Darwen, especially as there was an element of mystique about Scots 'professors'. It was good box office, Darwen wanted more, and other clubs soon latched on.
   So, how did it come about? At the time there was no mention in the press whether Love and Suter were paid to pay football, but Suter was candid enough to admit it later in life, when interviewed about his career:
 
'On what plan were you paid in those days?' he was asked, responding: 'Well, we had no settled wage, but it was understood that we interviewed the treasurer as occasion arose. Possibly we should go three weeks without anything, and then ask for £10. We never had any difficulty.' [Lancashire Daily Post, 13 December 1902]

   This is as near as you can get to proof that Love and Suter were paid directly by the football club. And if the occasional tenner wasn't enough, at a time when a working wage was less than two pounds a week, Darwen played a benefit match for Love and Suter in April 1879.
   But the relationship was short-lived. While Suter spent the rest of his life in Lancashire, Love played his last game for Darwen in October 1879, just a year after his debut. He then turned out once for Blackburn Rovers, made an appearance for Haslingden in January 1880, and promptly disappeared. 
   So what happened to him? Who was James Love, a key figure in football history, probably the first man ever to receive payment for playing the game? He has never been identified until now. There was no mention of his background or his circumstances in the papers, while Keith Dewhurst, who recently wrote a book [Underdogs, 2012] about the Darwen team, wrongly identified him as a shipyard worker – but that man remained in Partick all his life and died in an accident at work in 1894. 
   Tracking him down was not easy. Years later, there were cryptic clues in press articles that he had been killed in the bombardment of Alexandria in 1882 – but Love was not listed among the few British casualties. Then, searching more widely, I found that a Corporal Love of the Royal Marines had died of illness in Egypt, a couple of months after the bombardment of Alexandria. This led me to a family notice in the Glasgow Herald:
 
At Ismailia, of enteric fever, on 27 September aged 24, Corporal James Love, Royal Marine Light Infantry, eldest son of James Love, late of Greenock. [Glasgow Herald, 9 October 1882]
 
Now, Greenock is a fair distance from Partick, but this seemed as good a lead as any. After a lot of painstaking research, piecing together his life story, I found sufficient evidence not only to confirm that this was indeed him, but also to shed light on his reasons for going to Darwen.
   James Love was born in Gushetfaulds Cottage in Glasgow in 1858, his father the manager of a coal depot attached to South Side railway station and goods yard. When he was nine, his father – also James Love – gave up this job to set up a contracting business, which included coal supply, street cleaning and disposal of horse manure. The family moved to Greenock then on to Glasgow and, to cut a long story short, in the summer of 1877 the business failed and the father was declared bankrupt.
   Meanwhile, James junior also set himself up as a street-cleaning contractor in Partick but before long he too got into financial difficulties and a horse dealer called in an unpaid debt.
   In October 1878, his two horses and his equipment, including a street-sweeping machine, were sold off at a public warrant sale. A couple of weeks later he was summoned to the Glasgow bankruptcy court but when he failed to show up, the court postponed the case for a month. On 21 November 1878, he again failed to appear, so Sheriff Walter Spens issued a warrant for his arrest. It was never served: James Love had run away from his debts. He had gone to Darwen.
   That escape route was open to him thanks to his skills as a footballer and his friendship with William Kirkham. Also, Love had already visited Lancashire with Partick at New Year 1878. Going straight into the Darwen team, he formed a right wing partnership with Tommy Marshall and soon there was a steady diet of goals, cup ties and an admiring public. He had an income from the football club and may also have done some odd jobs.
   But a year later, after this initial excitement, he dropped out of the Darwen team for reasons which are not clear. This left him in a quandary. The football income would have dried up. He had no job. He could not go home because of the arrest warrant hanging over him. So he took perhaps the only option open to a fit young man: he joined the army.
   To be precise, he signed up with the Royal Marines in Liverpool on 24 February 1880 and I found his attestation papers at the National Archives.

They describe him as from Govan (Partick was in Govan parish), 5 feet 6 ½ inches tall, with a dark complexion, brown eyes and brown hair, giving his trade as a painter. His age is wrong, but that is nothing unusual in attestation papers.
   By the 1881 census he is at Chatham Barracks, having been promoted to Corporal. Then in the summer of 1882 the Marines were called into action and embarked for Egypt, where the British were putting down a nationalist uprising by Ahmed Urabi. His forces had occupied Alexandria but after a defiant stand-off they were forced out by a two-day naval bombardment of the city. Love would have taken part in the subsequent occupation of Alexandria by the Royal Marines, and perhaps some of the fighting thereafter. But then he fell ill with a fever and, sadly, died in the military hospital in Ismailia. Corporal Love is commemorated on the memorial in Tel-el-Kebir cemetery.​

The following year he was posthumously awarded the Egypt Medal (identical to the one pictured) which was sent to his father. Outside his family, his death went unnoticed. There were no obituaries, no tributes in the sporting press, and I've been unable to track down even a photo of him despite contacting several branches of his family.
   But the story doesn't quite end there as there is one final, poignant, connection with Partick FC. After his death, Love's elder sister Jessie married one of the other Partick players, David Muirhead, and they named their son James Love Muirhead. He too met a sad end, killed in action in the first world war.
   So that covers the story of Jimmy Love. What of Fergie Suter? His basic story is better known, and he even has an entry in the Dictionary of National Biography, albeit with errors. Suter was born in Glasgow in 1857, the third son of a stonemason recently arrived from Ireland. He grew up in Partick where he was an apprentice mason like his father, and appears in Partick teams from 1876 onwards. He was well established as a footballer when, out of the blue, he also had a strong financial imperative for leaving.
   In October 1878, the City of Glasgow Bank collapsed suddenly and spectacularly, incurring huge losses for its 1200 shareholders who had unlimited liability. It sent financial shockwaves through Scottish society as the directors were jailed for fraud, and 80 per cent of the shareholders were bankrupted.
   One of those shareholders was a prominent Partick builder called Peter McKissock, who immediately halted work on his projects and dismissed all his men including the stonemasons. Among them, it seems likely, was 21-year-old Fergus Suter.  To make matters worse, in November the Partick masons went on strike in protest against reduced rates of pay.
   So, with little prospect of finding work locally Suter must have cast envious eyes at Jimmy Love in Darwen and wrote to ask if he, too, could be found a position. Suter had already played there for Partick, so it was not exactly a leap into the unknown, and according to the Lancashire Evening Post article I have already quoted, Suter 'came in the guise of stonemason, but only worked in that trade for a week or two. After that he purely played football, and though this was years before professionalism was legalised, he never lacked money.'
   I have to point out that there is an erroneous story, which has appeared in many books and articles, stating that Suter played for Turton before coming to Darwen. This story originates in Tony Mason's Association Football and English Society (1980), but from an examination of the original source material, a 1909 history of Turton FC, it is clear that Suter's appearance for Turton was at the end of the 1878/79 season, not the start, although it does confirm he was paid cash by Turton for an appearance in their Challenge Cup team. I have since found a report of the Turton Challenge Cup final, and it was played on 29 March 1879 - ie two weeks after the defeat to Old Etonians. Suter played as a guest for Turton, who lost 1-0 to Eagley, and so did Jimmy Love; it stands to reason that if one of them was paid, so was the other.
   Suter had made his debut for Darwen on 30 November 1878 at Accrington, where a spectator recalled 'he simply electrified players and spectators alike with points in the game of which they had never previously dreamt'. A week later, he and Love played in their first FA Cup tie, against Eagley on 7 December.
   If anything, Suter's immediate impact was greater than Love's as within two weeks of arriving he played a trial for Lancashire and went on to represent his adopted county on numerous occasions, while Love was never selected. Suter certainly found his vocation in football. In his second season, 1879/80, he was appointed club captain of Darwen, led the team to victory in the first Lancashire Cup final, and his brother Edward also joined from Partick.
   But in the summer of 1880, without warning, he jumped ship and moved to local rivals Blackburn Rovers. Darwen protested furiously that Suter had been financially induced, but there was, of course, no proof - and precious little sympathy for Darwen in any case as they were suspected of paying Suter themselves. The chances are that Rovers made Suter an offer he could not refuse, either a straight cash payment or a large loan on easy terms to set up a pub.
   However, I did discover another possible reason for Suter wanting to leave Darwen. According to a family legend, he fathered an illegitimate son by a servant girl, and the time of his move to Blackburn would have coincided pretty much exactly with the discovery that she was pregnant.
   Whatever, it was a successful move and Suter was the first man to make a career as a professional footballer. He remained with Blackburn Rovers through a glorious decade in which they were the first northern side to appear in the FA Cup final, in 1882, and subsequently won the FA Cup three times in a row, in 1884, 1885 and 1886. Suter just found time to make one appearance in the Football League's inaugural season in 1888, and continued to live in the town as a publican until shortly before his death in 1916.
   So there, in brief, is the background to the players who gave birth to professionalism in football. Love and Suter changed the game forever through a specific set of circumstances which provided the means, the motive and the opportunity to earn a living from the game.
   Partick and Darwen were unlikely bedfellows, but between them they established the rationale for paying football players. It is quite a legacy.

Article copyright Andy Mitchell, not to be reproduced without permission.

Click here to read an article about this research in the Sunday Herald.

NB In the course of researching Love and Suter, I have accumulated a large amount of background material, references and family trees. If other researchers would like to consult this archive, please get in touch through the contact form on the home page.

Most sports historians will know of Partick players James Love and Fergus Suter becoming the first football professionals when they joined Darwen in 1878. 
   But few appreciate that Partick blazed a trail as a 'shop window' for Scottish players and how their unlikely relationship with Darwen prompted a cross-border revolution which saw a number of others follow in Love and Suter’s footsteps. 
   Modern sport in Partick has its origins in the West of Scotland Cricket Club, founded 1862, whose home at Hamilton Crescent was the only major enclosed sports ground close to Glasgow. It hosted the first football international in 1872 as well as numerous other major sporting events including top level cricket, athletics and rugby. West of Scotland started playing football in 1865, but they chose rugby rules and it was not until 1875 that members of Partick Cricket Club expanded their horizons to become Partick Cricket and Football Club, playing to association rules.
   Partick (not to be confused with Partick Thistle) made little impact on the Scottish Cup in their ten year existence and never provided an internationalist, yet they were doughty football pioneers: within months of their foundation, they were the first Scottish club apart from Queen's Park to play a match south of the border. 
   Meanwhile in Lancashire, Darwen also grew out of a cricket club, dabbled with rugby rules, then switched to association football. The romance of their brief flirt with fame was cleverly told in Keith Dewhurst’s book 'Underdogs', but as so often with early football history his dividing line between established truth and educated guesswork is hazy. 
   The story began on New Year's Day 1876 when Partick travelled to the mill town of Darwen, 20 miles north of Manchester. Although the game was not mentioned in local papers there was a brief report in Bell's Life: 'The Partick Club seem to have had it all their own way at Manchester … in presence of upward of 5,000 people. Most of the English team were Rugby players, and two of them are amongst the finest exponents of those rules in England. The Partick Club sent a very strong team to Manchester, including four of the Eastern, and the result was painfully one-sided, Partick carrying off the game by seven goals to nothing.'
   Teams were not listed but the mention of 'four of the Eastern' is interesting as that club's members included Peter Andrews who moved to Sheffield that year, for work reasons. After the match the teams had dinner together at the Greenway Hotel (nowadays named The Cock, in Duckworth Street) which was close to Darwen's Barley Bank ground.
   So, why would a team from a Glasgow suburb (in fact, a separate burgh) travel 200 miles to play an inexperienced eleven in an obscure Lancashire town?
   The genesis of this link between can confidently be traced to William Kirkham of Darwen, who went to work in Partick and played football there before returning south around 1877, featuring in the Darwen team until 1880. Kirkham must have instigated the frequent contacts between the two football clubs over the next few years: 
   1 January 1876: Darwen 0 Partick 7
   10 November 1877: Partick 5 Darwen 0
   1 January 1878: Darwen 3 Partick 2
   1 January 1879: Darwen 0 Partick 7
   2 October 1880: Darwen 4 Partick 1
   31 December 1881: Darwen 3 Partick 3
   Partick also faced Blackburn Rovers and Bolton Wanderers on their travels, and the series of games had far reaching implications, effectively acting as a 'shop window' for talented Scots players who would be among the earliest paid players in England.
   Darwen was first to take full advantage, with the club perhaps open minded about the morality of paying footballers (which was not in fact outlawed by the FA until 1882). Their teams around this period included Tom Marshall, well known as a professional runner, and Ralph Crookes, who was their cricket professional in the summer months.
   The first to move south was James Love, who can be found in the Darwen eleven for the opening game of the 1878/79 season, against Church on 26 October 1878. A few weeks later, Fergus Suter made the same journey, having started the season with Partick.
   Love left after a year while Suter went on to a glittering career with Blackburn Rovers, and there is little doubt they were enticed by the promise of payment. In 1902, Suter recalled: 'We had no settled wage, but it was understood that we interviewed the treasurer as occasion arose. Possibly we should go three weeks without anything, and then ask for £10. We never had any difficulty.'
   They were the first footballers to be paid, and soon others would use the 'Partick connection' to embark on a professional football career. To demonstrate this, take a look at the teams for the game on New Year’s Day 1879, which Partick won 7-0 despite Darwen already having Love and Suter in their team.
​
Darwen: J Booth, A McWetherill, F Suter, WH Moorhouse, J Knowles, T Marshall, J Love, J Hayes, JG Gledhill, T Bury, Kirkham (reports do not specify if this is William).
Partick: E Suter, H McIntyre (Rangers), W Bell, JS Campbell, R Rolland, JN Boag, J Smith, R Hutchinson, R Love, WG Struthers (Rangers), W McLachlan.
   
​   Several of the players are worthy of closer inspection.
   In goal for Partick was Fergus’s elder brother Edward, born in Bangor, Co Down, just before the Suter family moved to Scotland. Edward joined Darwen in November 1879, initially as a forward before reverting to goalkeeper and for a year the Suter brothers featured in the Darwen team together. Although Edward did not initially settle he married a local lass in 1883 and spent the rest of his life in Darwen. (NB a third brother, Jerry (christened Jarvis), was later a key figure with Partick Thistle and also moved south to work at Fergus's pub in Blackburn.)
   There were two guest players from Rangers in the Partick team, Hugh McIntyre and William Struthers, who both turned professional. 
   McIntyre gravitated between Scotland and Lancashire before being induced to make the move permanent. His first match for Blackburn Rovers was in March 1879 v Sheffield yet he also played for Rangers in that season's Scottish Cup final.  In October 1879 he captained Rangers against Blackburn Rovers, in December he played for Blackburn in the FA Cup, then won his Scotland cap in March 1880 as a Rangers player. 
   That summer he set up in business in Blackburn, and the inducement for moving south was money, as revealed in his bankruptcy case in 1892: 'The debtor, who was formerly captain of the Blackburn Rovers football team, was a journeyman upholsterer until 1880, when he commenced business as a licensed victualler at the Castle Inn, Blackburn; paying with borrowed money £500 for the goodwill, stock, plant, and license.' The clear inference is that the football club lent him the £500 to set him up in business in return for his footballing services.
   William Struthers took slightly longer to move to Lancashire, joining Bolton Wanderers from Rangers in September 1881. He later became Bolton club secretary, moved on to coach Gorton Villa, and eventually emigrated to South Africa.
   These players had such an impact that in October 1881 the Lancashire team included Fergus Suter, Hugh McIntyre and William Struthers (as well as another Scot, Jimmy Douglas who came from Renfrew).
   But the Partick connection with Lancashire did not end there. 
   When Darwen played Old Etonians in the epic FA Cup quarter finals of 1879, which went to three matches, William Kirkham was injured in the second. His place in the third game was taken by W McLachlan, but this name does not appear in any other Darwen line-up, nor is there a McLachlan in local records. Yet there was a William McLachlan in the Partick team – was he invited to play for Darwen in an emergency?
   In 1880, John Inglis played for Partick in their Lancashire friendlies. He also moved to Rangers, was capped by Scotland, and ended up at Blackburn Rovers where he won the FA Cup in 1884 alongside Suter and McIntyre.
   Then there was Partick player and club secretary John Boag. Although he remained in Glasgow, and eventually 'transferred' to Partick Thistle in 1885 when the original club folded, he also had something of a love affair with Lancashire as in April 1882 he married local girl Eliza Almond in a Bolton church.
   And the final direct link is also one of the most intriguing: James Gledhill, a key player in Darwen's FA Cup run, moved in the opposite direction to play for Partick. 
   Born in 1854 to an English father and Scottish mother, Gledhill was brought up near Preston and trained as a doctor in London, playing football for Pilgrims until he passed his medical diploma exams at Apothecaries Hall in 1878. 
   Returning north, he joined Darwen, one of the few clubs then playing to association rules, and was a key forward at this period. Then Gledhill left to complete his medical studies at Glasgow University, graduating in 1883, and - according to his nephew, writing to a newspaper many years later - while in the city he played for Partick under an assumed name. Dr Gledhill was a surgeon and lawyer in Lancashire but his health declined and he died in 1906 in an asylum, with sufficient reputation to earn an obituary in the British Medical Journal.
   While there is insufficient space here to provide full details of all the players, the sum of these connections between Partick and Lancashire add up to a substantial contribution by one small club to the birth of the professional game.

If you would like to find out more, contribute further information or discuss these findings, please use the contact form on the home page or leave a comment below. Andy Mitchell

I've recently being researching the links between Partick and Darwen in the 1870s and 1880s, which include the movement south of James Love and Fergus Suter, thought to be the first professional players. I'll write that up soon but in the meantime I stumbled across a bizarre case of mistaken identity for one of the prominent Darwen players.
   In the spring of 1880, the FA announced they had selected T Brindle of Darwen at full back for England's matches against Scotland and Wales. He was originally only chosen to face Wales, but a withdrawal led to him playing both games. Darwen's first internationalist, he is pictured above, circled, in a Boy's Own Paper supplement of 1881.
   Newspapers around the country duly reported T Brindle in the team lines, and every reference book since then has gone with that name; in fact, a number of who's who publications, histories and wikipedia describe him as Thomas (or Tom) Brindle.
   The trouble is, Darwen did not have a player of that name.
   Darwen team lines for matches around that time consistently list W Brindle at full back, including the famous 1879 FA Cup ties against Old Etonians which brought him to national attention. He played for Lancashire, and in September 1880 W Brindle was elected captain of Darwen. He continued to play for the club until 1882.
   He was a top player, deserving of international recognition, and his name was actually William Brindle. He is a difficult man to research as there are few references to him in the press apart from match reports, but from what I can establish he was born in Darwen in 1853 and worked in a paper mill. In the 1871 and 1881 census he is living at Hollins Row in Darwen with his parents and younger sister but then disappears from census records. 
   However, I found a reference to him in the Paper Maker and British Paper Trade Journal of 1 September 1916, which says:
  
WILLIAM BRINDLE, who was so well known as one of the best full-backs in Association football, and who was a tower of strength to the Darwen Football Club, left the service of Messrs. Potter & Co., Hollins, a short time ago to seek his fortune in America as a paper maker, and has now taken full charge as manager of the Spring Lawn Mills, Pennsylvania. 

Whether he returned from Pennsylvania or settled there, I have been unable to establish and I invite other researchers to come up with some answers.
   The question has to be asked, how did the FA make the mistake in the first place? I can only guess that they were familiar with the Darwen club president Tom Hindle, a well-known football administrator and founder of the Lancashire FA, and somehow got the two mixed up. 
   It seems extraordinary that the mistake was never spotted and has been perpetuated for such a long time. Hopefully the records can now be amended, albeit 135 years late, to give William Brindle his place in English football history.