As I am currently in Paris, working at Euro 2016, I took the opportunity to visit a fascinating exhibition in the French National Archives which examines the role of the state when it comes to major football events.
   Le Foot, une affaire d'État, is not in the easiest of locations to find, being staged in the northern suburb of Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, right at the end of Metro line 13. However, the journey is worthwhile (although I had to make it twice, as the first time the building was closed due to industrial action).
   As you might expect, there is a strong focus on the major tournaments hosted by France, including the World Cups of 1938 and 1998, and the Euros of 1984 and this summer. It is not just a celebration of the football - albeit there is a constant film loop of France's triumph in the 1998 final - but an opportunity to show how the bidding process and the staging of the tournament involved the French government.  Among the rare souvenirs are posters and tickets from 1938.

   There are also some surprising elements to the treatment of these tournaments, not least a display devoted to the fight against hooligans at the 1998 tournament, which includes copies of faxes sent by the National Criminal Intelligence Unit with pictures of suspected English thugs. Their personal details have been obscured, but the instruction to 'shred when no longer required' has clearly been ignored.

   Several displays are devoted to the construction and management of the great stadia in Paris, all of which are still in use, starting with the Stade de Colombes, moving on to the Parc des Princes, and now the Stade de France.
   It is not just a dry account of state finance and construction, however. There are touching personal accounts of the struggle for acceptance by footballing immigrants to France - a story which continues to have echoes today -  such as the impact of Algerian independence. 
   Football in wartime also throws up some little known tales, not least an incident which was new to me: in the autumn of 1939, after war broke out, Frenchman and FIFA president Jules Rimet attended a FIFA meeting in Switzerland at which two Germans were present. On his return to France he was arrested for having contact with the enemy, and the notes of his interrogation reveal that he was in tears at the accusation and offered to resign. In the end, the affair was resolved and he remained in post, but it does shed light on the tensions at the time.
   It is not a comprehensive history of French football - for example there is nothing on the game's origins in France, and little on club football - but I strongly recommend it.
   Le Foot, une affaire d'État runs until 18 September 2016 (with various closures in August), and admission is free. There is also an accompanying book, price 10 euros.
   Follow this link for further details: http://www.archives-nationales.culture.gouv.fr/fr/web/guest/le-foot-une-affaire-d-etat

It never ceases to amaze me that a footballer can play for Scotland yet his name does not appear in the record books. That is the unfortunate fate of Hugh Wilson of Dumbarton, whose cap has somehow gone 'missing'.
   It was a chance discovery when I was reading a report of Wales v Scotland on 23 March 1885, which we won 8-1. It mentioned the Scotland team's selection problems, including this sentence: 'It was anticipated that Keir of Dumbarton would make the special journey to Wales but he scratched.'  This was Leitch Keir, who is credited in every reference book with playing in this match, the first of his five caps.
   But he didn't play. In fact, the Scotland half-back was his team mate Hugh Wilson. 
   This is confirmed by the line-ups printed in all the next day's papers, as well as the following few years of Scottish FA Annuals. Yet somehow Keir has been credited with the cap and Wilson is forgotten, until now.
   I am currently working on the details of his career, but it is clear he was an accomplished player. He started out with Mauchline, and is in the picture above with the team which won the Ayrshire Cup in 1878, its very first season. Wilson is on the far left of the front row. Another famous name in the team is Dr John Smith (middle of back row), who won 10 caps including six against England.
   Wilson remained with Mauchline until 1884, winning numerous county honours for Ayrshire and also playing three times for Scotch Counties. Then he moved to Dumbarton, apparently after finding work in the town, and played for a couple of seasons. I can find no record of him after 1886, the year after he won his cap.
   Who knows if there are more discoveries to be made of 'lost' internationalists. But in the meantime, the record books can be corrected and Hugh Wilson recognised for his Scotland appearance. Leitch Keir, on the other hand, can only be credited with four rather than five caps.


NB: He is not the same man as Hugh Wilson of Newmilns, Sunderland and Third Lanark, who was capped in the 1890s.

One hundred years ago, a Doune man took part in one of the most famous raids of the First World War.
   James Morrison fought in an Australian uniform and is lauded as one of the ‘Black Anzacs’, yet he spent most of his life at Mains Farm in Doune, near Stirling, where he was born and died.
   As a young man, James worked on his father Peter’s farm and was also a talented footballer with his local amateur side Vale of Teith. They were good enough to give St Johnstone a hard fight in the Perthshire Cup final of 1907, which went to three replays before Saints won, and again in 1908.
   He played a few games for Dunblane, who were at that time a senior team, then returned to captain newly-formed Doune Castle to victory in the Perthshire Consolation Cup. The photo of the winning team from 1909 (above) has Morrison sitting proudly in the middle of the front row.
   With limited employment opportunities at home, he emigrated in 1913 in search of adventure, heading to Perth, Western Australia, where his uncle lived, and found work building the new Trans-Australia railway.
   When war broke out the call went out throughout the Empire for men to fight and he enlisted in March 1915.  Serving with the 28th Battalion of the AIF (Australian Imperial Force), he arrived at Gallipoli in September 1915 and was immediately pitched into action.
   The death toll of the Anzacs (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) at Gallipoli was appalling, but Morrison’s life was saved by illness after a few weeks of heavy conflict. His army medical record shows that he was admitted to hospital on 13 November suffering from enteritis and dysentery, and was shipped out to Malta to recover. It took three long months before he was deemed fit again for active service, and as the conflict in Turkey was coming to an end he spent a further month in Egypt before embarking for a different front line, this time in France.

It was there that he took part in the first serious action by Anzac forces on the Western Front. On 6 June 1916, 73 Australian soldiers volunteered for a night raid at Armentieres. Crawling on hands and knees through no man’s land in the pitch dark, cutting their way through 40 yards of barbed wire, they waited for a pre-arranged covering barrage before jumping into the German lines. Rushing along the trenches, throwing bombs into each dugout, they killed a number of men and took several prisoners, before withdrawing. It was all over in minutes.
   Although two of the raiders were killed in a retaliatory barrage (including another Scot, Duncan MacLeod, born near Nairn), the raid was heralded as a success and gave a much needed boost to morale after the horrors of Gallipoli. The press seized the opportunity, dubbing the solders the ‘Black Anzacs’ as they had blackened their faces with burnt cork for camouflage. The authorities were equally keen to celebrate some good news, and as a reward, the soldiers who took part were invited to the AIF headquarters in Westminster, where they were served strawberries and cream.
   While most of his battalion had to satisfy themselves with a short leave in London, Morrison took the opportunity to head north to Doune, where he was given a rapturous reception. He brought with him an Australian comrade, John McHugh (who would die of wounds the following year).
   Morrison travelled home on leave again before the end of the conflict but spent most of his three years living on the front line. The places where he fought read like a catalogue of the First World War: Poizieres, Ypres, Ancre, Bapaume, Passchendale, Amiens, Somme and many others, yet when the conflict ended, astonishingly, he was virtually unscathed.  Promoted to Corporal, he suffered his only wound at Morlancourt in the summer of 1918 but remained at his post.
   Demobilised in 1919, James decided not to return to Australia and came back to Doune where he assisted his elder brother William on the family farm. When William died suddenly two years later, James took over the tenancy and settled back into peacetime life as a member of the kirk session at Bridge of Teith Church, and was president of the town’s bowling club.
   Doune’s quiet war hero died in 1941, having gone full circle, in the very farmhouse where he was born.

James Morrison
Born 1 May 1887
Died 7 December 1941
 
The story of the ‘Black Anzacs’ is told by Australian historian Doug Walsh on his website, http://blackanzacs.org.au/ and he has also recently written a book on the raid.

You can read about football in Doune on the Doune Castle AFC website.

As any author knows, after you go to press things will crop up that you wish you had known about. Since I published my history of Dunblane FC in November, a number of extra details and photos have come to light about some players.
   But one thing I hadn’t expected was that Dunblane had another internationalist in their ranks. His name was John McGuire. 
   All I knew about him was that he was a local lad who was in the team’s last Perthshire Cup winning team of 1913, and had gone on to play for St Johnstone, Crieff Morrisonians and Dundee Hibs - not exactly the pedigree of a top level player.
   Recently, however, I found out that McGuire emigrated and carried on playing football across the Atlantic, where he won the American Cup twice and in 1925 was selected for the USA national team. What is more, he was inducted into the US Soccer Hall of Fame.
   John McGuire has a fascinating life story. He was born in Dunblane on 3 March 1893, the son of Willie McGuire (1858-1939), a founder of Dunblane FC and a professional athlete on the Highland Games circuit.
   Brought up in Millrow, John played with the successful local juvenile side, Dunblane Rovers, and broke into the Dunblane team in 1911 as an 18 year old, making an immediate impact by scoring five goals in a 10-0 defeat of Comrie in the Perthshire Cup. 

Next season he was inside right as Dunblane won the Perthshire Cup for the twelfth and last time, beating Breadalbane 3-0 in the 1913 final. The following week he was given a trial by St Johnstone in a league match against Abercorn, and that summer he signed for Saints. He played at centre forward for the first half of the season, but only featured sporadically thereafter and was allowed to leave in the summer.
   Dropping back to the amateur ranks, he joined Crieff Morrisonians but after just two matches the club closed for the war. Exempted from military service, apparently due to an old head injury for which he sometimes wore a cap while playing, he worked as a tailor in Perth and from 1915 to 1919 played for Dundee Hibs, who were in the wartime Eastern League.
   In the spring of 1919 he emigrated to Toronto, where he signed up with Ulster United. The local press soon described him as a 'star centre forward', but he was not around for long as after he got married in 1920, to Annie McNaughton, he moved to New York. There, his football career really took off.
   He joined the unlikely sounding Robins Dry Dock FC, at a time when many US soccer teams were backed by industrial concerns. Based in Brooklyn, they were crowned national champions on 19 April 1921: McGuire scored his team’s first goal as Robins Dry Dock won 4-2 against Scullin Steel of St Louis, Missouri, in the USFA National Challenge Cup Final, played in front of 6,000 spectators at Fall River.

The following season, his team had changed its name to Todd Shipyards (the owners of the Dry Dock), and again they made the national final, also against Scullin Steel.  McGuire scored twice in the first 20 minutes to put his side two up, but Scullin fought their way back into the game to win the cup, scoring their third a few minutes from the end.
   McGuire’s third final in as many years was on Easter Sunday, 1 April 1923, by which time he had joined Paterson FC in New Jersey. The opposition was yet again Scullin Steel, and a record crowd of 16,000 in the old baseball ground at Harrison, NJ saw an exciting 2-2 draw after extra time. There should have been a replay the following week, but Scullin announced they could not play as four of their team were professional baseball players and obliged to resume their summer contracts, and another three were injured. Paterson were awarded the cup by default.
   One curious game he played for Paterson was in September 1922, against the touring Dick Kerr’s ladies team from England. McGuire scored once in a 6-3 victory.
   He carried on moving clubs, spending one year each with New York Field Club (1923-24), New Bedford Whalers (1924-25) and Brooklyn Wanderers (1925-26), and it was during this last season that he won his international cap. At the age of 32, he played for USA in a 6-1 win over Canada, at Brooklyn on 8 November 1925.
   Having hung up his boots in 1926, Johnny McGuire remained in Brooklyn, where he worked as a machinist, for the rest of his life.  He was one of the earliest inductees to the US Soccer Hall of Fame in 1951, just the second year of its existence, and died on 18 November 1962.

​Some time ago I bought this old French football medal, presented to the players of White Rovers FC in 1897. Having researched its background, there is a fascinating story about the impact of the club and its founders, all of which is particularly relevant in the build-up to this summer’s UEFA European Championship.

 
In 1891, the first football club in France had a problem: customs officials were suspicious that their newly imported corner flags carried the emblem of some political party.
   An Englishman called William Sleator went to see the Prefet de Police to sort it out, and had to start by describing this new-fangled game of football. The policeman was mystified, asking why they couldn’t just play the game indoors. But Sleator not only charmed the official into releasing the flags, he even talked him out of charging customs duty on the goalposts which had been brought over from England.
   Sleator came to be considered the ‘father of French football’ and for many years football veterans would raise a glass and toast his memory. He was even presented with the French Football Federation’s gold medal for services to the game, but his legacy and the adventures of his fellow pioneers are now largely forgotten.
   Although British sailors had introduced football to France at ports like Le Havre in the 1870s, and there was a failed attempt to set up a Paris club in 1889, the genesis of the modern game can be pinpointed to 30 October 1891.
   On that day, at the Café Francais on rue Pasquier, a football club was founded by a group of young English and Scottish sportsmen. They voted narrowly to play association rather than rugby rules, agreed to call the club White Rovers and elected Sleator as treasurer.
   Having successfully sourced essential playing gear like those flags and goalposts, the team’s first match, against a YMCA eleven, was very low key, as Sleator later related: ‘We had ten spectators, most of them boys. One of the boys told his father he had seen English lads, in uniforms, kicking a huge ball about, knocking it with their heads, and charging each other to get at it. The boy’s father said the English were mad enough for anything.’
   White Rovers worked hard to establish the game in France and were one of six clubs in France's first-ever football championship in 1894. Sadly they were never crowned champions and after losing the inaugural final to Standard AC in a replay, they also finished runners-up for the next three seasons. The championship, somewhat incongruously, was backed by the New York Herald, whose European edition was based in Paris, and whose proprietor James Gordon Bennett donated a magnificent silver trophy.
   Playing in white shirts with a large blue Maltese cross, White Rovers were based in the Paris suburb of Courbevoie, near the railway station at Bécon-les-Bruyères, where they were granted the use of a ground by the Compagnie des Chemins de Fer de l’Est.
   This was thanks to a director of the railway company called Henry Blount, son of the British Consul and a well-known socialite, who became the club’s patron. In 1897, Blount felt so proud of the players as once again they fell at the final hurdle that he presented them with silver medals to commemorate their efforts.
   White Rovers lasted just eight years, but in that time they were hugely influential, inspiring French players to form their own clubs, the first being Club Français in 1892, which was founded by Charles Bernat and Eugene Fraysse who had learned the game while at school in the UK.

Rovers also introduced an international element, and in 1893 they invited Marylebone, an amateur team from London, to play the first ‘international’ match in France. Paris soon became a popular Easter tour destination for English clubs, and Rovers also travelled to Belgium. Then in 1898 the German football pioneer Walther Bensemann brought his All Germany team to Paris, and photos exist of their crushing 7-0 win over White Rovers.
   Not long after that, as some of the original players drifted back to the UK, the club foundered and it did not survive to the end of the century. However, its legacy remains.
   Today, although few French fans know the debt they owe to the pioneer players, the vibrant football culture in France can trace its roots right back to the heady days of William Sleator and his White Rovers.
 
Who were the White Rovers pioneers?
 
William Henry Sleator was born in Worcester in 1871 and grew up in the town’s Lansdowne Inn, run by his parents, but his father died before his second birthday. Although his mother remarried to the man who took over as landlord, that man also died ten years later, leaving her in sole charge of the tenancy.
   Despite these upheavals, William and his elder brother Alec were well educated at Worcester Middle School and Barbourne College, where they enjoyed sport and as well as playing football, both were active members of Worcester Rowing Club.

​Around 1890 William headed to Paris to go into business as a tailor, and he was soon joined in the city by Alec, who also played for White Rovers, and their mother. Around the turn of the century William established Sleator & Carter, high class English tailors and gentlemen’s outfitters, and would remain in business in Paris until the second world war, based in the Avenue de l’Opéra then the Rue des Pyramides. William lived in the city until shortly before his death in England in 1955.
   Alongside Sleator at the club’s foundation in 1891 was Walter Herbert Hewson (1868-1945), appointed secretary. He was born in Surrey and set up in business in Paris as a clothing outfitter.
   One of the most prominent players was Jack Wood (John Bertram Wood, 1872-1921) from north London, who went on to play for Standard AC and Club Français, then became a referee and officiated at the 1900 Olympic football tournament; his brother Tom also played for White Rovers.
   Edward Barclay (1872-1932) was a Scottish lawyer who attended Westminster School before taking a law degree at the University of Paris. He spent the rest of his life in Paris, where he was President of the British Chamber of Commerce.
   Robert James MacQueen (1871-1921) was a tailor like Sleator, but left Paris for Chile with his French wife, returning to England shortly before his death.
   Claude Farnworth Rivaz (1872-1958), a British artist who was educated at Westminster and spent three years studying in Belgium, where he played for Royal Antwerp, before coming to Paris around 1894 and joining White Rovers.
   These are just some of the early White Rovers players, but many others are recorded only by their surname in reports and are difficult to identify. I would welcome any further information and in particular a photo of William Sleator.

A curious obituary appeared in the press in 1936. ‘The death at the age of 64 has occurred in Elderslie, near Paisley, of Mr Bryce Scouller, better known as Tom Hyslop, a brilliant inside forward for Stoke and Rangers.’
   It was a crucial clue to the true identity of a man who was twice capped for Scotland against England, won two Scottish Cups, and was famed for his cannonball shot.
   Born in Auchinleck as Bryce Scouller, and brought up in Renfrewshire under that name, for his football career he called himself Thomas and adopted his mother’s maiden surname of Hyslop. If that was not unusual enough for a prominent footballer, he also had a close association with the armed forces, joining up no less than four times, including a spell on active service in the midst of an erratic football career.
   He first joined the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in 1888 under his own name, but disappears from the records after a year. Then in 1890, presumably to cover his tracks, he used the name Thomas Hyslop when he joined the Second Battalion of the Scots Guards. Based at the Victoria Barracks, near Windsor Castle, he came to prominence as a powerful six foot three centre forward in the 2nd Scots Guards football team which won the Army Cup (twice), the Middlesex County Cup (twice), and took part in the FA Cup. He was selected to represent the Army against the famous Corinthians, also scoring seven goals for Middlesex in a match against Sussex.
   Not surprisingly, he was sought by professional clubs for his goalscoring prowess, but equally the Army wanted to keep him. In April 1893 he applied for home leave but instead played a trial for Millwall, and at the end of the game was arrested by the military authorities and taken to Wellington Barracks where he was charged with disobeying orders. Although given a lenient punishment, he was obliged to remain in the army for a further two years.
   This seems to have been a ploy to keep him in uniform, so when Sunderland expressed an interest in signing him it took several months of protracted negotiations before they finally bought out his contract in January 1894 for the princely sum of £18 and he could embark on his professional football career.
   Sunderland was one of the top teams in England at the time and found it hard to fit Hyslop into their side, which would win the league in 1894-95. He played 19 matches in a year, scoring a respectable ten goals, before they allowed him to move in February 1895 to Stoke, where he made a solid impact. With 24 goals over a season and a half, the highlight being a hat-trick from three cannonball shots against West Brom, he worked himself into the international reckoning.
   His timing was lucky, as in 1896 the Scottish FA reacted to a succession of failures against England by using English-based players for the first time. The selectors chose Ned Doig (Sunderland) in goal, Tommy Brandon (Blackburn Rovers), Jimmy Cowan (Aston Villa), Jack Bell (Everton) and Tom Hyslop (Stoke) for the team at Celtic Park on 4 April 1896, and it worked. Bell scored what turned out to be the winner after William Lambie had put Scotland ahead, the English only securing a late goal by Billy Bassett, playing in his last international.
   Hyslop, despite some press criticism for his awkward style, was signed by Rangers that summer and played a key role in the team which won three Cups – Scottish, Glasgow and Charity - in 1896/97.
   It was enough to ensure he retained his Scotland place against England, and while Scotland were given little chance at Crystal Palace, especially after Steve Bloomer put the home team in front, it all changed when Hyslop headed an equaliser from Nick Smith’s free kick. The late winner came from Jimmy Miller, who knocked himself out in the process. England defender Howard Spencer later recalled: ‘Tom Hyslop was a thorn in our side, not because he was a particularly skilful forward, but because he was so deadly in his shooting.’
   The same month he sprinted to victory in the 220 yards race for professional footballers at the Rangers Sports, and went on to another successful season at Ibrox, winning the Scottish Cup again in 1898.
   Thereafter his career slid downhill. He returned to Stoke but had a disastrous run of form, not scoring once in a full season, and although he came back to Rangers in 1899 he was soon out of the team, playing only a small part in the league title win.
   He moved across the city to Partick Thistle in the summer of 1900 but in March the following year he signed up (as Bryce Scouller) to fight against the Boers and saw active service in South Africa with the Scottish Yeomanry. On his return in the autumn of 1902, he was over the hill in terms of top level football and initially signed for Dundee Wanderers, but within a few weeks was on his way back to Renfrewshire and ended his playing career with Johnstone and Abercorn.
   A year after hanging up his boots, in 1906 he emigrated to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he worked as a carpet weaver, still calling himself Tom Hyslop. However, in September 1917 he crossed the border to Toronto where he enlisted for the Canadian Expeditionary Force, signing his name as Thomas Bryce Scouller and even knocked a couple of years off his real age (46) to scrape under the maximum age for enlistment. The ruse worked and he served in Europe, but apparently as a reservist and not on the front line.
   After the war he sailed back to Canada on a troopship but in 1922 returned for good to Scotland, where he spent his remaining years, reportedly following Rangers at home and away. He died in 1936 at the Paisley’s Royal Alexandria Infirmary and is buried in the Abbey Cemetery, near Elderslie.
   It remains extraordinary that an international footballer could have played throughout his career under a false name. As far as I can tell it was never noticed at the time, and only in death did his secret come out. 
 
Bryce Scouller, born 20 August 1871 in Auchinleck; died 21 April 1936 in Paisley.

With the Euro 2016 play-offs this weekend, one that catches my eye is the 'local derby' between Sweden and Denmark. The first leg is in Solna on Saturday and the return in Copenhagen on Tuesday.
   By chance I have in my collection a couple of attractive souvenirs of two early encounters between the nations. These silver medals were presented by the Swedish FA to the players (caps never really took off outside the UK) and they have been engraved with the match details.
   The two games were both at the old Rasunda Stadium in Solna (now replaced by the Friends Arena) and were played on 10 October 1920, then a year later on 9 October 1921. Denmark won the first 2-0 and drew the second 0-0, and I'm sure they would be delighted with similar outcomes on Saturday night.
   The medals appear to have belonged to a Danish player as the 1920 engraving uses the term 'fodbold' rather than Swedish 'fotboll'. Also - one for the etymologists - it describes Denmark's opposition as 'Sverrig', an archaic word that was replaced in the Danish language by 'Sverige' early in the 20th century.  Four Danish players featured in both matches, so it could have belonged originally to any one of Leo Dannin, Ernst Nilsson, Steen Blicher or Poul Nielson.
   Of course, I could not write a blog without a Scottish reference, and one of the pioneers of Danish football was a man from Dundee.
   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. (See Matt McDowell's fascinating article for full details).
   With a bit of investigation, I have uncovered a few details about Smart, which indicate that although he was an important figure he was likely not the actual founder of the game in Denmark.
   The first thing is that the Scottish Sport article gets his middle initial wrong. He was James Young Smart, born in Dundee on 18 March 1862, the son of a jute mill manager. Strathmore FC was founded early in 1877, named in honour of its patron the Earl of Strathmore, and played its first match in March against Dunmore. Its ground was at Rollo's Pier, off Magdalen Yard Road at the west end of the city.
   James Young Smart was elected secretary and treasurer of Strathmore in the summer of 1878, aged just 16, and played regularly for the club over the next few years, rising to become club president in 1882. He held that role until he left Dundee, 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.'
   Clearly Smart continued to play football as he was the top scorer in Denmark’s first league tournament in 1889-90, with 12 goals for KB who finished second behind Akademisk.
   He returned to Dundee, probably when his father died in 1896, to join the family business at Rosebank jute mill, and is listed as a member of Dundee FC's match committee in December 1898, when the club got going again after liquidation. In December 1899 his sisters ran a stall at the football club bazaar.
   Thereafter, things get hazy. Although listed as a jute factory manager in the 1901 census, by 1907 he was no longer involved in the business.
   It appears his life went into a downward spiral as Smart died at Duke Street Hospital, Glasgow on 8 May 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). A sorry end for Scottish football pioneer.

Sadly, there will be no Scots in France at next summer's European Championships. So I've been taking a look back at an era when Scottish football played a key role at the very top of the French game: the 1920s.
   And in particular the 1924 French Cup Final, when both sides may have been led by Scottish coaches.  I say 'may have been' as there is an air of mystery about one of them, but what is in no doubt is that Olympique de Marseille won the cup for the first time under the charge of a Scotsman, Peter Farmer. His team won 3-2 after extra time against FC Sete, who were captained and trained by Victor Gibson.
   Peter Farmer is often referred to as 'anglais' in the French reference books, but while there are some gaps to be filled in his career, he was definitely a Scot; in fact he was born in the football hotbed of Renton on 26 October 1886.
   Little is known of his early life or how he embarked on a life in foreign football. I have seen references to him playing for clubs in Scotland but no facts to back that up. Similarly, there are sources that say he coached in Vienna, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia and Berlin, but there is scant contemporary evidence.
   However, I did find a mention of him holding a diploma in medical massage from Glasgow's Western Infirmary, and this would have been as much an essential qualification as his coaching skills.
   Peter Farmer was appointed to train Olympique de Marseille in 1923, and soon took the club to its first major triumph, the French Cup on 13 April 1924.

   And what of Victor Gibson, the opposing coach in 1924? He is a man who had an enormous impact on French football over two decades, yet who remains a complete enigma outside of his time there. He is described as Scottish in many sources, even as playing for Falkirk and Morton, but I have not been able to confirm anything about his origins, despite extensive research.
   The earliest mentions of Gibson come in 1911 when he was with a touring team of amateurs from Plumstead, Kent, who played a couple of games in Barcelona against CD Espanyol.
   Apparently then aged 22, Gibson (and a couple of his colleagues) liked it so much there that he stayed and was appointed captain of the team. He even made the front cover of the sports magazine 'Stadium'. There are potential clues to his identity as he is sometimes described as 'V. Raine Gibson' but unfortunately this has not led to any breakthroughs.

After a year in Spain, Gibson was persuaded to head for Sete (or Cette as it was then known) and he would spend the next 12 years there as captain and coach. He was already described as a veteran in the early 1920s but continued to play and score goals throughout the decade. Sete reached the French Cup finals of 1923 and 1924, losing both, with Gibson only playing in the latter match.
   He then succeeded Peter Farmer as Marseille coach and in five years he led them to two more French Cup successes, in 1926 and 1927. 
   Regarded as one of the top coaches in the country (in fact known as 'Papey' which translates as 'Daddy') he was poached by the Peugeot family in 1929 to manage their new club in Sochaux. Their free spending led to the game in France finally turning professional, but his five years there were not a great success and he left in 1934 (they won the league the following season!). He was still playing in 1930, although not as a first team regular.
   Gibson's coaching powers were probably fading and his last appointment was for the 1934/35 season at an amateur club in Bordeaux, called FC Hispanola-Bastidienne. 
   There is one delightful anecdote of him watching a Marseille match and each time his side scored he took a bottle out of his pocket and had a swig; his colleague asked what was in it and the answer was 'water and tea'. It was only when he stood up at the end of the game that it became apparent the (now empty) bottle had contained whisky.
   Although Victor Gibson is often now described as Scottish, contemporary reports are inconclusive and he disappears from view after 1935 - there are no newspaper reports, no comments, no death notices. It seems nobody knows what happened to him.
   The only potential clue is that in 1934 he was interviewed about the chances of the France team in the forthcoming World Cup, and the reporter noted that Gibson had recently become a father, with a charming young daughter. So perhaps, somewhere, there is a family who have proud memories of their football pioneer grandfather.

Update (January 2019): The true identity of Victor Gibson is discovered!

Victor Gibson and Peter Farmer belonged to a generation of British coaches who were successful in France but were virtually unknown in their own country. It would be wonderful to find out their full stories, so please get in touch if you have any additional information.
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