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.

I recently gave a talk about Scottish football literature - and the lack of it - at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. This was at a symposium on sport in the arts, hosted by the British Society of Sports History.
   The main thrust of my presentation was the lack of Scottish novels about football, despite it playing such a prominent part in our daily lives, and despite several high profile contemporary authors being football fans.
   You can read the full illustrated talk by clicking here. Please feel free to leave any comments below.

Tributes are being paid today to the former Rangers and Scotland defender Sammy Cox, who has died in Canada aged 91.  He was an immensely talented player who won numerous honours in his career, notably three Scottish Cups and four Scottish League titles with Rangers, but his international career had a mysterious beginning with a 'cap that never was'.
   For over 50 years, Cox was credited with 24 Scotland caps, in the last of which he captained his country against England in 1954. However, he actually won one more than the record books said.
   The discrepancy only came to light when I was working at the Scottish FA and was contacted by a friend of a former Hearts player, Charlie Cox. He told me that Charlie was exasperated at being described as a 'former international' when he had never, in fact, played for Scotland. He was listed in the SFA's own records, and all the reference books, as playing against France in May 1948.
   I decided to investigate and found that in those days, Scottish papers didn't send any reporters abroad and relied on local agencies. So when the team for the friendly in Paris came through on the wires with the unexpected (and uncapped) name 'Cox' it was mistakenly attributed to Charlie Cox of Hearts. And there the matter rested, unchallenged and uncorrected.
   So in the summer of 2003 I called Sammy Cox at his home near Toronto and he told me the true story. He was a travelling reserve with the Scotland team but was not selected to play, so he had lunch and was waiting in the stand at the Stade de Colombes in Paris while the other players warmed up. Then the right-half, Billy Campbell of Morton, came back in with one of his boots coming apart. With no replacement boots to hand, Campbell could not play, prompting a bit of an emergency.
   Sammy recalled: 'George Graham, secretary of the SFA, turned to me and just said 'Sam, you're playing'. I got changed, but my biggest worry was that I had just eaten a large meal and I spent the first half trying not to be sick!'
   Scotland lost the match 3-0 to three second-half goals, and you can see footage on the British Pathe film archive.
   The confusion did not end there, however. Billy Campbell was listed in the SFA's own records as having played, while Eddie Turnbull, who not only played but had Scotland's best goal attempt with a shot that hit the bar, was not credited with an appearance.
   The errors were rectified on the SFA's online database over ten years ago but many of today's tributes to Sammy Cox still claim he only had 24 caps. It's time to set the record straight.

When researching the lives of footballers, I have come across some fascinating tales but few can match RW Neill, who captained Scotland to victory over England in 1880 (above) and won the Scottish Cup four times with Queen's Park.
   Late in life he vanished from his Glasgow home and covered his tracks so successfully that his wife declared herself a widow and remarried. Yet Neill was not dead, he was in Australia and so much alive that he tried to fight for the Anzacs.
   For much of his life, Robert Walker Neill was a fairly typical Queen's Park player: born in 1853, son of a head teacher in the southside of Glasgow, he pursued a career as a commercial agent for an engineering company. In the 1880s he spent a couple of years in South America, and married Janet Johnston on his return.
   His football career was exemplary and he was described in the Scottish Football Annual as 'one of the finest backs Scotland ever produced'. That was in 1880, the year in which a knee injury in the Glasgow Charity Cup final - when he captained QP to victory over Rangers - ended his playing days. 

   He and his wife had four children, although only two survived to adulthood, and they lived in Shawlands. In the 1911 census the family are at 106 Kilmarnock Road in Shawlands, and he is described as a 58-year-old machine maker and employer.
   Then something happened. There is nothing in the press about his sudden departure, but indications are that he simply walked out. A year later he arrived on the SS Monaro in Fremantle, Western Australia, where he found work as a 'station hand', in other words a general labourer. He had no financial resources and lived in the Salvation Army 'Palace'.
   When the War broke out, there was of course a major recruitment drive for the Anzac forces. Neill was in his sixties, far too old: the normal upper age limit was 45, although for those with mining and engineering experience an exception was made for those up to 50. However, on 17 May 1917 he walked into the recruiting office at Blackboy Hill camp, near Perth, declared himself to be 48 years old with no next of kin, and signed on the dotted line. His attestation papers are available online.
   Private Neill passed the physical examination (despite needing extensive dental work) and was taken into the Mining Corps. He underwent his initial training before being appointed as a sapper on 31 July. Then a week later he was found out, and summarily discharged as over age. It was a brave attempt to join the war, and in fact he was not the only old man to try: several other Australians in their 60s actually kept up the deception and saw active service in Europe. For him, however, the war was over.

He went back to the Salvation Army hostel, and latterly worked as its caretaker. Meanwhile, back in Scotland, his wife Janet remarried in 1922 and declared herself a widow on the marriage certificate. Robert Neill, however, did not die until 1928.
   He was apparently well regarded in Perth, as his funeral at Karrakatta Cemetery drew a good crowd: 'The respect and esteem in which the deceased was held was demonstrated by the number of friends who attended at the graveside and the beautiful wreaths and floral tributes received' (Daily News). There also seems to have been no knowledge of his family back home, as a series of probate notices appeared in the local press.
   Unanswered questions remain about Robert Neill.Why did he leave? Did his family ever find out what happened to him? Only now, with the digitisation of records, has it been possible to track down the man who disappeared.


The younger brother

As a postscript to RW Neill's story, it is also worth highlighting his brother Quintin, another prominent footballer.
   There were actually seven brothers in the family, and Quintin was 13 years younger than Robert. However, he started on the same path and joined Queen's Park in 1886, becoming a first team regular two years later. Then in December 1888 something unprecedented happened: 'for the first time in their existence, the QP have had to submit to the English agent'. To general shock, he turned professional with Lincoln City.
   In Lincoln, Quintin Neill worked as an accountant while captaining the football team and was considered as one of its finest early players. In 1894 he was awarded a benefit match against Burnley, but at the end of the year he went to South Africa to set up in business. He joined the Durban Light Infantry as a volunteer, then when the Boer War broke out he became a Trooper with Driscoll's Scouts. Sadly, he died of fever in a Durban hospital and is buried there.

Curiously, he has been wrongly identified in some reference books which call him Quentin Durward Neill - Quentin Durward was the name of a Walter Scott novel. However, he was actually Quintin Dick Neill, named after his father's lawyer in Glasgow, called Quintin Dick.

Robert Walker Neill: born Glasgow, 4 August 1853; died Perth, Western Australia, 19 August 1928.
Quintin Dick Neill: born Glasgow, 16 April 1866; died Durban, South Africa, 9 August 1901.

As a collector of football programmes, I have a fascination for the earliest known Scottish editions, going back over 100 years. But where did it all begin? The answer lies with a pioneer editor in Perth.
   His name was JG Cruickshank, and he was much praised in the local press for his publishing efforts with the Perthshire FA around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, when he was honorary secretary of the association. Unfortunately, he met a tragic end.
   Football programmes - as opposed to team match cards - originated with a few English clubs during the 1890s. But in Scotland, the trend did not really get going until the 1920s, so it is quite a surprise to find the above drawing in the Dundee Courier in November 1899, above a lengthy appreciation of his work: 'Than Mr JG Cruickshank, the energetic secretary of the Perthshire Football Association, there are few gentlemen better known in the realms of sport in Scotland or more highly esteemed.' The article went on to say that Cruickshank had been on the PFA committee for three years and was also secretary of the Perthshire 2nd XI Association, the Perth City and County League and the newly founded Dewar Shield.
   It comments that he had taken the initiative to launch the Perthshire Football Annual, and the following year the Northern Football Annual, then adds: 'Mention ought to be made of the official guides which he prepares for every important event which falls to be decided. He handed over the proceeds of three of his programmes to the war fund (ie Boer War) - something like £4 after clearing all expenses.'
   Clearly programme publishing had already become a regular occurrence at major matches in Perthshire.
   Further mention of his editing skills came in the Dundee Evening Post in February 1900: 'We have just received the official programme of the inter-county match between Forfarshire and Perthshire which takes place on the Recreation Grounds, Perth, on Saturday. The programme is tastefully got up and contains, besides other information of interest to footballers, portraits of the rival captains, Mr James Eadie, Dunblane and Mr G Bowman, Montrose. It may be added that the official programmes are to be sold, and the proceeds are to be handed over to the local fund in aid of the wives and families of reservists. The programmes may be had for the humble 'brown' (ie a penny).'
   Described as 'Perthshire's Scribe', Cruickshank continued producing annuals and programmes until 1905, when he stepped down from his duties, again with much positive comment in the press. He was presented with a silver salver and a purse of sovereigns by the President of the Scottish FA, as well as a gold brooch for his wife. In fact, he was then prevailed upon to continue for another season before finally retiring.
   So, who was he? Born in Edinburgh in 1869, James Cruickshank moved to Perth and worked as a salesman for Macnaughtons of Pitlochry, a prominent woollen manufacturer, running their shop in St John's Place. His home was in Craigie, Perth, but his connections to his employers were so strong that he actually represented Vale of Atholl, the Pitlochry club, despite not living there.
   After stepping down from his Perthshire FA posts, he moved to Dundee and set up a drapery shop in Hawkhill. However, his life ended in tragedy and the Dundee Courier reported his suicide in November 1924, aged 55. He was found in his back shop, having poisoned himself with a pipe running from the gas oven. He left a wife and a son.

By a wonderful coincidence, just a couple of weeks after writing this blog I was visiting the Scottish Football Museum at Hampden Park and spotted this programme in a display case:

Yes, it is an original Cruickshank! Issued for the Perthshire Cup Final of 1903, in which St Johnstone beat Vale of Teith 3-2, it has four pages and was distributed free. I am indebted to St Johnstone historian Brian Doyle, who has provided me with the Perthshire Consitutional report on the game, which includes this info about the programme: 'A feature in connection with the match was the issuing of a nicely got up special souvenir ... the souvenir was largely taken up, and in fact was a huge success, for 'Davie' was finished handing out the copies long before the end of the game. The manner in which the souvenir was folded up and pocketed showed that it was indeed appreciated and no doubt is being duly preserved for the information it contains. On Saturday evening the souvenir was quite 'out of print' so far as the demand was concerned. Many persons desired to get copies with the object of sending them to Perth people abroad, and even on Monday there was a case where a person desired to purchase copies to send as far away as India.'

Ever dreamed of scoring the winning goal for Scotland? It’s something any player would love to put on his sporting CV.
   And one man, Angus McKinnon, has the unique claim to be the first ever to achieve the feat. He managed it in March 1874, when England were beaten 2-1.
   After the first two Scotland-England contests had finished in a draw and a defeat, a record crowd estimated at 7,000 was attracted to the West of Scotland Cricket Ground. We know from SFA accounts that spectators paid a shilling for a ticket, and that match cards were sold for a penny. The pitch ran on a gentle slope north-south with spectators lined up behind the ropes.
   Scotland captain JJ Thomson kicked off at 3.30 prompt, setting in motion a fascinating clash of styles as the English were markedly bigger and stronger, while the Scots made up for that with their clever passing game.
   England took the lead midway through the first half when Robert Kingsford chested the ball over the line. Under the rules of the day, ends were changed and it was Scotland's turn to have the advantage of playing downhill. The game was turned on its head shortly before half time: in the 40th minute Fred Anderson equalised, then three minutes later Angus McKinnon sent in a shot which slipped through the hands of English goalkeeper Welch. With no more scoring in the second half, this turned out to be the winning goal. Scotland had a victory to cherish.
   For McKinnon, it was just the start of a remarkable month of 'firsts'. The following Saturday he travelled south with the first Glasgow select team to Sheffield, and the week after that he took part in the inaugural Scottish Cup final, which Queen's Park won by defeating Clydesdale.
   Sadly, his goal-scoring ability did not earn him any more caps and this was his only appearance for the national team, although he did win two more Scottish Cup winner’s medals. He then suffered a serious illness which kept him out for a year, and despite making a comeback for Queen's Park and also serving as club secretary for a few months, in 1878 he decided to emigrate.
   Tracking down what happened to Angus McKinnon, and indeed where he originally came from, was not easy. According to DD Bone's Scottish Football Reminiscences, published in 1890, McKinnon had died 'about four years ago' in Canada. However, extensive searches failed to come up with any possible matches and it was only when browsing through the Scottish Athletic Journal from 1884 that I found a comment that McKinnon 'lies beneath the cold sod in Canada'.
   This inferred his death had taken place much earlier and eventually I found a manuscript register of his death in Kingston, Ontario in July 1880. This led me to an obituary notice the following month in the Glasgow Herald, placed by his mother; that in turn gave me a home address and I could start tracking him back. From Glasgow directories I found he had worked for West Watson & Son, merchants, but he was still invisible in the census returns.
   It was only by searching for his mother that I got the full story: it turned out Angus's father, Neil McKinnon, had died when he was an infant, his mother had remarried, and Angus appeared in the census under his step-father's surname, Taylor. He was 29 when he died which indicates he was born in 1851, but as this was before registration became compulsory there is no precise record.
   Scotland's other goalscorer in 1874, Fred Anderson, also had an unusual life. He was born in 1855 into a wealthy family – his father was a cotton merchant – and attended Glasgow Academy as a boy. When he was 12 his father moved to Cheshire and Fred spent a few years in Wilmslow but returned to Glasgow in the 1870s, playing football for Clydesdale.
   He won his sole cap for Scotland aged just 18 years and 110 days, making him one of our youngest ever internationalists.
   Like McKinnon he was selected for Glasgow to face Sheffield, and was then on the losing side in the first Scottish Cup final, but that summer he returned south to embark on a business career which took him all the way to China. He became chairman of Shanghai Municipal Council and was a director of rubber exporting companies in Malaysia. On retirement he donated a library to the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and died in 1940 at Hungerford, leaving a fortune worth £261,000.

7 March 1874: Scotland 2 (Anderson, McKinnon), England 1 (Kingsford)

Scotland: Robert Gardner (Clydesdale), John Hunter (Third Lanark) and, Joseph Taylor (Queen's Park); Charles Campbell (Queen's Park) and James Thomson (Queen's Park, capt); James Weir (Queen's Park), John Ferguson (Vale of Leven), Harry McNeil (Queen's Park), William Mackinnon (Queen's Park), Angus McKinnon (Queen's Park), Fred Anderson (Clydesdale).

The story of footballer and war hero George Brewster has finally been uncovered.
   I became interested in Brewster's life as part of my Scotland internationalist project, after establishing that his widely published birth in 1893 at Culsalmond, Aberdeenshire, had to be wrong; that man died in 1921, the same year that the strapping centre half won his Scotland cap in a 3-0 trouncing of England at Hampden.
   Brewster played for Aberdeen before joining Everton in January 1920 for a record fee of £2,400. He was later at Wolves, Lovell's Athletic and Wallasey, had a short spell in the USA with Brooklyn Wanderers, and ended his career in Inverness as player manager of Caledonian.
   It was relatively easy to find out that he was in fact born in Logie Buchan in 1891, and also that he was decorated in the First World War, awarded the Military Medal in 1918. However, the trail went cold after his time in Inverness and I was delighted that Everton historian Tony Onslow was able to step in and find out what happened.
  He not only worked out Brewster's family, he tracked his final resting place in Lancashire, where he died exactly fifty years ago in 1964. Tony's fascinating article on George Brewster is published this week on the Everton website Toffeeweb, and you can also read it here.