I was delighted to find a ship manifest on ancestry.com for the first overseas tour by a Scottish football select. Clubs had travelled abroad since the 1890s, but the Scottish FA had held back from international contact. Then, in 1921, Third Lanark were given permission by the SFA to play a series of matches in Canada and USA that summer, and instead of restricting it to club players it was open to a wide range of good quality Scots, some of them internationals.
   They played 25 matches in two months, travelling from coast to coast, winning the first 24 but ending up with a draw against Fall River. Full details can be found here. The US Football Association presented the tourists with an attractive trophy (pictured) which has the SFA crest as well as the Third Lanark badge, either side of the US logo.
   The players sailed out on the Cunard liner Cameronia, leaving Liverpool on 11 May 1921, and the passenger list (below) is full of interesting detail about the players, some of whom gave their profession as footballer, while others gave their 'day job' such as publican or joiner.
   With a bit more digging, I've also found similar lists for the first 'official' SFA tours across the Atlantic, in 1927 and 1935, as well as various club lists including Third Lanark's venture to South American in 1923. These are great examples of the kind of material that is now available to historians after many years being hidden from view.

I've spent a bit of time recently digitising early football texts, and will continue to upload more to this website from time to time, posted on the publications page. 
   To start with, these rare histories of Ayr FC and Kilmarnock FC are now available online to fellow historians for the first time.
   The Ayr booklet was produced in 1901, for a fund-raising bazaar - so financial difficulties are nothing new for Scottish football clubs. In this instance, the club had overspent on installing a cycle track and had to raise over £500 to clear the debt. At that time, Ayr (which merged with Ayr Parkhouse in 1910 to become Ayr United) was a multi-sports club, so football lived alongside athletics, cycling and tug of war. In an obscure coincidence of football history, the bazaar was opened by Sir William Arrol, the local MP, whose main claim to fame was the construction of the Forth Bridge; his cousin Mary Arrol had married Scotland's first football captain, Robert Gardner, who died in 1887 while working on ... the Forth Bridge.
   The Kilmarnock history is more straightforward, having been issued to commemorate the club's jubilee in 1919.
   To read either text, just click on the front cover images or visit my Sporting Anthology.

I came across this great caricature from 1877 in the Bailie, a Glasgow magazine which profiled prominent and influential citizens each week. It shows William Dick, who was at that time the secretary of the Scottish Football Association. He was not in the top rank of players, but set a high standard as an administrator before his early death aged just 29. See my earlier post [click on link] for pictures of his magnificent memorial in Glasgow Necropolis.
   It set me trawling through the volumes of the Bailie in Glasgow's Mitchell Library, to see which other football personalities were featured. There were not many, and no more until 1883 when 23 players were pictured as 'Football Favourites', a print I would dearly love to obtain. The Scotland national team was shown in 1886, SFA president Crerar a couple of years later, and SFA secretary JK McDowall in 1895.

One of the problems I find when researching Scotland internationals is that quite often their details don't match previously published material. Sometimes this means a birth is a year out, a Mac becomes a Mc, but occasionally a name changes completely.
   One such case was resolved this week when I was looking for the background to Tommy McInally, a Celtic star forward of the 1920s who also had spells at Third Lanark, Sunderland and a few other clubs. He won two caps in 1926, against Ireland and Wales. Known as a maverick who delighted the fans, he died of alcoholism on 29 December 1955. There were obituaries in the press, and an inscription on his grave at St Conval's Cemetery in Barrhead. But if you check the death registers, Thomas Bruce McInally, as the reference books call him, is nowhere to be seen.
   However, there was indeed a McInally who died that day, but his first name was Bernard. Death certificates give the names of parents, and from there it was simple enough to find the birth certificate of Bernard McInally, born in Main Street, Barrhead on 18 December 1899 to Francis McInally and Anne (maiden name Slaven). By the time of the 1901 census the boy was recorded as Thomas, the youngest of eight children including his older brother Arthur, who also went on to play for Celtic. And, for whatever reasons, he was known throughout his life as Tommy until that final note of his death reverted to his 'official' name.

I'm currently doing a lot of research into early Scotland international footballers, and have invested in a membership of ancestry.com as well as using a variety of other online sources. It's a long slog, following clues and cross-checking details, but I'm making good progress.
   Every now and then I find something that really stands out, and I was particularly taken by the above census return from a household in Liverpool in 1891. Staying with a Mrs Hughes, a widow, at 26 Coniston Street are six young men, all from Scotland, and all described as 'labourers'. But that masks their true vocation: they are all players for Everton Football Club, who would win the Football League championship in 1890/91; three of them were good enough to play for Scotland.  The players are Duncan McLean, Daniel Doyle, James A McMillan (the three internationalists), Daniel Kirkwood, Alexander Brady and Patrick Gordon.  Dan Doyle is perhaps the most famous of them, as after he captained Everton that season to their league title, he moved to Celtic where he won a further four league championships and nine Scotland caps.
   More satisfying for me was that this entry led me to other genealogical records which enabled me to pinpoint McLean and McMillan, two Scotland players who had previously been utterly elusive. Duncan McLean was born on 20 January 1868 in Renton, and died there on 17 November 1941. James Andrew McMillan was born in Bonhill on 11 April 1869, and died in Bootle on 20 February 1937.
   A similar discovery in the city of Liverpool which helped my research was from 1911. Two young Scots, described helpfully as professional footballers with Liverpool FC, are boarding with a tobacconist called William P Dunlop in Walton Breck Road, right outside Anfield. The players are John McConnell and Donald McKinley, and while the former returned north after two seasons, the latter became a Liverpool legend staying for almost two decades, winning two Scotland caps into the bargain. What makes the entry really interesting, however, is the tobacconist.
   William Dunlop had also played for Scotland during  a great Liverpool career, having joined the club in 1894 following spells with various Scottish clubs including Kilmarnock and Abercorn. His age (37) and middle initial (P) did not fit with the usual identification of him as born in 1871 with a middle name of Theodore. A bit of investigation confirmed that he was actually William Peden Dunlop, born in Hurlford on 11 August 1874. He died in Stanhope, County Durham, on 28 November 1941.

One of the great joys of the 1872 international - 140th anniversary this week - is that there are some carefully preserved original artefacts from the match, as well as the illustrations which appeared in the Graphic. 

•    The ticket (above) is held by the Scottish Football Museum in Glasgow. They could be bought in advance of the game from Queen's Park committee members, and despite the high price, sales were so buoyant that there were fears the ground would not cope with the anticipated large crowd. The Glasgow Herald suggested admission should be by ticket only, but then published an anxious response on the day of the game from an intending spectator: 'I do not know the committee of management, nor anyone who has tickets to dispose of, and it would be too had if I had my journey to Partick for nothing.' In the event, the crowd behaved impeccably 'and never once trenched upon the field of play'.
  
•    The shirt (below left) worn by England forward Arnold Kirke Smith, in his only international, was kept by his family until 1998, when it sold at Christie's for £21,000 and is now on display in the National Football Museum - the first of eleven 'milestones in the game' that visitors see. Picture courtesy of Umbro football's photostream.
  
•    Caps were not awarded specifically for this match, but Scotland's JJ Thomson made sure the honour of playing against England in 1872-3-4 was recorded on his cap (below right) when it was presented a couple of years later. It is now held at the Scottish Football Museum.

Who knows if there are any other souvenirs of the match still to be discovered?