A mistake in the allocation of a Scotland cap has come to light, with John McPherson of Hearts finally being credited for his international debut in 1890, rather than his namesake of Cowlairs.
   Thanks to the detective work of David Speed and Davy Allan at Hearts Heritage, the confusion over the two players with the same name has been resolved.
   The issue relates to two consecutive Scotland matches in 1890, just a week apart. The games against Ireland on 29 March and against England on 5 April both featured a John McPherson in the forward line, and in recent years both caps have been credited to the man from Cowlairs.
   However, a close look at the evidence in the newspapers and annuals of the time has revealed that the player in the first of these was actually John McPherson of Hearts. He was previously recorded as winning a single cap, against England in 1891, but his tally can now be doubled.  As for the Cowlairs player, who later starred for Rangers and was known as 'Kitey', he made his debut in 1888 and his caps total over the following decade can now be confirmed as eight rather than nine. 

In some respects it is an unusual mistake because the publications of the time, including the Scottish FA annual, were all correct. In fact, I have been looking at later annuals and the correct attribution appears to be in place until about fifty years ago. However, recent publications and online guides contain the mistake.

John McPherson (Heart of Midlothian)
Scotland v Ireland 1890, v England 1891.

John McPherson (Kilmarnock, Cowlairs and Rangers)
Scotland v Wales 1888, 1892; v England 1889, 1890, 1894, 1895; v Ireland 1895, 1897.

There used to be a strict rule in British international football, that you had to be born in the country you would represent. That's why Scots such as John Goodall and Joe Baker played for England, while English-bred players such as Alex Donaldson and Jack Lyall were capped by Scotland. Until the agreement changed in the 1970s to allow parental birthplaces to be considered, very few slipped through the net - I wrote recently about the cases of Willie Watson and James McKee.
   However, there was one notable exception when the Scottish Football Association was quite happy to break the rule. Jimmy Wardhaugh of Hearts was capped twice for Scotland and nine times for the Scottish League despite a birthplace on the 'wrong' side of the border in Northumberland.
   Wardhaugh was a goalscorer supreme in the outstanding Hearts team of the 1950s, part of the 'Terrible Trio' alongside Alfie Conn and Willie Bauld. Known as Twinkletoes for his quick feet, he scored no less than 376 goals for the club, a record that stood until it was beaten decades later by John Robertson.
   Not surprisingly, Wardhaugh came into contention for international honours and his first call-up was for the Scottish League in January 1951. This prompted a lively debate in the press: was he really Scottish?

Wardhaugh himself confirmed he had been born in the hamlet of Marshall Meadows, the first settlement south of the Scotland-England border. He had moved to Edinburgh as a young boy and spent virtually all his life there, stating unequivocally: 'I am a Scot'. In football and geographical terms, however, despite spurious claims that the cottage where he was born was actually a few yards inside Scotland, there was no doubt about it: he was English.
   Then, to general surprise, George Graham, the Secretary of the SFA, weighed into the debate with a curious piece of logic. He told the press: 'The SFA does not work to a foot-rule or feel itself bound by a matter of a few yards which are debatably English or Scottish ground. We have always regarded the Tweed as the border. Berwick Rangers are a Scottish club - they are playing at Brechin in the Scottish Cup next Saturday. And Wardhaugh is a Scotsman who I can say quite categorically will be brought into the selectors' reckoning when future teams are being chosen.'
   George Graham, normally a pedantic stickler for rules, gave no explanation for this policy of blurred national boundaries. He also managed to contradict himself in his statement, as Berwick Rangers' home at Shielfield Park is actually south of the River Tweed, in Tweedmouth.
   However, there were no complaints from the FA about his eligibility, and Wardhaugh scored on his debut for the Scottish League, against the League of Ireland. Despite his goal-scoring prowess he had to wait a while to be selected for the full national team, and finally made his Scotland debut against Hungary at a packed Hampden on 8 December 1954. He was capped just once more, against Northern Ireland on 7 November 1956.
   Curiously, however, Wardhaugh was not born in Marshall Meadows, even though he claimed he was. Accounts of his life have always stated that was his birthplace, but they are all wrong. I recently ordered up his birth certificate and it clearly says James Alexander Douglas Wardhaugh was born on 21 March 1929 in Berwick itself, at 65 High Street (now named Marygate). This was the home of his mother's family, the Egans, who lived in a flat above a chemist shop; the building is still there although the business is now a charity shop. 
   Winniefred Egan had married Alexander Wardhaugh at Berwick Barracks in January 1928. Alexander, born in Tweedmouth, was a career soldier who had been in uniform since 1912 and was serving with the Royal Scots Greys, based at Redford Barracks in Edinburgh, by the time Jimmy was born. Winnie was born in northern India while her own father was serving there, and was brought up in Berwick.
​   When Alexander retired from the Army in 1933 the family remained in Edinburgh, where Jimmy was brought up and spent the rest of his life. ​There is nothing to indicate that the Wardhaughs ever lived in Marshall Meadows, although it is possible the mother and baby stayed there for a short time.

The SFA's recognition of Berwick as part of Scotland, for footballing purposes, appears to have been a one-off. Later internationalists to have been born in the town, Trevor Steven and Lucy Bronze, have played for England without any quibble. Also born in Berwick was Thomas Burn, who represented the 'Great Britain' football team in the 1912 Olympic Games; he played for the England amateur team yet his club side was London Caledonians.
   In Jimmy Wardhaugh's case, England's loss was Scotland's gain. There is nothing unusual today about an English-born player with Scottish connections playing for Scotland, but in the 1950s he was a unique exception, thanks to the SFA's loose grip of geography. 
   Although he only won two caps, Jimmy remains a legendary figure at Tynecastle. His goals and teamwork helped Hearts to win the Scottish Cup in 1956, the Scottish League in 1958, and two League Cups. After retiring in 1961 he remained in football as a journalist until his sudden death on 2 January 1978, aged just 48.


* With thanks for David Speed, historian at Heart of Midlothian FC, for his input.  I also recommend reading Tom Maxwell's book The Lone Rangers on the issue of nationality for a football fan in Berwick.

While the story of the Hearts footballers who went to war in 1914 is well known, and rightly so, another important side to the City of Edinburgh's support for football during the First World War has received little publicity.
   In this centenary year, I have digitised The Sport in War, an account of the extraordinary campaign which raised enough money to send 1,700 footballs to British soldiers, sailors and prisoners of war. This little-known booklet was published in 1930 by John McCartney, who was manager of Hearts throughout the conflict. Having retired the previous year, he turned his hand to writing and also compiled a history of the Scottish Football League.

You can read the booklet in full on my Sporting Anthology page, but it is worth pointing out some key elements. The story began early in the war when Heart of Midlothian FC received some letters from troops requesting footballs for their free time. The club could not cope with the demand so a charitable campaign was set up by the Edinburgh Evening News to raise money for balls, which could be sent on request to anyone in the armed forces, whether serving or imprisoned.
   No doubt some of these footballs were kicked during the famous Christmas truce of 1914, and the campaign continued throughout the war, battling at times against bureaucracy but managing to reach some extraordinary places, as far away as Mesopotamia and Palestine. There are quotes from letters of thanks, not just from ordinary servicemen but from Field Marshall Sir Douglas Haig, Marshal Ferdinand Foch, General Joseph Joffre and other high-ranking soldiers - all testament to the boost to morale that a football could bring.
   There were players from Hearts and Hibs among the many recipients, and a Sgt McCready of the RAF summed up the mood when he wrote "Our English mates can't understand how you not only send footballs, let alone of such quality. Their clubs don't respond. I told them they could expect nothing else from the Capital of Scotland. We were very tired when the ball came, but it was just the thing to brighten and revive us."
   McCartney said: "We set out to prove generally that the spirit of sport in the Soldiers and Sailors of the Allied Forces brought about the downfall of the Central Powers. We claim to have succeeded, even although a great part of our story is bound up in and around the City of Edinburgh."

   John McCartney spent a lifetime in football. From humble origins in Glasgow, where he was born in 1866, he had a fairly unremarkable playing career with Cartvale, Glasgow Thistle, Rangers, Cowlairs, Newton Heath, Luton Town and Barnsley. At Oakwell he stepped up in 1901 to become secretary/manager and found his metier. He joined St Mirren in 1904 and took them to their first Scottish Cup final, then joined Hearts in 1910, spending a decade at Tynecastle. He went south in 1920 to Portsmouth, taking them from the Southern League to the First Division, and concluded with two years at Luton where he fought back from a leg amputation before ill health ultimately forced his retiral. He died in Edinburgh in 1933.

Postscript: the story of the footballs has been picked up by the Evening News.

   The distinctive clock tower was recently restored to near its original position after Edinburgh's notorious tramworks were completed. A big crowd is expected this weekend at Haymarket (details on the Hearts website) but when it was unveiled in April 1922 by the Secretary of State for Scotland an extraordinary 50,000 people were in attendance. This is how Aitken Brown viewed the memorial:

   Football in Verse is a flimsy book and few copies have survived, but I will try and digitise my copy at some stage. Meanwhile, it is available in the National Library of Scotland.

As regular readers of my blog will know, I am working on a new Who's Who of Scotland internationalists. The project is slowly making progress, and I am now down to just 20 footballers whose life details are still unknown (and for 12 of those I have a date of birth, at least).
   A breakthrough this week came with the discovery of what happened to John Walker, a forward who not only won five caps for Scotland but was also a key player with Hearts, Liverpool, Rangers and Morton. He won two League Championships and the Scottish Cup with Hearts - (he is pictured above with the 1897 Hearts side, fourth from left in back row) but is perhaps most famous for scoring the goal that clinched Liverpool's first Football League Championship. His goal against West Brom on 29 April 1901, the final match of the season, secured a 1-0 win for Liverpool, who won the league by two points from Sunderland.
   As with many players, the first challenge was that his widely-quoted date of birth (31 May 1874) is wrong. Thanks to Hearts historian David Speed, and with confirmation from SFA registers which provide his address in Woodend Rows, Torphichen, by Armadale, he was in fact born in Shotts on 24 August 1873. His parents were Thomas Walker and Elizabeth Reid.
   John Walker started his football career in Armadale and signed for Hearts in 1893, moving to Liverpool with teammate Tom Robertson in 1898. They can both be found in the 1901 census, boarding with the Liverpool trainer, James Chapman, who had also come from Hearts (centre of back row in above photo). The following season Walker returned to Scotland with Rangers, and three years later ended his career at Morton.
   What happened after that has long been a mystery, but after finding a reference in an Armadale history that said he settled in Canada, I had a new angle to follow. More searching finally turned up his name on a family grave (pictured below) in Woodend cemetery outside Armadale, just a stone's throw from where he was brought up. From that it can be confirmed that John Walker died on 17 February 1937 in the small community of Louise, Manitoba, where he had lived with his sister Lilias.
   Finally, the record can be put straight for another famous Scottish footballer.

Since writing this article, I have been made aware that there is a superb tribute to John Walker and his brother Thomas on the Military Museums of Calgary website. You can read it here:
​https://themilitarymuseums.ca/mmural/51-100/074/m074.html

When I recently digitised the 1928 Hearts booklet Tales from Tynecastle (now available for download on my Sporting Anthology page), I was intrigued by some of the adverts. 
   Two of them featured former players George Sinclair and Paddy Crossan, which adds an extra dimension to the interest of the booklet. Much could be, and has been, written about the relationship between football and alcohol, but it is fascinating how many players went into the pub trade, perhaps using a testimonial pay-off to set themselves up.    Paddy's Bar felt obliged to advertise that it offered 'sitting accommodation' for 'connoisseurs of the finest wines, beers and spirits' which is probably a reflection of how basic some pubs could be in the 1920s. It remained an institution in Rose Street long after the player died in 1933, in fact until recent living memory, but has since changed identity a few times and is now the Black Rose.    Sinclair made a surprising choice of location for a Hearts player, as Montrose Terrace is at the top of Easter Road, but promised his customers 'prompt attention, excellent quality and civility' with Dryburgh's Starbright Ale always in the best of condition. It was obviously a good business as he kept it until his death in 1959. The bar retained his name to about the end of the century but now it is a rather douce coffee and deli bar called Just the Ticket.