St Andrew Boat Club, founded in 1846 in Edinburgh, is Scotland's oldest open boat club and recently celebrated its 175th anniversary.
   The club was only two years old when seven of its members members appeared in these photos, which were preserved within the albums of the Edinburgh Calotype Club. Those books are now held by the National Library of Scotland, and the albums were fully digitised for the Pencils of Light exhibition.
   Photography was in its infancy: the calotype process was invented by Henry Fox Talbot in 1841, and taken up in Edinburgh by Hill & Adamson a couple of years later. They took the first known sports photos of John Laing, a tennis or rackets player, who I have already written about.
   It was a step forward from having a single subject who was standing motionless for a long exposure, to taking a photograph of a group, and the challenge was taken up by Hugh Lyon Tennent. He was a member of both the Calotype Club and the Rowing Club, and is credited with taking the photos, perhaps with the assistance of his brother Robert. The venue is almost certainly the club house at Fountainbridge, on the Union Canal.
   Identifying the seven men was a challenge, as the caption for the first photo simply named the rowers as 'T Dickson, Hastie, Hugh Lyon Tennent, Rd Campbell, Seton, JS Tytler, Arbuthnot'. The second photo has the same subjects but Tennent has moved to the right of the group.
   However, the recent publication of a history of St Andrew Boat Club has helped, not only to confirm all their identities, but also to pinpoint the date.

The club history published a list of members, starting with the 18 founders in April 1846, and detailing all who signed up in succeeding years. The Ordinary Members are those who lived in Edinburgh, while Extraordinary Members are mainly those who were in the military and therefore only in the city for a short time.
   Dickson, Campbell, Tennent and Seton were all founding ordinary members in 1846, while Tytler joined the following year. The other two were only in Edinburgh for a short time and joined as extraordinary members: Hastie in 1848, and Arbuthnot for 1847-48. The date of the photo can therefore be pinpointed to the latter year.
   The seven men in the photo can now be identified with some degree of certainty:
 
Thomas Goldie Dickson (1819-1905), an accountant who lived at 3 Royal Circus. Educated at Edinburgh Academy, he was also a member of John Hope's Foot-Ball Club in 1836. He was later notorious for his involvement in the Ardnamurchan clearances.
 
Charles Nairn Hastie (1809-1868), a solicitor from East Grinstead, Sussex, he was only in Edinburgh briefly and stayed at 136 Princes Street. In May 1848 he joined the Boat Club and was elected a Member of the Highland Agricultural Society.
 
Hugh Lyon Tennent (1817-1874), an advocate of 9 Lynedoch Place. Educated at Edinburgh Academy 1826-32. Related to the Tennents of brewing fame.
 
Ord Graham Campbell (1816-1890), a lawyer and Writer to the Signet, of 102 George Street. He was also a prominent golfer, member of the Royal & Ancient, and the Honorable Company of Edinburgh Golfers.
 
George Seton (1822-1908), an advocate of 13 Coates Crescent. Educated at Royal High School, then Edinburgh and Oxford Universities, he was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, an expert genealogist and served in the Royal Company of Archers.
 
James Stuart Fraser Tytler (1820-91), a lawyer and Writer to the Signet, of 27 Rutland Square. Educated at Edinburgh Academy and Edinburgh University, he became a Professor of Conveyancing at the university.
 
Charles George Arbuthnot (1824-1899), Born in Ireland and educated at Rugby, he was a Lieutenant in the Royal Artillery, based at Leith Fort. He went on to a prestigious army career, serving in Crimea, Afghanistan and India, becoming Lieutenant General Sir Charles Arbuthnot.

St Andrew BC remains a vibrant organisation, which only last week opened a new boathouse at Meggetland in Edinburgh. Rowing legend Dame Katherine Grainger, who has represented the club throughout her career, did the honours.
   The history of the club is a fascinating read with many interesting photos, a 90 page paperback which is available from the club, price £10.
   For further research, the club's extensive archives are held at the National Records of Scotland (Ref GD418). 

This well-known image, claimed to be the world's first photo of a tennis player, was taken by the pioneering photographers Robert Adamson and David Octavius Hill in Edinburgh around 1843. It features in a major exhibition just now at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, and is one of the key images used to market the exhibition.
   The subject is recorded simply as Mr Laing (or Laine, the writing is not clear) and has never been identified. So I set out to find who this dapper young sportsman really was, and why he should be holding a racket.
   The first thing to establish was that he was not actually a tennis player. Lawn tennis had yet to be invented, while the only real (or royal) tennis court in Scotland at the time was at Falkland Palace in Fife.
​   Less well known is the fact that Edinburgh had a thriving racket court in the city centre. It had been established as a fives court in Rose Street around 1800 by John Hallion, who ran the adjoining tavern and also used it to stage cock fights. The court continued in operation throughout the 19th century, subtly changing use from fives to rackets, and in the 1840s was leased by a Mr Wilson. As the advert below shows, he aimed it at the city's well-to-do, and even employed a professional for tuition.

The essential difference between rackets and tennis is that rackets - the ancestor of squash - is played in an enclosed court, with the ball knocked against a wall; in tennis the ball is played over a net between the players.
   As with many recreational sports, there were virtually no reports of matches in the daily papers, but regular adverts show that rackets was popular among young men in Edinburgh at the time. The Rose Street court even attracted royal patronage, as in 1864 Queen Victoria's second son, Prince Alfred, played a game of rackets there and was hit in the eye by a ball.
   It would appear, therefore, that Mr Laing is not a tennis player after all, but a rackets player. 
   There is, incidentally, another photograph of him, held at Glasgow University Library, which shows him in a different profile with outstretched arm. He is again holding the racket in an unnatural position, too far up the handle, but that can be explained by the requirement to keep still for a long exposure. The metal frame which helped to hold him steady has been painted out, but the telltale shadow is clearly seen. Even so, the smart sporty outfit makes him look quite the young athlete!

So, who was he? It is impossible to be certain, but I am confident he was John Laing, an Edinburgh artist who was not only the same age as Robert Adamson, he was also a near neighbour.
   John Laing was born in February 1821 (two months before Adamson) and brought up in the city. Although I have not yet found where he trained as an artist, by 1846 he was in business and advertised his studio at 5 Calton Hill, just a few yards from Adamson's studio at Rock House:

As a neighbour and as a member of Edinburgh's artistic community, he was ideally placed to be a subject for Hill and Adamson's pioneering calotype photographs. Indeed, Hill and Adamson took photographs of several Edinburgh artists. Among them was another neighbour, the sculptor John Steell, who was then at 20 Calton Hill but had previously lived in Laing's house at number 5. Other artists included James Drummond, John Maclaren Barclay, William Leighton Leitch, Kenneth MacLeay, John Stevens, James Rannie Swinton and William Borthwick Johnstone.
   While these connections alone do not confirm Laing's identity as the man in the photo, there is a further link. After Adamson's early death in 1848, Hill continued the business and at the 1851 Great Exhibition in London's Crystal Palace, he showed off the calotypes of Newhaven he had taken with Adamson. In the very same room, John Laing had an exhibit of his own, as this cutting from the Edinburgh Evening Courant (6 May 1851) shows:

Laing and Hill were also listed in the same section of the Great Exhibition's official catalogue.
   In the 1850s, Laing's art and design business continued to thrive and he opened two shops, at Leith Street Terrace and in Baxter's Place at the top of Leith Walk, while retaining his studio in Calton Hill. He had married Susanna Bryce in 1845 and they had eight children including Thomas who became town clerk of Leith.
   But disaster struck when Laing was diagnosed with diabetes, a disease which then had no known cure or treatment. After suffering for over a year he died at home on 23 September 1858 and is buried in Warriston Cemetery.
   As yet there is no conclusive evidence which confirms John Laing as the holder of the racket. But the available clues, including his close connection to the photographers and their studio on Calton Hill, point strongly to the painter as the likely subject.

Postscript, May 2018: I am immensely grateful to the Friends of Warriston Cemetery in Edinburgh, who not only tracked down the grave of John Laing and his family, but cleaned off the moss and took this photograph. He is buried with his wife and three of his children, and his artistic career is recorded beautifully and simply with the artist's palette carved on the headstone.
​

The exhibition A Perfect Chemistry, Photographs by Hill & Adamson is at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh until 1 October 2017.

Thirty years ago I travelled to Gothenburg to see Dundee United in the UEFA Cup final. I wasn't a supporter of the team, but simply went to support a Scottish team in a European final - just as I had done to see Aberdeen lift the Cup Winners Cup in the same stadium in 1983.
   A couple of weeks later I went to the return leg at Tannadice. Sadly, the Swedes triumphed 2-1 on aggregate, and the only consolation for United was a fair play award to recognise their fans' outstanding behaviour.
   I took my camera to both games, and documented the supporters in Gothenburg. A few of them have been used in a new TV documentary, as BBC Alba have commissioned a film about Dundee United's exploits in 1987. Entitled Tannadice 87, it will be broadcast on 20 May at 9pm, and on iPlayer after that. 
   In advance of that, here are some of my photos, which have never been published before. I hope they bring back happy memories of a lost generation of Scottish football - a time when a small provincial club could beat Barcelona home and away, and dare to believe they could be European champions.
   All photos are copyright - no copying please!

Fifty years ago today, Third Lanark took on Berwick Rangers at Cathkin Park in Glasgow, in what turned out to be their last season. This rare colour image of the team in action - never published before - was taken by football historian George Campbell, who was years ahead of his time in documenting some of Scottish football's lesser known teams and stadia.
   There is just a sparse crowd watching Thirds (in scarlet) and Berwick (in black and gold stripes). Some of them are sitting in the fine-looking, but uncompleted, grandstand, the rest of them scattered around terracing which had once held over 40,000. The crowd for this game was around 1100, and as the club continued to decline it was the last time a four figure attendance was recorded at the ground.
   Although times were hard, nobody realised at the time that Third Lanark were on the brink of extinction, the victims of years of corrupt mis-management which was orchestrated by club chairman Bill Hiddelston (often mis-spelled as Hiddleston), who took control at the end of 1962. The sad story has been told many times, notably in great detail in John Litster's book 'Life and Death of the Hi Hi'.

As so often in football, the main people to suffer were the supporters. who ended up losing their club. Third Lanark had a particularly active Supporters' Association, founded in 1946 and which produced the club's match programme and annual handbook, making substantial donations from the proceeds to back the club they loved. Despite not seeing eye to eye with Hiddelston and his directors, they were still going strong up to the end. This membership card for 1965-66 was the last one issued, and inside is stapled a sheet with the details for 1966-67.

8 October 1966
Scottish League Division 2
Third Lanark 3 (Fyfe 5, Henderson 25, Stewart 87)
Berwick Rangers 0
Third Lanark: Russell, Connell, Baillie; McLaughlin, Little, McKay; Kinnaird, Stewart, Fyfe, May, Henderson. Sub: Kilgannon.
Berwick Rangers: Tait, Haig, Riddle; Craig, Coutts, Rodgers; Lumsden, Forsyth, McLaren, Boyce, Veitch. Sub: Stewart.
Referee: RD Henderson (Dundee)

On the same day, the SFA sacked Scotland manager John Prentice after just six months; Celtic maintained their 100 per cent record at the top of Division 1 with a 5-3 win at Hibs; and the league's new club Clydebank maintained their own 100 per cent record with a ninth successive defeat at home to Albion Rovers to remain rooted at the foot of Division 2.

A long time ago I was a dedicated follower of Meadowbank Thistle. I learned to appreciate that supporting football in Scotland's lower leagues is an acquired taste, one which offers a range of emotions and experiences, among which victory celebrations are low on the list.
   So I can empathise with the unique joy of being an Albion Rovers supporter, a team you would never associate with success. Professional photographer Iain Mclean has been following the Rovers for many years, and in this 'photo journal' has recorded a unique insight into life at the Coatbridge club, on and off the pitch.
   Yes, there are occasional on-field highlights, such as that pictured below on the day in 2015 when Albion Rovers were presented with the Third Division championship trophy. But cup victories and promotion challenges are a bonus rather than an expectation, largely outnumbered by the goalless draws and the windswept winter nights.
   In 48 pages spanning 15 years, Iain Mclean has captured the essence of life at this level, with pictures that, according to the intro, 'evoke the unique survivalist charm of Cliftonhill'. His abiding message is that lower league football can be great fun, offering a sense of camaraderie that raises you far above the tedium of the match itself. You will find fans wearing fancy dress, doing their knitting, bringing their dog to the match and having a picnic.
   More than just a football club is available price £9.99 from select Coatbridge outlets including the club shop, or direct from the author via his website. You can also see a wide range of his photographs in his online gallery.

For Scotland fans of a certain vintage, there are matches that stay fresh in the memory above all others. Forty years ago was one of those, the 2-1 victory over Czechoslovakia at Hampden Park which ensured Scotland would take part in the World Cup finals for the first time in a generation.
   That game on 26 September 1973 wasn't the first time I had seen Scotland play, but it is the first match I can remember them winning. It had such a huge impact on me, as an impressionable 15-year-old, that I kept the following day's newspaper. I still have it, and Allan Milligan's front page photo (above) of toothless Joe Jordan being congratulated by Tom Hutchison remains a classic image of unbridled Scottish celebration.
   More importantly, the win raised Scotland's football aspirations. It gave us confidence that we could compete on the world stage - this was the first of five consecutive qualifications - and also helped to shift the traditional attitude that beating England in the British Championship was the most important game of the year. 
   Our World Cup qualifying group seems ridiculous by modern standards. Just three nations, with the amateurs of Denmark making up the numbers, and group winner qualifying for West Germany. Scotland under Tommy Docherty breezed past the Danes home and away, while the Czechs could only, inexplicably, draw in Copenhagen before putting six past them in Prague. With two games remaining, that unlikely draw made our target simple: win at Hampden to reach the World Cup finals, regardless of what happened in Bratislava the following month.
   Simple? Hardly. 1973 had begun with a new manager, Willie Ormond, and an SFA centenary celebration game against our traditional rivals which turned into an embarrassing 5-0 rout; there would be another, albeit narrow, defeat at Wembley in May and by the autumn Ormond had lost five of his first six matches.
   In the media, there was scant optimism, and Ian Archer in the Glasgow Herald was particularly gloomy: 'There is no reason to believe that the Scotland of 1973 can succeed where the Scotlands of 1961, 1965 and 1969 have failed before them,' he wrote. 'Only the old adage that hope springs eternal will comfort the impassioned and the patriotic.'
   Nonetheless, the game was a sell-out, Hampden having been restricted to a crowd of 100,000. For the rest of us (particularly those like me with school to go to in the morning) there was the rare treat of a live broadcast on STV. It began ominously, a hard physical battle with no quarter given. I can still hear Arthur Montford intoning 'And that's disaster, absolute disaster for Scotland' as a nonsensical long shot from Nehoda evaded Ally Hunter's flap and crept in at the far post. It was 'a freak goal' according to the Scotsman. As half time approached, the hopes of the nation were revived as the big defender Jim Holton leapt above the Czech defence (and Denis Law) to head home a corner. All square at the break. 
   The second half was the stuff of legend. We saw a Scotland side which was disciplined, having to ensure there was no repeat of the opening goal while chasing a winner, and even the Scotsman's John Rafferty, not one for hyperbole, was 'thrilled to see this Scottish team play it with such composure'. In the 64th minute, Ormond replaced Kenny Dalglish with the robust figure of Joe Jordan, a game-changing move. Little more than ten minutes later, came the decisive moment: a Bremner shot hit the inside of the post and rolled agonisingly along the goal line and apparently to safety; but it came to Willie Morgan and his cross with the outside of the boot found the unmarked Jordan in front of goal, who found the net with ease. It was bedlam thereafter, a hysterical finale which lasted till the Norwegian referee blew for time. You can see the goals from the game on Youtube.
   Denis Law, who made his debut just after the 1958 World Cup and had suffered through those desperate failed campaigns of the 1960s, gushed: 'I don't think I have ever been happier in my life.'
   Below are the full front and back pages of the Scotsman, and while the paper is a bit yellowed with age, the memories remain fresh. In those days, football on the front page was something extraordinary, and that just about sums up what this meant.