I recently came across a remarkable collection of Scottish sports programmes dating back to the 1880s, many with a strong football connection. They are held at National Records of Scotland, having been deposited there by the renowned athletics historian, John Keddie.
   The programmes include the earliest known issues from several football clubs, including Hearts, St Bernard's, Falkirk and Dunfermline Athletic, and there are later issues from Hibs and Aberdeen. There are programmes from a variety of other clubs, whether athletics, cycling or football, and the common feature of nearly all of these meetings is five-a-side football contests. Sometimes the player names are given.
   The earliest are from 1883, and while the early issues are the most interesting, the extensive collection goes right up to recent times.
   They give a fascinating insight to sports meetings of a long-forgotten amateur era, where prizes for the winners ranged from cutlery sets to silver cups, clocks to butter dishes, but never money.
   The programme pictured above is from the Heart of Midlothian FC Sports of 1884, a flimsy four page issue which you can read in full by clicking here. This is thought to be the earliest known event programme from Hearts.

Across the city, the 1880s also saw the start of a series of annual sports at St Bernard's FC, and follows them as they moved around grounds, from Powderhall to Logie Green, back to Powderhall and then to the Royal Gymnasium. The programmes cover over three decades, from 1883 to 1904, and you can read the full St Bernard's issue from 1884 - which included five-a-side teams from Hearts and Hibs - by clicking here.

It was not just the football clubs which realised the crowd-pulling potential of five-a-side competitions. Edinburgh Northern Bicycle Club, for example, invited Hearts and St Bernard's to play in their competition in 1883, pictured here.
   Their programmes are filled with adverts for bicycles, tricycles and tandems, for racing or for everyday use, at a time when the mechanics of cycling was in its infancy. There are some weird and wonderful illustrations of these contraptions.

While much of the collection relates to Edinburgh, there are a few from further afield. The Falkirk FC Sports of 1883 was held at Blinkbonny Park, their home before they moved to Brockville two years later. It is a four page programme [click here], as is the issue produced by Dunfermline Athletic in 1890 at East End Park [click here]. Again, both teams had five-a-side competitions, with an interesting selection of entrants. 

Pictured above are the Hearts programmes for 1886, when they had just moved to their current ground at Tynecastle Park [click here]. There is also one for 1894 [click here], then a gap until the series resumes in the 1920s. One interesting item is the event in 1924 when Eric Liddell ran at Tynecastle, shortly before heading to Paris to take part in the Olympic Games, winning a famous gold medal. A full set of Paris Olympic athletics programmes is also in the collection.

When Edinburgh hosted an International Exhibition in 1890, the organisers knew that they would have to put on special entertainment to draw the crowds through the summer and autumn months.
   Alongside the displays of new technology, the balloon rides and the fireworks, a key part of their strategy was to stage a series of top class football matches at the exhibition’s recreation ground at Meggetland, in the west of the city. Over a dozen attractive fixtures featured all of Edinburgh's clubs as well as guests from the west of Scotland and from England.

This built on the success of the Exhibition of Industry, Science and Art, which was staged on the Meadows in 1886 and concluded with a short series of football matches.
   In 1890, football was a much stronger element of the Exhibition and the large crowds of visitors could be whisked to the ground by electric railway from Haymarket Station, or by launch on the Union Canal. The series kicked off in August with two local derbies, Hearts v Hibs and Leith Athletic v St Bernard's, before branching out to include teams from far and wide.
   It was still the amateur era in Scotland so the organisers made sure the players were rewarded with something tangible. The winners of the first three matches – Hearts, Leith Athletic and Dumbarton – were presented with silver cups, the first of which is in the Hearts Museum at Tynecastle; also, the players in every game were awarded medals, a couple of which have come up at auction in recent years.

Another collectable souvenir of the matches was the daily events programme which contained full line-ups of all the big games including Hearts v Nottingham Forest and Rangers v Sunderland Albion, not to mention those featuring Dumbarton, Queen's Park and Third Lanark.
   A bound volume of the programmes is held in Special Collections at the National Library of Scotland, and for several of the clubs these issues represent their oldest known match programmes. If any individual programmes ever turned up at auction they would surely fetch a high price.
   Hearts, who won all three of their matches, even played a home Scottish Cup tie at Meggetland rather than Tynecastle and their 3-0 victory over Methlan Park (from Dumbarton) in October is in the programme collection.

For Hibs the Exhibition was less memorable as the club was then struggling for existence due to the recent exodus of players to Celtic and the impending loss of their ground. Their 2-0 defeat to Hearts was followed by a humiliating 9-0 reverse at the hands of Queen’s Park, and few were surprised when Hibs effectively went out of business before the year was out (they re-formed in 1893).
   Among other interesting ties, the organisers scheduled matches to coincide with local holidays elsewhere in Scotland, which explains why Rangers came to Edinburgh on a Thursday afternoon, and the same applies to visiting teams from Kilmarnock, Moffat, Dundee and Kirkcaldy. Some games were distinctively parochial, such as those featuring local butchers and grocers, while the Exhibition staff pitched in to provide the opposition for three games, including one where Kirkcaldy FC failed to turn up against Raith Rovers.
   Although football was the main attraction, the Exhibition also hosted a rugby match in September between Hawick and Stewart's College, while the pioneering Lady Cricketers played a three day match in August.

Edinburgh Exhibition matches 1890
 
6 August: Heart of Midlothian 2 Hibernian 0
13 August: Leith Athletic 3 St Bernard’s 1
20 August: Dumbarton 3 Leith Athletic 1
27 August: Queen’s Park 9 Hibernian 0
30 August: Third Lanark 2 Our Boys 1
10 September: Butchers 1 Grocers 3
15 September: Heart of Midlothian 1 Nottingham Forest 0
17 September: Kilmarnock 8 Wishaw Thistle 1
24 September: Exhibition Attendants v Leith Butchers
2 October: Rangers 2 Sunderland Albion 0
6 October: Exhibition Attendants 0 Raith Rovers 7
9 October: Moffat 6 Kirkintilloch Athletic 4
13 October: Lochee 4 Edinburgh Postal 1
17 October: Dumfries Wanderers 8 Exhibition Attendants 0
18 October: Heart of Midlothian 3 Methlan Park 0 (Scottish Cup tie)
29 October: Cameron Highlanders 0 Lancashire Fusiliers 1 (Army Cup tie)

The pages above show the team pages from the daily events programmes at the 1890 Edinburgh Exhibition. They are all held at the National Library of Scotland. Note that the numbering of matches is not correct!

Below, some programme covers from other exhibitions in Edinburgh and Glasgow, all of which featured football.