In autumn of 1946 a select team of footballers from the southern Polish region of Silesia embarked on a four match tour of Scotland which helped Polish football on the road to post-war recovery.
   The players, mainly from clubs in Krakow and Chorzow, had just emerged from years of wartime hardship, with several of them having been held in concentration camps. When Poland resumed international matches against Norway the following summer, seven of the players from this tour were in the team.
   The games at Dundee, Morton, Ayr and Hampden also added an attractive new dimension to the domestic scene in Scotland. The tour was scheduled to start on 9 October, but a travel delay in Berlin forced a short postponement. When the players finally trained for the first time, they were described by a curious reporter from the Dundee Courier: 'Fifteen well-built young men, clad in snappy training suits, yesterday lapped Hampden Park and went on to reveal slick ball-control. They were the Silesian footballers having their first trial spin since their arrival in this country. Their names read like anagrams.'
   He added that only one had been in Scotland before: Michalski had served in the Polish Army and left Britain just nine weeks ago to be repatriated. Five had been in concentration camps, while others took part in the underground war in Poland.
   Managed by M. Kiesielinski, Director of Physical Education in Poland, they were based in Glasgow, where they were entertained by a visit to the cinema, a tour of the city including Ibrox Stadium, and watched a League Cup tie between Queen's Park and Morton. 

For their first match, versus Dundee, they travelled by bus and it turned into quite a festive occasion, starting with lunch at the Royal British Hotel hosted by the Dundee directors, then before the game the players were presented to Lord Provost Sir Garnet Wilson, followed by the national anthems.
   The match attracted over 10,000 spectators to Dens Park on a Monday afternoon, including 13 truckloads of Polish Army soldiers, and they saw the home team record a comfortable 2-0 win. Then in the evening there was a reception where the players were presented with plush Scotch terriers, decorated with a tartan ribbon.
   Incidentally, the same day Sparta Prague met Rangers at Ibrox and they faced Hibs later that week.
   The Silesian tour continued two days later in Greenock, and this time the visitors showed their worth by racing to a three goal lead by half time. Although Morton pulled one back, and Garth missed a penalty, it was a good win.
   Then on Saturday, there were 8,000 at Somerset Park. Ayr took the lead before Cieslik quickly equalised, and the Silesians scored what proved the winner after the break, although it took a brilliant penalty save by Brom from Smith to retain the lead.
   The tour ended where it began, at Hampden Park, where 15,000 turned out to see a Third Lanark and Queen’s Park select face the Silesians. The visitors recorded their third successive win, although it was a close match.
   Despite Cieslik and Brom apparently being offered professional contracts by Scottish clubs, all the tourists returned to Poland where they were greeted as heroes when they finally arrived at the railway station in Katowice, and taken for a festive breakfast.
   However, it would not be long before Scottish football gained a Polish flavour. There was a large Polish Army base near Fraserburgh and inevitably some of them were decent players and decided to remain in the country when demobilised. The first to move to a Scottish League club was Feliks Staroscik, who signed for Third Lanark in May 1947, and he was soon followed by Alfie Leszcz (shortened to Lesz) at St Mirren and Konrad Kapler at Celtic.

Silesian squad
Walter Brom (Ruch)
Erwin Michalski (AKS)
Antoni Barwiński (Tarnovia)
Stanislaw Flanek (Wisla)
Mieczyslaw Gracz (Wisla)
Bak (right half)
Tadeusz Parpan (Cracovia)
Antoni Andrzejewski (AKS)
Jan Wapiennik (Wisla)
Stanislaw Baran (Ruch)
Gerard Cieślik (Ruch)
Mieczyslaw Nowak (Garbarnia)
Marian Jabłoński (Cracovia) captain
Maksymilian Baranski (AKS)
Stanislaw Różankowski (Cracovia)
 
In the first match at Dundee, the Silesian team was Brom; Barwiński, Flanek; Wapiennik, Andrzejewski, Jabłoński; Cieślik, Nowak, Gracz, Różankowski, Baranski. For the other three matches, Parpan replaced Andrzejewski, and Baran replaced Baranski. Michalski and Bak did not play.
 

Results

October 14, 1946
Dundee 2 (Turnbull 4, 75), Silesians 0 
Dundee: Bennett, Follon, Ancell, McKenzie, Gray, Smith, Gunn, Pattillo, Turnbull, Ewen, Hill.
 
October 16, 1946
Greenock Morton 1 (McInnes 51), Silesians 3 (Cieślik 2, 12, Różankowski 41)
Morton: McFeat, Maley, Kelly, Mitchell, Aird, White, Cupples, Divers, Jones, Garth, McInnes.

October 19, 1946
Ayr United 1 (Morrison 30), Silesians 2 (Cieślik 32, Gracz 57) 
Ayr: Paton, Monaghan, Henderson, Smith, McNeill, Nesbitt, McGuigan, Harkness, Morrison, Wallace, Beattie. 
 
October 23, 1946
Third Lanark/Queen's Park Select 1 (Ayton 61), Silesians 2 (Nowak 9, 79) 
Third Lanark/Queen’s Park: Hamilton, Carabine, Kelly, Letham, Whigham, Harnett, McCulloch, Mason, Aitken, Ayton, Mitchell.

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.

The newest addition to my page of digitised books is the small volume of Football Reminiscences, written by Third Lanark's Frank Walker in about 1928. It is a fascinating tale that reveals a lot about playing conditions and attitudes in Scottish football between his senior debut in 1916 and his last match ten years later.
   It is a curious feature of Scottish sporting biography that very few footballers committed their story to print in the early days, and not until the 1950s was there any kind of vogue for publishers to attack the market: George Young's Captain of Scotland (1953) was the first hardback of the genre. Before then, just a few paperbacks were produced: James B Niven's Scottish Football Story (1906), Mattha Gemmell o' Clyde (1943), Jerry Dawson's Memoirs (1949) and A Lifetime of Soccer by referee Peter Craigmyle (1949) being the others that come to mind. There were ephemeral pamphlets such as those by Walter Arnott and Tommy Walker, while some footballers were interviewed about their lives for newspapers, but few of these stories are readily available. All of which makes Frank Walker's little booklet particularly valuable for the historian.
   Walker was a talented but not particularly famous footballer, with one international cap to his name, a defeat to Wales in 1922. That match was a bit of a farce, with two inches of snow on the ground at kick-off and snow continuing to fall through the game; yet players in those days seemed to accept challenging conditions without complaint: "It was very difficult to pass at all accurately, as the weight of the ball was continually changing. On one occasion the ball would be coated with snow, whereas on the next occasion you might receive it direct from a throw-in after the half-back had carefully removed all the snow. It was practically impossible, therefore, to judge correctly on the spur of the moment the exact weight necessary to transfer the ball the desired distance."
   Another anecdote told of the time he scored a hat-trick for Third Lanark against Aberdeen, and on returning to the pavilion at the end of the game the club chairman, a Colonel Wilson, presented him with 'a crisp treasury note wherewith to provide the necessary hat'.
   Frank Walker served in France in the Great War with the Royal Field Artillery, and was lucky to escape unscathed. He combined his football career with work in the civil service as an income tax inspector and died in Edinburgh in 1949, aged just 52. 
   To read the book, and a range of other Scottish sporting works, go to the Digitised Books page.
   

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.