As any author knows, after you go to press things will crop up that you wish you had known about. Since I published my history of Dunblane FC in November, a number of extra details and photos have come to light about some players.
   But one thing I hadn’t expected was that Dunblane had another internationalist in their ranks. His name was John McGuire. 
   All I knew about him was that he was a local lad who was in the team’s last Perthshire Cup winning team of 1913, and had gone on to play for St Johnstone, Crieff Morrisonians and Dundee Hibs - not exactly the pedigree of a top level player.
   Recently, however, I found out that McGuire emigrated and carried on playing football across the Atlantic, where he won the American Cup twice and in 1925 was selected for the USA national team. What is more, he was inducted into the US Soccer Hall of Fame.
   John McGuire has a fascinating life story. He was born in Dunblane on 3 March 1893, the son of Willie McGuire (1858-1939), a founder of Dunblane FC and a professional athlete on the Highland Games circuit.
   Brought up in Millrow, John played with the successful local juvenile side, Dunblane Rovers, and broke into the Dunblane team in 1911 as an 18 year old, making an immediate impact by scoring five goals in a 10-0 defeat of Comrie in the Perthshire Cup. 

Next season he was inside right as Dunblane won the Perthshire Cup for the twelfth and last time, beating Breadalbane 3-0 in the 1913 final. The following week he was given a trial by St Johnstone in a league match against Abercorn, and that summer he signed for Saints. He played at centre forward for the first half of the season, but only featured sporadically thereafter and was allowed to leave in the summer.
   Dropping back to the amateur ranks, he joined Crieff Morrisonians but after just two matches the club closed for the war. Exempted from military service, apparently due to an old head injury for which he sometimes wore a cap while playing, he worked as a tailor in Perth and from 1915 to 1919 played for Dundee Hibs, who were in the wartime Eastern League.
   In the spring of 1919 he emigrated to Toronto, where he signed up with Ulster United. The local press soon described him as a 'star centre forward', but he was not around for long as after he got married in 1920, to Annie McNaughton, he moved to New York. There, his football career really took off.
   He joined the unlikely sounding Robins Dry Dock FC, at a time when many US soccer teams were backed by industrial concerns. Based in Brooklyn, they were crowned national champions on 19 April 1921: McGuire scored his team’s first goal as Robins Dry Dock won 4-2 against Scullin Steel of St Louis, Missouri, in the USFA National Challenge Cup Final, played in front of 6,000 spectators at Fall River.

The following season, his team had changed its name to Todd Shipyards (the owners of the Dry Dock), and again they made the national final, also against Scullin Steel.  McGuire scored twice in the first 20 minutes to put his side two up, but Scullin fought their way back into the game to win the cup, scoring their third a few minutes from the end.
   McGuire’s third final in as many years was on Easter Sunday, 1 April 1923, by which time he had joined Paterson FC in New Jersey. The opposition was yet again Scullin Steel, and a record crowd of 16,000 in the old baseball ground at Harrison, NJ saw an exciting 2-2 draw after extra time. There should have been a replay the following week, but Scullin announced they could not play as four of their team were professional baseball players and obliged to resume their summer contracts, and another three were injured. Paterson were awarded the cup by default.
   One curious game he played for Paterson was in September 1922, against the touring Dick Kerr’s ladies team from England. McGuire scored once in a 6-3 victory.
   He carried on moving clubs, spending one year each with New York Field Club (1923-24), New Bedford Whalers (1924-25) and Brooklyn Wanderers (1925-26), and it was during this last season that he won his international cap. At the age of 32, he played for USA in a 6-1 win over Canada, at Brooklyn on 8 November 1925.
   Having hung up his boots in 1926, Johnny McGuire remained in Brooklyn, where he worked as a machinist, for the rest of his life.  He was one of the earliest inductees to the US Soccer Hall of Fame in 1951, just the second year of its existence, and died on 18 November 1962.

Hampden Park in Glasgow is Scotland's national stadium, and has a long history going back to 1873 over three incarnations, with the current stadium being inaugurated by its owners, Queen's Park FC, in 1903.
   What few people realise, however, is that there was another sports stadium called Hampden Park in existence long before the Scottish one was thought of, in fact before Queen's Park was even founded: it opened way back in 1853 in Springfield, Massachusetts. It was laid out by the Hampden Agricultural Society and had a long and varied history as host to baseball, bicycling and horse racing, not to mention a mustering site for the American Civil War. 
   You can see what it looked like in the fine colour engraving above, which was produced by the Springfield Bicycle Club in 1886 to promote a championship meeting at the ground. Around 1940 it changed its name to Pynchon Park, then in 1966 the grandstand burned to the ground in a mysterious fire. That was the end for the stadium and the site is now a car park for an industrial estate; you can see more photos and background at this link and also read about its history here.
   The common link between the American version and the Glasgow stadium is that they both ultimately owe their name to the English patriot John Hampden, although by different routes. In Connecticut, Hampden County was established around the town of Springfield in 1812, so it was a natural choice of name for the owners. 
   In Glasgow, however, a terraced row of houses was named Hampden Terrace by the builder George Eadie around 1870 (he himself lived in Hampden Park Villa), and when Queen's Park built their football ground overlooked by this new street they simply decided to name their ground after the nearest set of buildings. While the choice of an English statesman may seem strange for a Glasgow suburban street, this was not Eadie's only such choice: the east end of Hampden Terrace was originally called Cobden Place, after the Liberal politican Richard Cobden.

To mark this week's international between Scotland and USA at Hampden, I wrote up the fascinating tales of the two men who had played football for both countries, Barney Battles and Jack Marshall. It was published in the Scotsman (click here to link).
   While the story of Battles is relatively well known, finding out about Marshall was quite a challenge. He was generally assumed to have been born in Saltcoats in the late 1890s or even - according to one of his American clubs - in 1902. A detailed look at his playing career made those dates highly unlikely, as he started out with Saltcoats Victoria in 1911, but nobody in census returns seemed to match his profile. It was further complicated that his birth name was John, but he was generally called Jock or Jack in the press.
   Experience has taught me there are always clues out there, and the breakthrough came in a newspaper cutting that described his departure for the USA on the Cameronia in September 1924. I was able to check the ship manifest on ancestry, which listed him, his wife and three sons. The next stage was to find his marriage, which meant a trip to the ScotlandsPeople centre in Edinburgh, and by noting his parents on the marriage certificate I eventually found his birth: 24 April 1892 to John Marshall and Annie Cathcart at Braehead, Baillieston. The location was a surprise, but it transpired his father was a miner at the Braehead pit (no longer there, the site is just off the M8 motorway east of Glasgow), and it was clear from later census returns that the family moved to Saltcoats while John junior was a small boy.
   His football career could be tracked through the British Newspaper Archive and US soccer archives such as the excellent Bethlehem Steel site, but what happened to him once he hung up his boots? I found John Marshall in the US censuses in 1930 and 1940, living in Kearny, New Jersey, working as a labourer. That seemed to be the end of the line, as New Jersey deaths are not online, but by a stroke of luck I found a family tree - again on ancestry - that seemed to match. I got in touch with the owner of the tree, and she was able to provide not just a precise date of death, 10 October 1964, but also a photo of his gravestone in South Amboy, NJ, where he is buried with his wife. In return, I could provide details of his life.
   All in all, a satisfying conclusion to the search for a notable player, who was not just a captain of Scotland but also a highly respected star in his adopted USA.

John 'Jack' Marshall
Born Baillieston, Lanarkshire, 24 April 1892.
Died Morgan, New Jersey, 10 October 1964.

Playing career
Saltcoats Vics 1911-14 (inc a trial for Rangers res)
Shettleston Aug 1914 (three games only)
St Mirren 1914-19. Won Victory Cup 1919
Middlesbrough Nov 1919-23
Llanelly 1923-24
Brooklyn Wanderers 1924-25
Newark Skeeters 1925-27
Brooklyn Wanderers 1927-28
Bethlehem Steel Aug 1928- Aug 29
(On loan to Philadelphia Centennials for two games in Nov 1928)

Representative appearances
Feb 1913, junior international trial
3 January 1917, Home Scots 2 Anglo-Scots 1 at Hampden, War Fund match (scored one)
19 April 1919, Ireland 0 Scotland 0 at Windsor Park, Victory International

Seven caps for Scotland
12 Feb 1921, Scotland 2 Wales 1 at Pittodrie
26 Feb 1921, Ireland 0 Scotland 2 at Belfast
9 April 1921, Scotland 3 England 0 at Hampden (captain)
4 Feb 1922, Wales 2 Scotland 1 at Wrexham (captain)
4 March 1922, Scotland 2 Ireland 1 at Celtic Park
8 April 1922, England 0 Scotland 1 at Villa Park
16 Feb 1924, Wales 2 Scotland 0 at Cardiff

One cap for USA
6 November 1926, USA 6 Canada 2 at Brooklyn Ebbets Field (scored one)

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.