The Edinburgh front: how the capital supported the troops with footballs

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.