Scottish football is, understandably, proud of the 'Scotch professors' who took the passing game to England and beyond in the pioneering days.
​   Well known names include JJ Lang and Peter Andrews who went to Sheffield in 1876, Fergie Suter and Jimmy Love moved from Partick to Darwen in 1878, the brothers Robert and James Smith played for Scotland in the 1872 international while with South Norwood, and Hugh McIntyre who first played for Blackburn Rovers in 1879.
   What is not well known is that several English footballers went in the opposite direction and played for Scottish clubs. They all came north to work or study, and there is no suggestion that they were paid to play, but they certainly had an impact on the game here. I have identified five English players in the 1870s and there may well be more.
   The most influential, although he would not have realised it at the time, was William Kirkham. The man from Darwen came to Glasgow to work, was a founding member of Partick FC in 1875, and was the catalyst for the close relationship between Darwen and Partick.
   He played for Partick for two years before going home and the outcome of that, as I have previously detailed, was the decision by Jimmy Love and Fergie Suter to head south in 1878. When Darwen faced Old Etonians in the FA Cup later that season, Kirkham's experience of Scottish football could be added to that of Love and Suter.

Kirkham was not the first Englishman in Scottish football, however. From 1874-78, James Waghorn was a key player for Alexandra Athletic, based in Dennistoun. Born in Essex, he came to Glasgow in the 1860s when his father found work on the railways and took up football, playing for the Kennyhill Park club from 1874-78.
   Alexandra Athletic, like Partick, was one of the pioneers of cross-border football and in 1876 played the first of a series of matches against Sheffield Albion, home and away. Waghorn was not only a club official, he was team captain. His elder brother George also played for the team in some early matches.

James Waghorn had an interesting career after he left Glasgow. He spent a few years in London, where he played rugby for the Reindeer club, then emigrated to Canada where he was founding editor of the highly successful Waghorn's Guides. He died in Vancouver in 1942.

One well-established English player to come to Scotland was Godfrey Turner. Born in Slough in 1854, he played football regularly in the early 1870s for Uxbridge, Windsor Home Park and Swifts. With Swifts his team took Old Etonians to two replays in an FA Cup tie, he was good enough to be selected for an England trial in 1875, and the following year he was England's umpire in the international match against Scotland at Partick.
   In 1877 he started studying science at Edinburgh University, and helped to found a football club with his fellow students. In fact, he captained the University in their first ever match in February 1878, against Glasgow University.

Turner continued to represent the University until he graduated in 1880 when he went into business in Liverpool. He played football for several more years, initially for Bootle, with one appearance for Everton, then in 1882 he founded Liverpool Ramblers where he was team captain. He also captained the Liverpool & District Select and in 1886 he even played for the famous Corinthians. Meanwhile he had a successful brewing business, and remained in Liverpool until his death in 1936.

Another high profile name who made a major impact was Thomas Britten, who was part of the famous multi-cultural Parkgrove team alongside Andrew Watson, Tommy Marten and Robert Walker.
   Britten is something of an enigma. He was born in the village of Byton in Herefordshire, just a couple of miles from the border with Wales, and his birth was registered in Presteign which straddled the border.
   This appears to have qualified him to play for Wales and he was capped twice, in 1878 and 1880, as well as being selected several other times. However, he also came very close to playing for England and was named as a reserve in the team to face Scotland in 1879.
   Educated at Doncaster Grammar School, he came to Glasgow in 1874 to undertake an apprenticeship in engineering and worked in Govan and Linthouse for four years. He joined Parkgrove FC and was in such fine form in 1877-78 that he was selected for Glasgow in the annual match against Sheffield, scoring one of the goals in a 4-2 victory. A few weeks later he made his Wales debut at Hampden.
   On leaving Glasgow he worked in Grantham, and later in Liverpool and London. He was much in demand from clubs including Grantham, Bootle and Brentwood, and was also selected for representative teams including the South, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire and London. Wales picked him against England in 1883 and 1887 but each time he called off.
   Britten emigrated in 1887 to Johannesburg, where he won the Transvaal Cup with Wanderers. He remained in South Africa as a mechanical engineer in the gold mining industry, and died there in 1910.
   These brief summaries of the stories of Kirkham, the Waghorn brothers, Turner and Britten show clearly that football skills were transferred in both directions between England and Scotland in the 1870s. Before the first glimmer of professionalism, players moved for work or study and this must have helped to spread tactics and ideas.

Everything changed in the following decade which saw a flood of 'Scotch professors' heading south, but there was one more example of the early relationship between Partick and Darwen. Two Darwen players, James Gledhill and John Holden, both came to Scotland to study medicine in the 1880s. Gledhill is thought to have played for Partick under an assumed name, but Holden made a considerable impact in four years at Edinburgh University, and was selected for Edinburgh nine times, at least one of them as captain.