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SPORTS HISTORY BLOG

Over 250 articles on all aspects of Scottish sport

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With tennis about to feature in the Olympic Games, I was pleased to learn that my home town of Bridge of Allan used to be the focal point for Scottish tennis and had an Olympic connection of its own.
   In 1908, Stanley House School invited the Scottish Lawn Tennis Association to hold the national championships on its superb facilities which included eight courts. The offer was welcomed by the SLTA as previously its championships had been played in Moffat, which was considered too remote by many of the top players and had also been bedevilled by bad  weather.
    For five glorious years, the best players from Scotland and beyond converged on Bridge of Allan for a week each summer, including a number of  international stars. In July 1908, for instance, the men’s singles and doubles titles were both won by the Canadian Robert Powell, who had been a Wimbledon semi-finalist and competed in the  London Olympics the previous month. He is in this picture from 1909, sitting in the middle of the front row. 
    It was too good to last. The tournament of 1912 was marred by atrocious weather which peaked on the last day, when two of the finals had to be scratched. The following year the Scottish championships moved to Edinburgh, and with the demise of Stanley House after the First World War they have never returned.
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It is something of an achievement to play for Scotland - but only rare talents are given the honour in two sports. I was checking recently for double internationals at football and cricket, and there are a few anomalies because of the sometimes dubious status of the Scotland cricket team.
   Scot Symon won one cap for the football team, against Hungary in 1938, and famously took 5 wickets for 33 runs while bowling against the Australians earlier that year. That match against Australia was at Dundee's Forthill ground on 4-5 August, and he also played in a one-day match at Hamilton Crescent in Glasgow on 6 August, taking 3 for 44.
   In an earlier era, John Macdonald (Edinburgh University and Queen's Park) won one cap at football against England in 1886, having already played cricket for Scotland against the Australians in September 1880; he also represented his country against the Gentlemen of Philadelphia in 1884.
   Moving to the modern era, Hearts striker Donald Ford played three times for Scotland in 1973-74, twice coming on as a sub for Denis Law and finally making a start against Wales. He was a member of our World Cup squad in West Germany but didn't get a game. A talented cricketer with West Lothian, his only appearance with a Scotland XI was a 40-overs trial match against Worcestershire in 1980, and although he was a member of our B&H Cup squad that year he didn't play.
   The trouble with all the above cricket matches is that none of them is formally considered a 'first class' match.
   Which brings us to the only football international to have played for Scotland in a first class cricket match. Andy Goram won 43 caps in goal for Scotland between 1985 and 1998, when he famously walked out just before the World Cup. He played five times for Scotland at cricket from 1989 to 1991, and two of those games are considered first class: they were both against Ireland, on 8-10 July 1989 and 22-24 July 1991. By then, he had signed for Rangers and Walter Smith made it clear that he had to hang up his bat and focus on the footie. He was rumoured to be contemplating a comeback with Uddingston CC this summer at the age of 48, so there is life left in the Goalie yet.
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Photo of William Ker c1876 (copyright)

One of the most satisfying aspects of research into the early footballers is discovering their families, and I was particularly lucky to make contact with direct descendants of William Ker (above), who played for Scotland in the 1872 international then emigrated the following year.

   My breakthrough was in finding that William and his younger brother George both went to the Yakima Valley in Washington State, where there is now a local history website [link] with pictures of them both. From there I managed to trace their family trees down to the present generation and gain access to a number of excellent photos, some of which are in my book. They even had a letter to William from Queen's Park FC in 1874! 

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This impressive memorial in Glasgow Necropolis (city of the dead) pays tribute to a former secretary of the Scottish Football Association, William Dick.
   He died in 1880 aged just 29, after five years in post. He was quite an influential man, as founder and editor of the Scottish Football Annual in 1875; Queen's Park played Clapham Rovers in a benefit match a month after his death, representing the Scottish and English cup holders.
​   What is particularly interesting about the gravestone is the detailed carving, which is one of the earliest such representations of a football in existence. The grave is in the part of the Necropolis known as the quarry, at its southern edge.
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Update: an earlier carving of a football is in Wardsend Cemetery, Sheffield, in memory of a footballer called George Beaumont who was killed during a match on Christmas Day 1877. Click here to read his tragic story.

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All blog posts, unless stated, are written by Andy Mitchell.