It is a curious club, Aston Villa, a dulled edge that was once so sharp. It is today synonymous with a certain, slightly pallid conservatism, when more than once it had been at the very limit of what was allowable, could be contemplated and might be accepted. It is a club with a trophy cabinet full yet with its dust settled. It is a football giant that nods off regularly. And, of course, it is a Birmingham club yet has on its badge a rampantly Scottish, golden lion.
That Aston Villa was in its early days a Scots club is without doubt. However, it did not start that way. It emerged in 1874 from a Wesleyan church and cricket club at Villa Cross, just west of Aston, then a developing suburb to the north of the then town of Birmingham, and practised and played whatever fixtures it had a mile or so away in Aston Park. And it was there, it is said, that a young Scot was walking, watched a kick-about, noticed they were one short and asked to join in. His name was George Ramsay and he was an early wanderer, an economic migrant, Glaswegian-born in 1855 in Tradeston, with the family moving to Cathcart, his father from Liff in Forfar, his mother English, born in Woolwich. He is said both to have already arrived in Birmingham at 16 in 1871 , which seems a little young, to work as a clerk in a brass foundry and to have played by some reports for Rovers, and by another for Oxford, both from the city's neighbouring Queen's Park and Crosshill areas, "in several first-class games". Both were early Glasgow teams.
In fact there was a George Ramsay, who did play for Rovers as goalkeeper, when 'keeper was a recognition that in a team hands could be used as well as feet by a designated player, rather than a position. The date was October 1873. It was in the first round of the first ever Scottish Cup and Rovers were beaten in Glasgow 4-0 away by Eastern, for which none other than
Peter Andrews
seems to have scored past him in the second minute. Then the following year Rovers had a walk-over in the first round to Hamilton in October 1874, a bye in the second round in November and did not turn up in December for their quarter-final against Queen's Park. In addition Oxford first entered the Scottish Cup in 1874, defeated on 10th October 2-0 by Rangers, which means firstly Ramsay, amateur footballer, would have been free to travel south shortly after that date at the latest and secondly make an Autumn walk in Aston Park later that same year entirely feasible.
Whatever the truth George Ramsay in Birmingham was something of a revelation. He described what he found as,
"as a dash at the man and a big kick of the ball."
What he brought was at least a couple of season's knowledge of the game, an understanding of the different approach taken to it north of the border, at that time a style that was a mix of dribbling and controlled interplay, no doubt some contacts back home and an ability amongst the Birmingham Scots community to make more and his own prowess on the field. He was later described as,
"a capital all-round player and could take any position and give a good account of himself."
Meanwhile, Ramsay still in the club's foundation year had on the basis of his ability been made team captain, was taking training, using the Scottish 2-2-6 formation, attracting spectators especially to see him perform and had brought in two other players, John, actually James so Jimmy, and Billy Lindsay. The brothers were in Birmingham, probably to learn more about the ironmongers’ trade, notably also George Ramsay's father's, and perhaps including brass moulding. However, they too were wanderers, if temporarily, and also Scots, both born in far-north Sutherland with Caithness connections, Billy, like Ramsay, in 1855, James, two years later, the middle sons of four of the late James Lindsay Snr, a Golspie blacksmith and also ironmonger.
Both the Lindsays, it has to be assumed, were amateur. They must also have had prior footballing knowledge. How else could they otherwise pass it on to the Brummies? Moreover, due to the timing, that knowledge had to have been gained in or around Glasgow, as the only region in Scotland that the game was being played. Perhaps they had also spent time on the Clyde before arriving in the English Midlands. Perhaps they even knew Ramsay from there. Certainly they would soon move on. By 1881, if not much earlier, Billy Lindsay had left Birmingham, returning to Thurso to run the local branch of the family business and in Wick marry Kitty McKay, a girl from near-by Latheron. With her he would have five children, a by, James, who would die with a year of birth, and five daughters, Indeed he would at the age pf seventy-nine die in Wick in 1934, his younger brother having taken over the business in Thurso, and be buried there. Meanwhile James would return to the village of Golspie itself, where on the main street there is to this day a hardware store, an iron-mongers, Lindsay & Co., once owned by it and still bearing the family's name. However, by then “John” Lindsay, and Ramsay himself, both of whom realised that to prosper the club had to take gate-money, had found for the new club a new ground, one around which a wall could be built, blocking the view and making it necessary for spectators to pay to enter. In fact it may well have been Jimmy Lindsay, who was really finder. The site, now a garden centre, was at Perry Barr immediately opposite a known, existing smithy, which might well have also served as the team changing rooms.
Aston Villa played their first game, a friendly, at the new Perry Bar ground on 11th October 1876. It was against Wednesbury Town. Billy Lindsay, aged twenty-one, played up front, James Lindsay, nineteen just, in defence. It is assumed George Ramsay, also aged just twenty-one, was also playing, also now as a forward and probably on the left. Villa won 1:0. Seven years later The Birmingham Daily Mail, would write of Aston Villa:
It might have been shortly after the 1875-76 season that, whilst Ramsay remained, the Lindsay brothers returned north, James. There names ceased to feature at the Villa. James, who is recorded in his home village in 1881, was perhaps even to found his own local team before seeming to disappear from records. Golspie Sutherland FC is, perhaps not coincidently, the oldest club in all North Scotland. It was formed in 1877, two years before even neighbouring and now Highland League club Brora Rangers and a decade before clubs in Inverness. However, it was at about that same time that back in Birmingham a fourth Scot must have become aware of what had been set in motion and himself become involved with Villa, not on the field but off. His name was William McGregor. He had been born in Braco in Perthshire in 1846, he had served an apprenticeship as a draper in Perth itself before in 1870 following his elder brother, Peter, and two sisters, Mary and Ellen, to Birmingham and in Aston opening a draper shop."Until 1876 there is little of note with which the club can be identified, but towards the end of the season of 1876/77 (ed: this should be 1875/76) they were joined by three Scotchmen, two brothers named Lindsay, who came from Golspie in Sutherlandshire, and Mr G. B. Ramsay.The Lindsays showed the Villa how to play a good back game, and Ramsay, who had for several seasons previous been considered a very fair forward in the Glasgow Rovers, a club which when it died gave several good players to the Queen's Park, taught them dribbling."
McGregor is first said to have become interested in football on watching a game at Ardoch by Braco between his local team and visiting Callander stonemasons. It would not have been association football – it did not exist then - but a version of the rough Ba’ Game then played widely in Perthshire, notably at Callander. Whether he himself played the old football in Perthshire is unknown and contact with its new Association form in Scotland must have been minimal as in 1870 it barely existed so it must have been in Birmingham his interest in the game was ignited. He joined Calthorpe, a club run by a fellow Anglo-Scot, Glasgow-born, Fife-raised John Campbell Orr, who would be Secretary of the Birmingham FA for many years. However, although certainly enthusiastic but never much of a player he is then said to have turned to officiating, to what was then on the field “umpiring”, and it seems it was that brought him contact with Ramsay, the Lindsays et al resulting in an invitation probably in 1877 to help with his local team.
Once involved with Villa, McGregor quickly became club administrator, as the following year, 1878 in August, it recruited its fifth early Scot, Archie Hunter. Hunter, a back, who would convert to centre-forward, had been born in Joppa in Ayrshire in 1859, begun his career with Ayr Thistle, one half of the future Ayr United, before moving to Third Lanark, and an 1878 Scottish Cup Final loss to Vale of Leven. In that team he had played alongside J.J. Lang, now recognised as probably the World's
first professional footballer
when in 1876 he had moved from Clydesdale to Sheffield, who had managed then to return to Scotland still as amateur but clearly with some stories to tell that could well have influenced nineteen year-old Hunter, also said to be in hardware to trade. He too then travelled south arriving in Birmingham with perhaps more than a suggestion of some sort of financial arrangement. He came to join Campbell Orr's Calthorpe but unable to find it was somehow intercepted and instead persuaded to join Villa. And it is from Archie Hunter that we have descriptions both of the Aston Villa he found,
and of the football, not Association football, he had played as a child.“Aston Villa (seemed) to me as a club that had come rapidly to the fore and asked me to become a member of it. I hesitated for some time, but at last my friend told me that a "brother Scot," Mr. George Ramsay, was the Villa captain and that decided me. Mr. Ramsay was a Glasgow man and had exerted himself very considerably to bring the Villa team into the front rank.”
It is noticeable from the newspaper description of the early influence of Ramsay and the Lindsays that there is mention of back-play and dribbling. However there is none of what would quickly become the hallmark of Scots football, the "passing game". In fact it is no surprise. The style only developed with Vale of Leven from about 1874-5 and was only adopted by other teams as The Vale proved it worked by winning from 1877 three Scottish Cups in a row. Archie Hunter had in 1877 and 1878 seen it at first hand, for Ayr Thistle in losing in the competition in the semi-final in January 1877, 9-0, and in March the following season the final 1-0 for The Thirds. Indeed, it must have been him that brought it as he came south, Ramsey having been too early, and it was more than likely reinforced when at Villa the following year he was joined by the next of his three elder brothers, Andy. He too was a very talented player, who, it was reported, in Scotland had not only played, like his brother, for Third Lanark but also, it is said, for Vale of Leven itself. Then there was a third brother, John, older still, who not only also played for Third Lanark in two losing Scottish Cup Finals but won four Scotland caps too and the eldest, James, also said to be a sportsman but twenty years senior and therefore in his prime before football arrived."football in those days was very different to what it is now or ever will be again. There were no particular rules and we played pretty much as we liked; but we thought we were playing the Rugby game, of course, because the Association hadn't started then. It didn't matter as long as we got goals; and besides, we only played with one another, picking sides among ourselves and having friendly matches in the playground. Such as it was though, I got to like the game immensely, and I spent as much time as I could kicking the leather."
And, back in Birmingham on 13th December 1879 it would be Andy who scored Villa's first ever FA Cup goal in a 1-1 draw against Stafford Road from Wolverhampton, by which time the club had in October 1878 decided to have a badge on its kit, decided because of the Scots input on and off the field and tried one that didn't make it through the wash. It was then that William MacGregor, "Mac" as he was known, is said to have sent George Ramsay to Scotland charged with finding some that were more robust. He returned with the lion rampant, they were sewn onto the shirts, eventually to wear out and be replaced in 1880 but are the essence with the lion still at its centre of what we associate with the club today.
Archie Hunter would take over from Ramsey as Villa captain in 1880, one Scot to another. It would be the year too that William McGregor was elected club president, becoming the following year a member of the club's Board of Directors. George Ramsay himself would retire from playing in 1882. Perhaps it was injury as he was only twenty-seven and that seemed to be it. Villa meanwhile would regularly tour Scotland, playing the best of the Scottish side in an era when Scotland conquered all. It was in this period too that Andy Hunter would be the club tactician, that is until 1884, when he was forced to give up playing because of tuberculosis. In fact, with James having already died back in Glasgow aged just forty, four years later at the age of only twenty-four Andy would also be dead, said to be of a heart attack, having emigrated to Australia. However, meanwhile, George Ramsay, having seemed to have left football behind, was back. As Andy Hunter began to struggle with his health so Ramsay returned in an administrative, becoming Club Secretary, a position he was to hold for the best part of forty years, if not immediately then certainly by 1886, in what was a difficult period financially. It is said that year William McGregor even averted club closure.
Nor was Ramsay's appointment to be the only changes. By 1887 not only were the Secretary, the captain and the Chairman of the club Scots, so was the President and the Vice-President. The former was George Kynoch, the MP for Aston Manor, a local businessman, who had been born in Peterhead in 1834 and had moved south with his parents, first to Worcester and then to Birmingham. Kynoch had originally been a banker but had gone into ammunition production, his factory incidentally called The Lion Works. And although he sold up his business in 1884, it had since become the still Birmingham-based IMI plc, Imperial Metal Industries, and his period in office did not last long it seems to me his potential role at that time has always been underestimated. In 1888 he was made to resign, due to a number of outside problems, leaving under a cloud for South Africa and dying there in 1891 but he was a wealthy man not without influence and must have played some role firstly in saving the club and in what would come next. And the latter was Fergus Johnstone, who son, Charlie, a teacher, would play half-back in the First team alongside both Ramsey and Hunter, also becoming a club director and in the 1920s Villa's Vice President in his own right. In fact Charlie Smith Johnstone, although born in Norwich after the family moved south but before Birmingham, would actually die in Canonbie in Dumfriesshire, having simply returned to his father's and mother's birthplace..
Aston Villa had paid its way at first by playing friendlies. It had won the local Birmingham Senior Cup in 1879, had entered the FA Cup that same year but since had never progressed beyond the fifth round. In its first year it had failed to turn up for a third round match against an Oxford University team that would make it to the final and lose to
James Princep's Clapham Rovers. From then it would be mostly fourth round, respectable and lucrative enough. In 1885 however, having been without a doubt shamateur, the Hunters had to be paid, the club turned professional. It did so as soon as paying to play was made official, represented in the discussion that led to it by William McGregor. Said initially to have decried payment, he had clearly come round to acceptance, actually admitting his club was already making payments to players, not least to Archie Hunter. And then he was hit by the consequences. With the higher wage bill it inevitably produced, his club promptly fell in the Cup second round 2-0 away to Derby County. No wonder finances were very tight that season, and pockets, perhaps not least Kynoch's, had to be dipped into in order, it is also said, for the club to avoid looming bankruptcy and the afore-mentioned potential closure.
Nevertheless the Villa survived and had been recruiting well from an increasing supply of local talent. From 1882 there were several internationals in the ranks and in 1886-7 it all came good. Round after round was ticked off until in the semis the opposition was Glasgow Rangers. The game was at home at Perry Barr, the last time a Scottish team played in the FA Cup. Villa won relatively easily 3-1 with as a reward a final against local rivals, West Bromwich, also won by two goals with none in reply. 15,000 at The Oval in London watched as Archie Hunter, a man never allowed to play for Scotland officially because he stayed south of the border but had just scored in every round of the competition, lifted the trophy.
However, the following season Villa was knocked out in the fifth round of the FA Cup by Preston North End at home. And it was perhaps that defeat, which then prompted William McGregor to make a suggestion that he must have been mulling over for some time and would revolutionise football, in England first, then worldwide, indeed change all sports, certainly professional sport, in perpetuity. Thus it was on 2nd March 1888 not quite two months thinking time after the Preston defeat but enough time to see revenues tumble as Villa's Saturday matches had been cancelled five Saturdays in a row that McGregor wrote his ground-breaking letter to both his own Board and a select group of Northern English clubs proposing discussions of a football combination. It said,
“Every year it is becoming more and more difficult for football clubs of any standing to meet their friendly engagements and even arrange friendly matches. The consequence is that at the last moment, through cup-tie interference, clubs are compelled to take on teams who will not attract the public.I beg to tender the following suggestion as a means of getting over the difficulty: that ten or twelve of the most prominent clubs in England combine to arrange home-and-away fixtures each season, the said fixtures to be arranged at a friendly conference about the same time as the International Conference.This combination might be known as the Association Football Union, and could be managed by representative from each club. Of course, this is in no way to interfere with the National Association (The FA); even the suggested matches might be played under cup-tie rules. However, this is a detail.My object in writing to you at present is merely to draw your attention to the subject, and to suggest a friendly conference to discuss the matter more fully. I would take it as a favour if you would kindly think the matter over, and make whatever suggestions you deem necessary. I am only writing to the following – Blackburn Rovers, Bolton Wanderers, Preston North End, West Bromwich Albion, and Aston Villa, and would like to hear what other clubs you would suggest.I am, yours very truly,William McGregor (Aston Villa F.C.)P.S. How would Friday, 23 March 1888, suit for the friendly conference at Anderton's Hotel, London?”
McGregor’s letter is perhaps the most important in the history not just of football but of modern sports, leading to the transformation of the finances of the game of football and serving as a blueprint for many others but what he was doing was little more than recognising realities. The FA Cup win had put Villa in an influential position vis a vis other clubs yet it like them was still clearly financially fragile. He was also being absolutely pragmatic. Football had certainly seen a growth of income but with the new and costlier, openly professional era it was not enough anymore simply to rely on income from friendlies and an unpredictable Cup-run. McGregor knew this first hand, recently and for his own club almost fatally. He may even have feared a repetition. Moreover he understood that urgently required additional income would come only from guaranteed games and therefore if not necessarily enhanced then regular crowds.
The clubs, he contacted all in much the same position as his, nigh on bit his hand off. Its contents were taken up immediately, suggesting concern, need, indeed fragility not just at Villa but everywhere. The suggested meeting itself did take place, on the day before the 1888 FA Cup Final and in London. With no interest from southern clubs, a second was then held in Manchester, from when progress was astonishing. In six months, little more than a closed season, it led to the formation of what was rapidly renamed The Football League, supposed at the suggestion of yet another Scot,
Thomas Mitchell, Secretary of Blackburn. It provided its member clubs, all professional, what they needed; a guaranteed fixture list. And it was a name chosen specifically with no reference to England, to allow the possibility of Scottish clubs joining as and when as was, indeed, McGregor’s hope, perhaps Mitchell's too, although at the time no Scottish club was constitutionally able to.
Initially made up of twelve clubs, with no more than one per town or city and all from the North and Midlands, and McGregor as Chairman the league kicked off on 15th September 1888. It was a turning-point, generating regular income, the model for similar leagues world-wide, easily won in the first season without losing a game by FA Cup winners, Preston North End, with Villa as runners-up. But more importantly it also caught the public imagination in a different way to the Cup. Spectator numbers increased all round. Money was being made by those clubs that were in as others not included simply folded. In a decade Aston Villa's income would grew six-fold and football as a business was on its way, more clubs were attracted and in 1892 the new league was expanded to two divisions. Professionalism now not only had been officially sanctioned as had been the case since 1885 but also commercial muscle and could not be resisted, even if in Scotland, as the floodgates opened for players moving south, resistance was tried. There league football, duplicating McGregor's basic formula, came first in 1890, ostensibly amateur, although the game was clearly shamateur, and professionalism only in 1893.
The 1889 runners-up spot for The Villa would effectively be Archie Hunter's last hurrah. In 1890 in a game against Everton he too suffered a heart-attack, just as his brother had two years earlier, and collapsed. He was not to play football again, although he remained at the club working behind the scenes. However, his health was broken. Having been replaced at centre-forward by local boy, John Devey, he would see his club take its first league title in 1894 but die just six months later, aged only 35.
However, the Scots at Villa would both continue in the shape of McGregor and Ramsay and come again in a second wave both on and off the field. On it and aged just eighteen the full-back, John Baird, had come south from Vale of Leven in 1888 but seems to have been farmed out to Kidderminster clubs for a couple of years before getting into the Villa first team in 1891 and staying four years. James Cowan, also from Vale of Leven had followed a similar path, had first joined the Villa squad in 1890 and would stay a decade, his younger brother, John, would also join, in 1895 from Rangers, remaining until 1899 and John Campbell would join that same year for two seasons. Off it with the departure of Rynoch and McGregor's increasing involvement with the League a new figure emerged, Frederick Rinder. Born in Liverpool he had arrived in Birmingham in 1876, been a club member since 1881, became Financial Secretary in 1892 and in the following five years introduced a number of reforms that saw the arrival of the second wave of players and that of Joe Grierson as club trainer, i.e. coach. Then in 1898 Rinder became Villa chairmen in 1898, replacing McGregor and staying in post until 1925.
In some biographies Grierson is said to have been born in Durham, in others in Dumfries. There are Joseph Griersons of the right age born in Leadgate, Durham and Irongray, Dumfries. What, however, is of no doubt is that both his parents, John Grierson and Joanna Kennedy were Scots-born, he in Dumfries and Galloway and she in The Borders. An coincidentally or not, given George Ramsay's original calling, John Grierson was a one-time brass-finisher. And what is also of no doubt is that Grierson's period in charge of club coaching was its most successful. He arrived at The Villa in 1893, aged thirty-eight, from the Ironopolis club in Middlesbrough. He coached the first team until at least 1910, John Devey was his assistant from 1901, and stayed at the club until 1915, returning aged sixty to Middlesbrough during hostilities and remaining there until his death in 1937 at the age of eighty-two. And between 1893 and 1915 Aston Villa was to win the league title in his first year, than again in 1896, 1897, 1899, 1900 and 1910, and the FA Cup in 1895, 1897, 1905 and 1913.
In the meantime William McGregor had continued his work with The Villa, the Football League and on the FA committee. In 1895 he became his club's vice-chairman and in 1897 for a year chairman, by which time the club had just moved to Villa Park, the then new ground said to have been secured largely by Charlie Johnstone, son of Fergus. MacGregor would also serve from 1888 to 1894 as chairman of the FA under both Marindin and then Lord Kinnaird. Later under Kinnaird he was vice-president, at which point the two most powerful men in English and therefore World football were both Scots, one native, one Diasporan. And, of course, having been the Football League first chairman and re-elected in 1891, in 1893 he stepped down because of ill-health, was made honorary president in 1894 and life-member in 1895 continuing a philosophy that lasted for the best part of a 100 years and might be well worth re-considering today. Under McGregor’ stewardship the League clubs experienced great revenue growth but the Scot in typical Scots fashion saw the organisation as based on mutual support and cooperation, mutual being the important word. Until the 1980s gate receipts were still shared amongst the clubs, ensuring that no wealthy club could dominate. There was no Premier or premier league. He also did not see the League as a rival to the FA. Philosophically too he was inclusive right until illness in 1910 forced retirement from his football activities and led to his death at 65 in 1911. One wonders how England's, and more importantly Scotland's, relations with FIFA might have fared with the long-term practicality of McGregor and then the Scots FA's Bob Campbell to draw on both before and immediately after the Great War rather than the somewhat shorter-term bombast of Kinnaird and then, another name to ponder, Clegg.
It also became noticeable that with MacGregor's death and the departure of Grierson Aston Villa began on the field to struggle. It also played fewer Scots. There were, of course, exceptions. In the early 1920s at centre-forward there was Ian Dickson for a season, 1921-2, before, having moved on to Middlesbrough, injury curtailed his career at the age of just twenty-three. Then Vic Milne arrived in 1923 from Aberdeen. Playing at centre-half he had been brought in from Aberdeen as a rapid replacement of Tommy Ball, who had been murdered on 11th November that same year. A qualified doctor, Milne would stay at Villa Park for six years, then become a local GP and the club's doctor for many years and in 1924 he was joined by Jimmy Gibson, although the two would rarely play together. The son of Neilly Gibson, the former Scottish international, Glasgow-born Jimmy would play for the
Wembley Wizards
in 1928 but not really be a regular in the first team at The Villa until 1929. It would finish as runners-up to Arsenal in 1930-01, winning more games at home but fewer away. And that was exactly how it finished two years later also with Gibson now joined by
Danny Blair, also Glasgow-born but Canadian-raised, at full-back and as the other full-back, Joe Nibloe, born between Glasgow and Paisley.
That was to be the Villa high-point. The team was ageing. As Nibloe went to Sheffield Wednesday in 1934, aged 31, Danny Blair to Blackpool at the same age in 1936 and Jimmy Gibson that same year aged 35 into retirement Aston Villa, in spite of recruiting both George Cummings and Alex Massie was for the very first time in its history relegated. Joe Grierson would live to see it just. He died the following year. George Ramsay did not. Aged eighty he died in October 1935. The team he had been in charge of until 1927 had that season to that point won three, lost four and drawn one, so safely mid-table, after which, as if in mourning, there were no wins for seven games, and until the New Year just two wins in fully fifteen. In fact Villa would win only thirteen games all season but a remarkable six away. Only Sunderland in top slot and Stoke in fourth would win more. Where it was lost was at home with a seeming pall of mourning hanging over Villa Park, just seven won, no-one worse and, for the first time ever, relegation.