The "CoodNaes"
Through the history of Scottish football there have been players, Scots players by descent or upbringing, who have either, having been briefly in the national team, then been excluded for an
intriguing variety of reasons, or have not simply been disallowed from inclusion in the same team for reasons of birth but left no alternative but to play for other countries. These are the "CoodNaes" and they begin with Andrew Watson, perhaps one of the greatest of them all and a pioneer in so many ways.
Andrew Watson
The first Black player in international football was a Scot. His name is Andrew Watson. He was also Scotland's only Black captain and a football administrator and patron of note. He played three times in 1881 and 1882 for the country of his father and of his choice and then was shut out by a change of rule perhaps designed specifically both to do just that and to him.
Eadie Fraser
Malcolm Eadie Fraser was a son of the manse and after growing up in Glasgow seemingly collateral damage. He from 1880 to 1883 took the field for Scotland five times, scoring four times and then like Andrew Watson was similarly and suddenly expunged. Moreover within three years he was dead. And his footballing crime - being born in Canada as his father briefly served a flock in Ontario.
Stuart MacRae
Stuart MacRae was the World's first centre-half. He was also a Highlander, a denizen of Eilean Donan, a clan chieftain buried in the clan graveyard on the shores of Loch Duich. But he did not step up or rather across for what was clearly his country but for England. And the reason was he was born in India, where his father, clan chieftain before him and Army surgeon, was serving and Empire was England.
Nick and Jimmy Ross
By his mid-thirties Nick Ross was dead. Just as a decade later his younger brother, Jimmy, would be. Both were fit men, both noted footballers in their days,. But nevertheless they succumbed to the curse of the Scottish working-class, tuberculosis. And both, sons of Ross-shire Highlanders and born in Edinburgh, might well have played for Scotland had not the rules again excluded them. Instead they had to be content between them with two league championships, the first two, an FA Cup and a the formation of the Association Football Union, the forerunner of the PFA.
John and Archie Goodall
John Goodall was perhaps the greatest forward of his time. And his time was the decade from 1888. He was brought up, he learned his football in Kilmarnock, as did younger brother, Archie, also a footballer, a half-back, of considerable note. But both had a problem. John was born in London and Archie in Belfast, which meant that in spite of their father being a Clamannanshire-born, professional soldier in a Scottish regiment and their mother from Ayrshire, John internationally could only turn out for England, fourteen times, scoring twelve, in an era when Scotland sorely needed him, and Archie ten times for Ireland.
Willie Maley
Few could have given greater service to Scottish football than William Patrick Maley; a decade as a player and forty-three more as Celtic's manager. He even played for Scotland, twice, both in 1893. That is until it was deemed in spite of spending all but one of his previous twenty five years in Cathcart Maley was not, it seems, a Scot and was grassed up The problem was that, whilst his mother had been born of Scots parents in Canada, she had returned home with his father, a Southern Irish-born soldier, via Portsmouth and Newry. Willie's elder brother Tom, also a famed Bhoy, had been born in the former and Willie in the latter. Only Alex, the youngest of the three was born at home and he did not have the same footballing talent.
G.O. Smith
The last amateur to play for Scotland was Bobby Brown in 1946, the last to captain the national team Robert Gillespie in 1933. But there is one player, who under different circumstances might have done both. It was Gilbert Oswald Smith, referred to by some as "the first great centre forward". He would attend Charterhouse School and Keble College, Oxford, play twenty internationals, score eleven international goals, captaining thirteen, perhaps sixteen times and do it all for England even though his father was an Edinburgh-brn Scot. The problem was that G.O. had the bad luck to be born in Croydon.
Bob Ferrier
He still holds the record for the most appearances in the Scottish Football League, in which he is also one of the top ten scorers. He appeared in a Scottish League XI no less that seven times, scoring five times. He was the son of a Scottish professional, also Bob Ferrier, who was born in Dumbarton, an inside-forward. He played youth football at Petershill, as a left-winger made 626 league appearance for Motherwell, scoring 255 times. He was a one-club man, a club he captained and led the the 1931-32 league title. In 1928 he had even led the team on a South American tour playing two games at the beautiful Fluminense Stadium in Rio de Janeiro. My grandfather could well have been their to watch him. Yet there was naer a cap.
And the reason is simple. Having between the ages of seventeen and twenty, perhaps nineteen and twenty-two depending on what birth date you believe, made twenty appearances for his home-town club his father made the move south, spending the next twelve years in the employ of Sheffield Wednesday. And part of the reason is that there he met a local girl, Bessie Headley, and in 1899 they married and that same year their son was born in the city and was as far as the footballing authorities were concerned English.
But on retiring the Ferrier family moved to Motherwell. Bob Ferrier senior died there in 1947. His son learned his football there. He spoke with the accent. And after football Bob junior post-war managed first Airdrieonians and then until 1948 Ayr United, whilst having married in 1922 and returned to live in Dumbarton, where at the age of 71 he died.
Jock Simpson and James Conlin
Jock Simpson was just months old when he came home. His father had been working briefly away in Pendleton in Lancashire before returning and remaining in Falkirk. Simpson began his football career with Falkirk before a transfer to Blackburn Rovers. And when his career was over he returned to Falkirk, even dying there. But in the meantime he had no choice but play his international football for England, eight times.
In contrast Jimmy Conlin died in 1917 in the Great War mud of Northern France and played just a single time for the Auld Enemy. He too had no choice for, although he was one of four siblings otherwise born and brought up in Old Monkland, he, the eldest, had been born in Consett, Co. Durham.
Charlie Buchan
Charlie Buchan never came home, although it's said he was quietly asked if he would. He might even if he had not perhaps warned off and an alternative rapidly offered; playing for England. In fact he would do so six times either side of the Great War but never frankly make the impact in white he might have in blue. For, whilst Buchan was born in South London his parents were both Aberdonian and after a fruitless first season with local Woolwich Arsenal he at least found initial footballing fame half-way home, at Sunderland, before back at the now North London Gunners both on-field success was repeated and tactical immortality achieved.
Patsy Gallacher
Perhaps the greatest player of his generation worldwide Patsy Gallacher was brought up in Clydebank. He died in Scotstoun. His sons, Tommy and Willie, and his grandsons, Brian and Kevin, also became professional footballers, as did his nephew and great-nephew and like him for Celtic. Kevin would play fifty-three times for Scotland. But Patsy never did. The reason was simple. Like Willie Maley before him he had been born in Ireland; in his case in Co. Donegal, coming to Scotland at the age of three. And it was with Ireland both before and after partition that he enjoyed his international career, postponed by the Great War, eleven times between 1919 and 1927 for the united island and once in 1931 for the Free State.
James Jackson and Sid Bishop
Neither played for Scotland. Both today could have. One played against Scotland. He was Sid Bishop, Sid MacDonald Bishop, born in Stepney in London, his father working at the Royal Mint, and in 1927 he took the field four times for England. Indeed one of those games was against Scotland, a 1-2 win at Hampden Park, where he started at left- and finished at centre-half. But his mother was born Marie Ogston in Lonmay in Aberdeenshire and aged fifteen had run away to London. Lonmay is by the way said to be the ancestral home of Elvis Presley.
James Jackson, known as The Parson, was another raised in Scotland from the age of six but not born there. In fact the family had been very itinerant. James's father, Jimmy, a professional footballer born in Cambuslang, had been brought up in Australia. There at the Adamstown Rosebud he with his brother had been two of the true pioneers of Ozzie football. But Jimmy had returned to Britain to play for Rangers, Newcastle, Arsenal and Rangers again amongst others and it was in Newcastle James had been born. He then played mainly for first Aberdeen and then Liverpool, where he was captain, took part in several trials, was never selected either at left-back or centre-half and after football became a Presbyterian minister. This as his cousin became perhaps Australia's greatest unfulfilled cricketing talent.
Barney Battles and Joe Kennaway
You can be born in Scotland, in Edinburgh, and be the son of a former Scots international of note but, even if you yourself play once for that same national team , it be decided from somewhere on high that that will be it. And, in spite of of a similar eight year career in Scottish football, much the same can be true of a son of Scots from Dundee. In the first case, that of Barney Battles Jnr. in 1930, the rapid rejection was due to an appearance again just once for another country, the USA. In the second, that of Joe Kennaway, just three years later, expulsion was once more due to just one game this time against the United States and for Canada. But then, even if that had been somehow ignored the fact that Celtic's goalie had not only lived in Canada but had been born there would doubtless have provided a second opportunity for exclusion for the pedants, whoever they might have been.
Willie Lyon and David Jack
When you are a shipwright or a professional footballer alike sometimes it is necessary to move for your work. Thus it was for the fathers of both Willie Lyon and David Jack. The latter's was Bob Jack, over almost twenty years a journeyman winger born in Alloa and with several English clubs and subsequently a noted manager. The former was Willie Lyon's born in Troon, resident for much of his life in Irvine but working briefly but critically in Birkenhead on Merseyside. Thus is was that David Jack was Bolton-born and Willie Lyon officially in Cheshire with neither therefore eligible for Scotland. In Lyon's case in the 1930s it was perhaps a major loss, whereas in Jack's a decade earlier it was perhaps not so important. As an inside-forward Scotland had alternatives in a way England did not but there is a twist, which perhaps more than anything indicates the absurdity of the then rules. Lyon was not just single but double Scotch. His mother was from Beith. Jack was English on neither side. His mother was born in St. Helier on Jersey. Moreover, although her brother was born in Gosport in Hampshire, her sister birthplace was Edinburgh and for most of her young life she too was Scots.
Don Revie and John Lyall
Don Revie was a man, who even given today's qualification rules would not have qualified for Scotland, but only by a single generation. In 1864 in Springburn Glasgow-born John Revie married Jane Hume, also a Scot. But by the following both had moved south to Hebburn in Durham, he to lay English bricks. Their second son, John, married a local girl and in turn the couple's eldest son, Donald, in 1927 fathered Don. He went on to play six times for England in a single season, a deep-lying centre-forward, went on to glory as a manager for thirteen years of a Leeds team built on Scots, managed England, married the niece of John Duncan, Fife-born, fellow professional footballer, returned to Scotland and died in Edinburgh.
John Lyall, however, would be born in Essex, die in Suffolk, be a renowned manager of West Ham, the club he played for as a young man and where he gained a single England youth cap but be Scots from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. His father was policeman born in Kirriemuir, who on holiday home would take his son to games in Dundee. And his mother was a Murray from Back on the Isle of Lewis, a village with footballing pedigree that deserves to be highlighted. Andy Gray's mother came from there too and, moreover, was also a Murray.
Joe Baker
If there was ever a case of might have been it is Joe Baker and to perhaps a little lesser extent his brother, Gerry. Gerry was born in New York but brought up in Motherwell and dying in Wishaw. Joe too was brought up and died in the same two towns. Joe made his name at Hibernian, Gerry at Motherwell itself and St. Mirren. Gerry would play seven times internationally, in a single season towards the end of his career and for the United States. Joe began internationally far earlier, at nineteen, and for the only team he was allowed, England.
Now the truth about Joe and Gerry is that they were Scots to the core. Their mother was Motherwell-born., their grandmother on their father's side Dundee-born. They spoke broad Lanarkshire but trapped, the last to be so. And at the time their presence in the national team that would otherwise have been their choice would have made a difference at a crucial time.
Gordon Milne
He played for five English clubs, two hundred and thirty-six league games for Liverpool alone, became the manager of six clubs, three English, three abroad, notably in Turkey, worked alongside Bobby Robson for six years at Newcastle and served as Chief Executive of the players' union, the Professional Footballers Association. He also in a single season played fourteen times internationally. He might even have been seen as the natural replacement in the Scotland team for Dave Mackay, when he broke his leg in December 1963. However,he was otherwise engaged, playing for England, even against Scotland in 1964. And the reason was simply that even though his father was a professional footballer from Dundee and his mother was Dundonian too Gordon had been born where his father had been playing at the time, Preston.
Gordon Milne
Rose Reilly
And finally there is Rose Reilly, the inspiration of this whole page. As an amateur she would play ten times for Scotland, then be banned by the SFA probably for being payed to play and move to France and Italy, where she qualified on residence and there was selected twenty-two for more international matches with the Italian national team, scoring thirteen time. There is nothing I can write about her that would better the film made by Margot McCuaig's Purple TV so below is the YouTube link to it. Watch it and be inspired.