Let me first say that this article is entirely the result of coming across an article, first published in 2015 in the Northern Echo and written by Chris Webber. It is entitled "When the Saints went marching in", I have used it as the source of my incessant search for Scots involvement in football outwith Scotland and have added what I have been able to uncover and correct. The result is a fascinating insight into Scottish football in the 1880s and the way it involved, due in Scots no matter what their origin.

The "Saints" in question was perhaps the first, probably the second football team to emerge from the industrialising, North English, market town of  Darlington. At its source was the church of St. Augustine's and its founder was a certain William Nollie cum Nolli. The story is, to begin with perhaps, a familiar one. A Scotsman arrived in the Durham town. He looked to continue to play the game he had practiced back in his home-town of Edinburgh and found nowhere to do so. So he took a ball into a local park and began a solo kick-about. But he did so not without being noticed. As Chris Webber reported it from contemporary accounts,

"A rumour spread that a Scotsman with bare legs and an Irish shirt was running amok."  

and        

"His antics attracted a crowd of hundreds."

plus

"Soon afterwards, he got several men from St. Augustine's Church to play with him, and thus the first football team in Darlington was formed."

That final assertion, that the team was the first in Darlington, is unlikely to be true. Haughton-le-Skerne F.C. probably predates it. Darlington F.C. would be formed in 1883 and there is some doubt about when Nolli's park antics took place. Yet it would be his club,  Darlington St. Augustine's, that would the first from the town to enjoy success. In 1889 it won the Cleveland Cup and at that time it was reported that the club was eight years old, so formed in 1881, to which on victory was added that,

"Nolli was chiefly instrumental in the club developing from very humble beginnings, from a park team, in fact, into the important football organisation which it is today.....Irish and Scotch songs were naturally well to fore."    

So who was William Nolli? There are clues already. He was Scots. St Augustine's Church is not Protestant but Catholic and the surname was not typical of north of the border. Moreover, it was said that back hame he had played for Hibernian, although Webber reported there was no evidence. In fact there is. Hibs records have a William Nolli, Edinburgh-born in 1857, working as an upholsterer, living at 12, Balfour St. off Leith Walk and a defender, playing for the local club in 1880, so aged 23-ish. Moreover, on Saturday, 21st August 1880 a W. Nolli of Hibernian F.C. won the "running high leap" at a sports event at Powderhall. Furthermore, in the census of 1881 a William Nolli is to be found at the Balfour St. address, the eldest of three sons and three daughters of John,  and Margaret Nolli. John is a Leith-born Spirits Dealer, i.e. publican. Margaret, nee Harvey, is Leith-born too. A decade earlier the family, recorded as Nollie, with John already in Spirits and William a 14-year-old Apprentice Upholsterer, is living in Stead's Place, two more streets down Leith Walk. They had been there too in 1861 with William four years-old so born in 1857. In fact he was born in December 1856, by Coltbridge, with his father then a journey-man guilder and carver. That in itself is perhaps a clue. John Bartholomew Nolli had been born still in Edinburgh in 1826. His birth was recorded by the Catholic Church, but by the age of fifteen, an apprentice optician, he was again in Leith living with his aunt, who had married Lewis Butti, a qualified optician, born in "foreign parts". Butti and Nolli are both Italian names so the family allegiance to Hibernian was not Irish- but Italian-Catholic. John Nolli and thus William were early Italian-Scots, many of whom would arrive in the Central Belt, not as purveyors of coffee, ice-creams and fish-suppers but as statue-makers, carvers and guilders, looking to make a living from the growing population of Irish origin. As such William was the forerunner of Lou Macari and many others, who integrated into the nation and the national game, even, like  Johnny Moscardini, taking it to and helping to implant it in their former homeland. 

So thus far both facts and event fit in well with arriving in Darlington as reported locally in the early 1880s. However, there is also a Nolli recorded in December 1884 as playing left-back for Hibs against Hearts in the Edinburgh Shield at Hibernian Park, the ground used by the Hibees from 1880 to 1891. But then is there really any incompatibility? Willi Nolli went to Darlington and simply came back temporarily. And FYI the Leith team won 3-1 and also included  James McGhee, quite probably the first Catholic to play for Scotland before actually briefly managing Hearts and then emigrating to Philadelphia. He was also the father of   Barty McGhee, who played for the USA to the semi-finals in Uruguay the first World Cup in 1930.

Thus it seems that Italian-Scot William Nolli had actually been one of Hibernian's early first-team players. He may have then crossed the border to look for work but whether that would have been with furniture or as one, in the footsteps of  J.J. Lang,or  Fergus Suter and the small number of Scots players, perhaps at that time two dozen at most, to be taking a chance as shamateurs in England is unclear. Certainly, once South, off-field he would also follow the typical path of many Scots shamateur footballers north of the border and some professionals once in England in becoming a publican. He ran The Old Dun Cow until his death. Moreover, the pub remarkably is still there on Post House Wynd. This, whilst on-field he would captain the club he founded to some success. He is the player above in the photo holding the Cup. With Darlington, known as The Quakers, only finishing fifth St Augustine's would in 1890 win the initial Northern League title. And there were to be some notable firsts. Sunderland had worn their red and white stripes for the first time in defeating St. Augustine's 1-0 in 1887. The World's first ever penalty was scored against and at St. Augustine's, by Rotherham Town on 5th December 1891.

However, the club would also not be without controversy.  In 1890 the team had included what were euphemistically called "Saints new men". There were five changes from the eleven of the previous season, with complaints inevitably following not least because they were said all to be Scots, apparently but perhaps unsurprisingly mainly from Edinburgh clubs, in England able to turn openly professional. Indeed one, Auld Reekie's Tommy Cleghorn, seems already to have been there for some time, arriving in 1888, aged just eighteen, he was to stay two seasons before moving on to Blackburn, Liverpool and others.

Futhermore, like the Hunters at Aston Villa William would even be joined in Darlington and in his football team by his brother, Jack.
John Nolli Jnr was six years younger than William and if the latter had been active with Hibs in 1880 perhaps it was he, who had made the 1884 appearance before he too came South. Yet here too there is a problem. Jack married in 1882 but it had already been in Darlington, his wife Margaret Brennan, later known locally at Molli Nolli, at which the footballing spotlight might be thought to fall on a third brother, Louis. But then he was only seventeen at the time with after all the best explanation indeed finally that one of the elder brothers really had simply made a wee trip north and got roped in for a one-off. 

Willie Nolli would pass away in 1912. He had done well out of his pub, dying a fairly wealthy man, leaving his widow, Emily, whom he married in the town in 1892, and others £10,634. Additionally contact from Jack Nolli's great-grandson, Keith Allen, confirms that on William's death Jack, who has worked alongside his brother, took over the business. And John would outlive his sibling by twenty-seven years, dying, still in their adopted, Durham home-town, in 1939, retired and a widower., Molli Nolli having clearly predeceased him.

As to Darlington St. Augustine's, the club, shortly after Willie Nolli's death, with him thought to be buried in its source's churchyard, it was no more. Having topped the Northern League in that first year it finished its second in last place and withdrew. It then yo-yo-ed in and out for a decade, finishing as runner-up in 1901 but in 1914-15 was now not last but second from bottom, never to recover. By the time The Great War came to an end it had been disbanded. Willie would not see it go but Jack would