1897-1939
The change of the Scottish international eligibility rules in 1896 was revolutionary in its true sense. The tables had been turned, clearly in terms of inclusivity, but also on the field of play itself. Certainly it coincided with a crop of top-class players emerging in Scotland and remaining and returning from the south because club football north of the border was booming; players like Neilly Gibson, John Campbell, Alex Smith,
John Tait Robertson, Bobby Walker,
Harry Rennie, R.S. McColl and R.C. Hamilton. Moreover, with still more still
like
Alex Raisbeck and Andy Aitken, heading south directly the choice of player was qualitivilly as wide as it had ever been and wider still in terms of numbers with one, two and even three for every position. However, it is and was results that matter and with both talent and a recognisable style of play, The Cross, results also reverted to what they had been twenty years earlier. After the 1898 stutter against England, when
James Cowan, captain for the day turned up drunk for the match and never played for Scotland again, and the failure to replace him adequately in 1899, from 1900 and the inclusion of Raisbeck Scotland did not lose any of its next ten fixtures.
And it did not go unnoticed with the responses from the opponent that mattered, England, three-fold. Firstly it recognised that the days of the gentleman player, the amateur not with a professional club, were drawing to a close. Subsequent teams speak for themselves even if there was something of a false start. In beating Scotland in 1898 three amateurs, two more than the opposition, had been fielded, although one was the great G.O. Smith, but there had been Cowan's, shall we say, disruptive input. However, in winning again in 1899, this time without opposition help, there was one to Scotland's two, and the one was again G.O. Moreover, in losing to Scotland away in 1900, although one was still Smith it was three to Scotland's one, that one being Bob McColl, who scored a hatrick. And finally in 1901 with the result just a home draw, having twice been ahead and one of its goals offside, it was, with both Smith and McColl once more present, again three to one, at which point a trend, in fact two, seemed to be recognised. Firstly, Scotland's team was literally more professional; it selected a greater number of professional players. Secondly, the more gentleman players England included the worse the result.
From that realisation came England's second response. In 1902, as the result of the Ibrox disaster another home fixture, for the first time it chose no Gentlemen. As it happened neither did Scotland, McColl having joined Newcastle from Queen's Park, so there was for the first time true comparability. Scotland was two up in half an hour with a strong wind behind it. England scrabbled it back after the interval and it finished a fair 2-2 draw. There was equality. Then in 1903 there were again no amateurs on either side. Scotland won away after being a goal down, to which England responded the following year with its own away win. On a horrible day it had enough in the locker, despite one amateur, for victory by a Steve Bloomer only goal with Scotland having to make four late replacements. In defense Rennie and
McCombie
could not play, in the forwards Hamilton and Livingstone. And it was a narrow England win that was repeated in 1905, this time at home and again with no amateurs present. Again there was equality.
However, that was not to be the case in 1906, at least for one of the sides. In the England team there were four surprise inclusions. Firstly, amateurs were back, two of them. In fact the team in defeat was even captained by Stanley Harris of Old Westminsters and the Corinthians. Secondly, and England's third response, if one that had been seen before, it once more played Scotsmen by up-bringing or background. The reinstatement of amateurs had more to do with footballing politics than talent. G.O. Smith had retired. In fact it was to be amateur football in Southen England's last stand. That same year saw the creation in London of the Amateur Football Defense Council, which in 1907 as the Amateur Football Alliance was shunted off sidewards by the professional game in the North and Midlands. The reintroduction of Scots, to bolster the ranks, successfully as it happens, with, after an initial glitch, no losses in the next three years, begun two months earlier when a certain
Colin Campbell McKechnie Veitch had been selected against Ireland. It continued against Wales in the next game and against England became twofold. Colin Veitch, at centre-half was joined by James Conlin on the left-wing.
Colin Veitch, born in Newcastle, of Scots grandparents, playing his entire career for his home-town club, was a remarkable man in many ways; not just a hugely talented sportsman but an actor, musician, intellectual and political and sporting activist. Like
R.C. Hamilton he had been destined for a teaching before professional football intervened and on which he was to have a major impact. Renaissance-man and one of the great thinkers of the game he was amongst the founders of the Player's Union, as Newcastle captain, one of the principal author of the Off-Side Trap, football manager and journalist. James Conlin was born in Consett in County Durham but, whilst he was a child, his family and he, like David Weir two decades earlier, returned home to Coatbridge, where all his siblings were born but seemingly without his footballing talent. He would begin his football career with Falkirk and Albion Rovers before, and not without controversy, being bought by Bradford, moving on to Manchester City and Birmingham City. Married to Scots girl with a child born in Bradford and a second in Coatbridge itself, he would at the end of his career return to Scotland to Airdrie and Broxburn, before enlisting at the start of the Great War in the Highland Light Infantry and like too many Scots make the ultimate sacrifice, killed at Passchendaele in 1917.
James Conlin would win just a single cap, a 2-1 loss to Scotland at Hampden. Colin Veitch would win six. The 1906 Scotland game was his third. His fourth would be against Wales in 1907, at left-half, a position he did not play at his club. That was
Peter McWilliam's. And Veitch in that game would be joined by yet another Diasporan, as he would be for following game against England. At inside-left in both games was James Stewart, known as "Tadger", again a Geordie, once more with Scots grandparents and a nickname, the origins of which is crude and also very Scots. Playing initially for Sheffield Wednesday he would join Newcastle in 1908, ending his career at Rangers as the Great War began, by when he would in 1911 have played for England for a third and last time. It was a match, which the previous year had featured Andrew Ducat at right-half, was one, in which Stewart would score in yet another draw against Scotland this time from inside-right and he would do it with a certain Jock Simpson outside him on the wing for a third cap in succession.
Arsenal’s Andrew Ducat had been born in London of a Scottish father, born in Forfar. He played cricket for Surrey and would even make one test-match appearance, against Australia in 1921, whilst as a footballer he gained six caps for England before and after the War. Two of them were against Scotland including that 1910 match. The other would be in 1920, by then with Aston Villa. The first was a defeat at Hampden, his only loss, the second a win in Sheffield. And fine sportsman to the last Ducat would even die aged 56 at the wicket at Lord’s Cricket Ground, having been a sports journalist and cricket coach at Eton. John "Jock" Simpson, however, moved in an entirely different world. He had begun his career with Falkirk, having played junior football there with Laurieston Villa and had a trial with Rangers. His goal-scoring exploits began from his début in 1905 with Falkirk fourth from bottom place but soon climbing the table. In 1908 twenty-three year old Simpson from outside-right was top-scorer on his own, netting thirty two times, the largest total achieved in a single season to that date and at more or less a goal a game. Then in 1910 Falkirk finished second in the Scottish Championship. In 1911 it was third, when, having represented the Scottish League against its English equivalent in 1910, he moved south. He chose to go to Blackburn Rovers above Everton and Newcastle, and there such was his impact that from nowhere the club took the league championship in 1912 and 1914. And also in 1911, once at Blackburn, Simpson had made his first full international appearance – against Ireland but it was the Goodall, Weir and Porteus situation all over again. Simpson did it for England because he had been born in Lancashire with a Scottish father from Falkirk, to where he had returned as a child, aged three, where he married a local girl, to where he returned again at the end of his career and where he is buried.
Jock Simpson would play eight internationals in all, in a career probably cut a little short by the outbreak of the Great War. Three were against Scotland. He would not lose, with two draws and a win. And again he was not alone as England drew on yet more Scottish Diasporan talent. Other Diasporans would be included in England lineups right up until the suspension of official football in 1915. In fact in thirty games in the Home Championship between 1905 and 1914 only seven did not have a player taking the field for England, who today would qualify for Scotland with the last to appear perhaps in terms of his long-term, footballing legacy the most important of all. His name was
Charlie Buchan.
South London-born Buchan was the son of Aberdonian parents. A forward he would start his career with Woolwich Arsenal but break into the first team at the age of 22 in 1911 at Sunderland. He would stay in North-east England until 1925 and then at the age of 34 return to Arsenal, by then in North London at Highbury, for three critical years. There Buchan, like Colin Veitch, would also make a tactical contribution to the game that has had far-reaching consequences. However, right at the beginning of his international career he, perhaps unknowingly, had also come close to changing the course of Scottish international football for half a century. In 1912, before he had taken the field for England, he was quietly asked by the Scottish selectors to play for the country of his parents. It was potentially a fundamental change to Scottish selection policy, the complete abandonment of birth as a requirement for qualification. It would have set Scotland apart from the other Home countries, even Wales. There, if a player were not born in the Principality itself, it had to be very close, Oswestry or Chester, with no-one pretending London and Scottish border were the equivalent. It would have driven coach and horses through the 1887 IFAB ruling on Empire, which in Scotland's case since Watson and Eadie Fraser had allowed not one player from outwith Scotland to be
selected legitimately. It would have extended choice presumably not just to England but to all of Britain and Ireland. It might even have in quick time allowed its extension to non-Empire countries, notably those in North America. And it certainly would have given Buchan a unique place in World football history.
Of course it never happened. The official version of events is that Buchan is said to have declined. For what reason is unknown. Perhaps he was warned off and, in any case, his international career was not over. A year later he was called up for England and, although, as with Jock Simpson, the War inevitably intervened, between then and 1924 he would play another five times for what, one hopes, might have been his second choice. The pity is that for Scotland it may well have been more. Moreover, fifteen years later football history would come calling for Buchan a second time; not for doing but thinking as he, back at Arsenal once more, provided
Herbert Chapman with the solution he adopted for the new offside rules introduced in 1925, the centre-back. Perhaps too the SFA was also warned off, not for the first time, but there was no real response, no fight. Instead, at least allaying the ghosts of
Watson and
Eadie Fraser, it contended itself with the selection that same season, 1912, for a single game, not against England but Ireland, of Sandy Bell, who although raised in Ayr had had the temerity to be born in South Africa; this whilst leaving the hard stuff to others. And it was Ireland that stepped up. Having already been the country to have thumbed its nose at the original Empire rule it now was happy to flout the non-Empire one. In 1908 against Scotland in Dublin it had selected at centre-forward a certain Billy Andrews. In 1913 he was chosen again at right-half against England in February 1913 in Belfast and a month later against Scotland once again in Dublin. So what, you might say but Andrews was not Irish, at least not by birth. Nor was he any other form of British, nor indeed Empire. Thought to be the first North American ever to play League football and officially the international game, he had been born in 1886 in Kansas City, Missouri, USA only moving to Belfast as a child. He was, if you like, the Irish Willy Maley with the difference being that Ireland either was not intimidated, did not care or, if there were a problem, it was subsumed by the outbreak of war.
The Great War was monumental in so many ways with football not immune. From the far British Diaspora it drew in many amateur players, who returned to enlist speeding up, notably in South America, the transfer of the game into local hands. Many professional footballers also enlisted and lost their lives. James Conlin was one. The great Welsh goalkeeper, Leigh Roose, another. Its result would lead to the Home Nations leaving FIFA but it would not change Scots confusion over eligibility one iota, trapping one player in particular,
Patsy Gallacher.
Gallacher was simply the most inside-forward cum winger of his day north and south of the border. His club career began in 1911. He was twenty-years old. He finished playing in 1932 having turned out four hundred and thirty-two times for Celtic, had a brief stay in America in New Bedford in southern Massachusetts and returned for one hundred and thirty-two appearances for Falkirk. Two of his sons, Tommy and Willie, became in their turn professional footballers, with Dundee, Celtic once more, Falkirk, Ayr United and St. Johnstone, two of his grandsons, Brain and Kevin, too, for Dumbarton, Kilmarnock, St. Mirren, Albion Rovers, Dundee United, Coventry, Blackburn, Newcastle, Preston and Sheffield and, of course, in Kevin's case fifty-three times for Scotland. But, although Patsy himself grew up in Clydebank and played international football twelve times and for two teams neither was Scotland. The reason was simple. Patsy Gallacher had been born in 1891 in Co. Donegal and had only arrived in Glasgow aged three. As a result he was deemed Irish, by then at least the eleventh major Scots player to have been labelled something he was not and, more worryingly to have become one of an increasing number not just to have fallen through a notional net but, having been safely in the actual net that was football north of the border, to be cast away due to the SFA's failure through lack of back-bone, in spite of notionally being in charge of what had been and would for another two decades be the most successful footballing nation in the World, to insist on change to rules that operated increasingly to its disadvantage.
After the Great War Patsy Gallacher continued to dazzle. His greatest club day came in the 1925 Scottish Cup Final, when he rode five tackles and then with the ball clamped between his feet somersaulted over the Dundee keeper for the first goal. And what combinations might have been formed internationally by him at inside-right and on the wing outside him first from 1921 Alex Archibald and even from 1925 Alex Jackson. It would have made what was for a decade an almost unbeatable Scottish team virtually invincible at a time when England at first kept it nose clean and then began to lapse, turning once more to Scots talent. In 1924, having started his international career a month earlier against Wales, against Scotland David Jack, the son of former Scottish professional and manager, Alloa-born Bob Jack, would alongside Charlie Buchan be at inside-right. And Jack would be there against Scotland again in 1928, two of nine caps he would accrue over twelve years. In addition in 1927 in beating Scotland at Hampden starting at left-half but moving to centre-half because of injury to John Hill was Sid Bishop, Sidney MacDonald Bishop. Macdonald because of his Scottish mother.
However, for all that Jack and Bishop might have been annoying in truth, although unrealised at the time, Scotland's real eligibility problems lay both in the future with some of the players not even born, and largely elsewhere, in fact about three years ahead and three thousand miles west. They began on 25th October 1930 when a player with a famous name was picked against Wales. He was
Barney Battles. Thirty years earlier his father, also Barney, had not just over decade been a full-back and half-back largely for Hearts and Celtic but had also played all three internationals matches in 1901, a win and two draws but this younger Battles was of a different cut. A centre-forward he had been born in Edinburgh in 1905 after the death of father, had for much of his early adult life lived in America, playing in the leagues there but at twenty-three in 1928 returned to Edinburgh and also to Hearts. And now in his Scotland jersey he was said to have played well, scoring the equalising goal.
Yet Barney Battles Jnr. never played for the national team again. The reason given is competition from Celtic's Hughie Gallacher. No relation to Patsy, Hughie was a fine player in his own right but he was far from the whole story. More pertinent was that earlier Barney had played another international match. It had been in June 1925, the opposition Canada, the venue Montreal and the team he played a part in in losing 1-0 was the USA. And it had not only been noted, as was the rule that no player was apparently allowed to play for two countries, even if it was not at the same time, the second country was the land of his birth and the fact that within four year Italy would make a mockery of the rule with its Oriundi, South Americans of Italian origin, but it also was pointed out. Battles seems quietly to have been dropped. Then on 29th November 1933 Hibernian's goalkeeper,
Joe Kennaway, was similarly selected against Austria. It was the match when
Jimmy Hogan and Matthias Sindelar came to call at Hampden; a match where Scotland was twice ahead and twice hauled back. Like Battles three years earlier Kennaway too played well but never again. You see, although he had Scots parents like
Eadie Fraser he had firstly been born in Canada, which was by then a Dominion and not a colony, in other words not Empire, and, secondly and crucially, he had played a game in 1926. It was in November of that year, in Brooklyn, a 6-2 loss, the opposition had been the USA and he had played for Canada. It too had been noted. About him too a word was had and just as quietly as had been the case with Barney Joe's became, shall we say, "surplus to requirements".
Except that once more there were double-standards. Indeed there was precedent, in fact precedents. The first was Ireland's playing of the American, Billy Andrews, in 1908 and 1911. That should have overcome any question concerning Kennaway's birth, even if the 1887 Empire ruling did not. Then there was the case of Jack Reynolds with caps for both Ireland and England. His case of being born in one country, growing up in another and playing for both was more than precisely matched by that of Battles. He had lived just five years in America, whereas Reynolds had lived a childhood in Ireland. Yet where was the SFA? Nowhere to be seen.