In this article it is assumed that the origins of football in Scotland are understood. A synopsis is that it had from 1867 been played by Queen's Park and almost no others, was virtually extinct north of the border but was revived by the moving to England of the Smith brothers, first Robert and then James. They continued both to keep connections to home, James even dying in Moray, and to turn out in London for West Norwood. It was participation that resulted in Queens Park, in return for accepting the rules of the Football Association in London, receiving an invitation to take part in the 1871-2 FA Cup, which it nearly won. The Cup-run then stirred interest north of the border and prompted the organisation of a match to be played between Scottish and English XIs in Glasgow and it was this 1872 international that, firstly, planted football in Scotland and, secondly, saw the Scots not beaten, in spite of being smaller physically, supposedly slower and by inference less skillful, not least because three new, indeed revolutionary tactics - formation, pitch-doctoring and bus-parking - were employed by Scots captain,
Robert Gardner.
Now, whilst there is no evidence that in the three years following 1872 there were any obvious changes in the basic formations used by successive Scottish teams. There was experimentation, tactical and otherwise, and by both camps. In 1873 for England it was tactical with the adoption of Gardner's 2-2-6. For Scotland it was personnel with the attempt in London at the Kennington Oval to introduce London-born,
Arthur, Lord Kinnaird, of later FA infamy, Indian-born, Henry Renny-Taiylour and Scots-born, London-based, John Blackburn. Playing their football not in Scotland but England, in English conditions, on English pitches and in an English fashion the two Diasporan- and one Anglo-Scots, all forwards, were no doubt talented but ultimately disruptive; not just to the middle of the attack with the move of Wotherspoon and McKinnon to right- and left-wing respectively, Thomson from half-back to inside-forward, his replacement by Gibb in defence and the dropping of Alex Rhind, later with his sons, James and Robert, who would also play for Queen's Park, to be an important figures in Highland football, Jerry Weir and James Smith but also to the Scottish team as a whole. There was a loss of coherence from playing familiarity. Scotland would lose 4:2.
In 1874 again it was personnel for Scotland and for England formation. Robert Smith, who was soon to move on from London to America and a distinguished career in Wyoming business and politics, was replaced in defence long-term at club and country by Charles Campbell. James Smith’s position would be held briefly by Frederick Anderson of Clydesdale, who was to take football to China, before
John Ferguson
of Vale of Leven, Queen’s Park’s first nemesis, became the new star on the left wing. England played seven forwards, no half-backs, three full-backs and, for the first time ever, a single, designated centre-forward. It did not work, resulting in a first international defeat for the country of football's birth, completely baffled by Scotland’s,
“swiftness and playing-together power”,
the
“close dribbling”,
i.e. the control of their lighter opponents, and its nimble players’
“passing of the ball....in a way that completely astonished.....”.
Yet the following year, 1875, England persisted with three across the back and no half-back. Moreover it played a Central American. The designated centre-forward was of a father born in Turkey, a mother on Malta and himself had first seen life in Mexico. How he qualified for England is a moot point. Additionally Scotland itself tried the lone centre-forward in the form of John Macpherson from Clydesdale, with the role of the second, central forward unclear. The changes seemed to work for both teams. England avoided a second defeat. The game was drawn, 2:2, Scotland having to come back twice for what was also to be the first time defeat away in London was avoided.
In the 1875 Glasgow football scene too there was tactical tinkering. In a friendly between Queen’s Park and London’s The Wanderers, Kinnaird’s club, the English took the field still with fundamentally a 1-2-7 formation but on either wing there were pairings with both players not side-by-side but one behind the other each other on the touch-lines; what might be described as 1-2-2-5. Meanwhile the Scots, retaining the 2-2-box defence, also paired vertically but not just on the wings but in the centre as well. It resulted in a six-man block up front in a 2-2-[3-3] and it clearly worked. Queen's Park would win 5:0. And at Vale of Leven too there are suggestions of pairings. There an
Alex Lamont seems to have played at lone centre-forward between wing-pairings and even possibly in front of a three-man half-back line with the latter's origins in another game, at which the club also excelled,
shinty.
It might have been that same Queen's Park formation or something very similar Wales, with its gentlemanly Scottish connections through
Dr. Daniel Gray and the
Thomson brothers, adopted in playing Scotland for the first time the following year in 1876, again at Partick. Certainly there were wing pairings with two centre-forwards but perhaps side-by-side and not one in front. Scotland too seemed to take it on board but adjusting it subtly a la Vale of Leven. Using Billy Mackinnon instead of Macpherson as the advanced centre-forward in a 2-2-3-2-1 in front of the man generally recognised soon to become the World’s first professional player, the one-eyed James (J.J.) Lang, it proved effective in both defence and attack with Scotland running out easy 4:0 victors.
It was not a shape, however, that was retained by Scotland for the next game – against England. It was the game which saw the introduction to international football of both the cross-bar and half-time. Until then the bar had been a tape and teams had changed ends after each goal. It also saw the return for Scotland of John Ferguson, the subject of a first spat over professionalism, and his pairing with fellow Vale of Leven team-mate, John Baird on the left, Third Lanark’s William Miller on the right wing and three from Queen’s Park centrally. For England the conventional box-four defence was re-adopted but the forward-line had once more two centre-forwards and a bias to the right. Again it did not help. Scotland was 3:0 up in thirty-five minutes against again bigger and heavier opposition and that was also the final score.
However, 1876 must have provoked thought amongst the Scottish selectors. In the 1877 game between the Auld enemies both sides rearranged. Scotland had a new goalkeeper, Robert Gardner temporarily replaced by the much younger McGeoch, who had previously played against Wales. Perhaps the younger McGeoch legs, with the 'keeper still very much an outfield player still, albeit the one who could handle the ball in his own half, allowed Scotland then to play one full-back and three at half-back, whilst up front three of the six now came from Vale of Leven, one of, as with Wales a year earlier, the two now out-and-out centre-forwards, John McDougall paired with Smith, Mauchline's Dr. John Smith,John McGregor, beside McDougall with Ferguson on his own on the left. They were joined on the right by a retained Billy Mackinnon and Richmond of Clydesdale, in much the same shape as England a year earlier. England, on the other hand, may have mistakenly perceived a possible weakness in new cap, Ranger’s first internationalist against England, Thomas Vallance, on the right side of Scotland’s defence and played with two outside-lefts as well as two centre-forwards. They also appeared to have been intent on defending in greater depth again with still three full-backs but now an additional, single half-back. Thus Scotland had three effectively half-backs and one full-back, more a triangle than a box and England one half-back and three full-backs.
In the end the Scots had it right. England lost for the first time at home, 1:3. Its players were said individually to have held onto the ball in attack too much and been loose at the back. The Scots simply passed the half-back out of the game as the central Scottish forwards kept the English full-backs busy. Scotland was 0:2 up in thirty-five minutes through wingers Ferguson and Richmond, England getting one back in the second-half before Ferguson added his second.
It was also in 1877 that Vale of Leven F.C. was to take the first of its three successive Scottish Cups, Queen’s Park having been holders for the first three years since the inception of the competition. And in The Vale's campaigns are more hints that success was in part due to still more new tactical thinking, honed at the club with beer bottles on a table-top and further suggesting cross-fertilisation from the club's Highland roots. The new thinking was a subtle but important change to the shape seemingly employed by the club from 1875. It consisted in attack of the moving slightly inside of the two “secondary” players, the rearmost players in the wing pairings, to create what was a pair of inside-wingers as they were known, embryonic “inside-forwards”. Thus with the wingers staying wide, keeping the full-backs busy and the central forwards the half-backs these inside-wingers could almost inject themselves both around and between those same, box-four half-backs and into the opposition goal area. However, the wing adjustment also had three, perhaps unexpected, additional effects, two defensive and one in attack. In defense the first would be the creation of not just one but two boxes, one on top of the other; the original, solid one comprised of the backs and half-backs and a second, if looser, one, of half-backs and inside forwards. The second was that under pressure it blocked earlier any central attacks, forcing of them wider still, whilst in attack the third was the ability to turn that defence into literally en bloc attack.
It was a style of play that seems to have been used at club level, by Vale of Leven and increasingly others, to greater effect the following year, 1876, and greater effect still and also by the national team in 1877 as Scotland won 7:2 at Hampden Park in spite, with Vallance injured, of being a man down for the last fifteen minutes of the match. England had meantime again tinkered, attempting to counter the Scottish threat with four half-backs and no full-backs. It was an abject failure. Scotland was 4:0 up at half-time, 6:0 at the time of the injury. Queen’s Park’s Harry McNeil scored a brace, one in each half, and centre-forward, Vale of Leven's John McDougall, went one better, scoring the World’s first international hat-trick.
Once again in contemporary reports of the 1877 match Scottish power and the ability to play together were emphasised. This was, however, not a team just from one club, as had been the case with Queen's Park in the first two internationals, nor even from two or three as in 1874, 5 and 6 . Its players were drawn from five, crucially once more organised from the back by Robert Gardner, but now clearly embodying a style that was not just an, if embryonic, “scientific” approach, one which seems to have resolved the conundrum of converting attack into goals through better linkage via the “inside-wingers”, but also not just Vale of Leven's and Queen’s Park's but an emerging, distinctively Scottish style that all the top-flight clubs and players north of the border thoroughly understood. It may even in certain situations also have included the beginnings of yet another innovation, a new defensive one, once more perhaps influenced by shinty. It was the deliberately wider positioning still of the full-backs, replacing a square with a trapezium, creating a shape at the rear not so much a box but not unlike an “anvil”. Its results would be, firstly, better protection of the goalkeeper from lateral attacks. It pushed them outwards, in turn allowing the 'keeper to patrol a larger but more, central area now unhindered. Secondly, the full-backs became for the first time not just the de facto but obvious markers of the opposition wingers. And, thirdly, it also left by default the half-backs to deal specifically with the inside-forwards. In essence it created what were to remain the fundamental tenets of Scottish football, of the football that Scots, after more
experiment, were to take with them on their global travels, into their Diasporas and which today actually rather than theoretically form the basis of the game the World plays today.