He sits with the cup on his knee, centrally part of team, Vale of Leven, that was in the 1870s critical to the flowering of football in Scotland, for Scotland read working-class and World, and integral to Scottish domination of the international game for a decade and half. His name was Ferguson, a surname that echoes in football to the present day. But this Ferguson was not Alex or Barry, Duncan or Bobby but John.
The team that had taken the field for the World's first official international in November 1872 had been drawn from one club, Queen's Park. The reason was simple. It was virtually the only club, at least, the only one north of the border. But by the beginning of the following year there were several others. In Glasgow itself they emerged from cricket clubs, Granville and Clydesdale. There the new game was decidedly middle-class. However, in Leven Vale in Dunbartonshire, where Queen's Park had staged one of the their highly successful demonstration games cum sessions the interest from elsewhere. The area's sport was the far less genteel
shinty and those attracted were from the textile industry, weavers and dyers and the like. Football, unlike in England, in Scotland and for the first time became working-class.
The result was rapid. When the Scottish Cup was played for the first time in 1873-74 Queen's Park would take the trophy, two of the other teams in semi-finals, Clydesdale and Blythswood came from cricket but the fourth was Leven Vale's Renton. Then three months later, when Scotland took on England in Glasgow there were four players in the team not from Queen's Park. Two were from Clydesdale, Robert Gardner ex. of Queen's Park, the master tactician and goalkeeper, and Fred Anderson, the man to score Scotland's first ever home goal and be one of two Glaswegians to take football to China. One, John Hunter, was from the military team 3rd Lanark and the final one was John Ferguson.
John (Jake) Ferguson had been born and brought up in Bonhill, between and on the other side of the Leven river from Alexandria, with its club, Vale of Leven, and Renton. At twenty-four in 1872 and nearer twenty-six than twenty-five on his first cap he had come to football late. However, it is hardly surprising that he had taken to it so quickly. He was a natural athlete, a noted sprinter and shinty-player. He had both speed from the former and crucially an understanding of teamwork from the latter.
However, the sprinting had already caused problems. Athletics for money was an integral part of Scottish, working-class sporting life. Ferguson had won won races and on that basis local rivals, Dumbarton, had objected before its match against Vale of Leven; what would be its first game in the first Scottish Cup. The Vale was expelled from the competition.
There was, in fact, never any suggestion that Ferguson had taken money for football and outwith the Cup he continued to play friendlies and to impress. His first cap was even awarded whilst the complaint of professionalism still hung over him. His attributes were obvious. He was powerful and lightning fast, a goal scoring, left-wing flyer. But there was more to his game than simple pace that had a specific source, his shinty prowess.
Ferguson seemed to be a Leven Vale local but like many in the community and specifically at Vale of Leven Football Club, the Highland club, he had roots elsewhere, which would explain not just his involvement with the ancient, Highland game but also his enthusiasm for it. Even as he played football he would continue to wield his caman. In fact he was the son of parents, who formed part of the drift from Scotland’s countryside to its cities and, if minimally, to the south. His father was born in Killin in Highland Perthshire and his mother in Balquidder, home to Rob Roy, in equally Highland Stirling-shire. Shinty and even the Ba'game might have been in his blood and it stands to reason that the former would lead to a synergy particularly between the two thousand year-old game with stick and small, round ball and the new one with the feet and the larger sphere.
The synergy took the form of the transfer of the concept of pairings. When in 1872 Robert Gardner had organised Scotland's defence and by building from the back against expectations achieved a score-less draw, the forwards had extemporised. Gardner might even have tried to bring a little order to them as well by changing places with Robert Smith on the left-wing after 45 minutes but without obvious impact. Yet within four years it had changed. Not only on the right wing were Queen's Park's McNeil and McKinnon but on the left was John Ferguson, back after a second year's objection to his running, and in tandem with his club colleague, John Baird.
The following year, 1877, Ferguson would be there again in what would be his finest season. That year, having won the previous one 3-0 in Glasgow, would produce Scotland's first international victory away, in London of course, and 1-3. The Vale man would score twice, the first the opening goal and the second the first in the international game with a direct free-kick, in the year when for the first and far from the last time there would be more than eleven Scots players on the pitch. The others would at least have been caught by fate, born elsewhere in the Empire or in England of Scots parents, but in this game there was not just William Lindsay, born in India, whose grandfather had been Provost of Dundee but also John Bain, not just with Scot-born parents but himself born and sending his early childhood in Bothwell. Moreover, then having travelled to North Wales Scotland and Ferguson would also beat Wales away. It was the and Scotland's second international against the Principality. The first had been the previous year in Glasgow and Ferguson had also played again opened the scoring and in front of a then World record crowd.
But back to 1877. Ten days after Wrexham Ferguson would be there again as Vale of Leven faced Rangers in the Scottish Cup Final. It was a game, or rather a series of three games not without controversy but the club from outwith Glasgow eventually emerged the winner by the odd goal in nine. The following year too the trophy again would be Vale of Leven's this time against 3rd Lanark, a team that would soon break up, Reddie Lang and Archie Hunter taking the paid road south, to Sheffield and Birmingham respectively. Indeed had Renton not lost its semi-final it might have been an all Leven Vale, all working-class affair. And there would be more. Two weeks after winning the cup final Vale of Leven would be in London. On the 13th April 1878 they met The Wanderers, England's FA Cup winners, the epitome of the English game, indeed of upper middle class football for what was effectively a World Club Championship. Moreover they won with ease, 3-1.
Perhaps the win was regenerative. Even after such a long season The Vale would be back the following year, 1879, winning the Scottish Cup for a third time in a row with victory once more over Rangers and more strife. After a 1-1 draw in the initial game, Ferguson scoring his team's goal Rangers objected to a further one of theirs that had been disallowed and refused to turn up to replay. He, Jake Ferguson, was, however, now thirty and, although it seems he played at club level well into his mid-thirties, at international level his involvement was coming to an end. That year, 1878, he would not be in the line-up against England but would against Wales, scoring the fifth in a 9-0 home victory. Again he would be paired with club colleague, Baird, this time on the right-wing with the Rangers pairing of Watson and founder, Peter Campbell, on the left. It was the Vale man's sixth and final cap, although probably not his final trophy. There is every likelihood he was in the Vale of Leven team, having been knocked out in September in the First Round of the 1879-80 Scottish Cup 4-3 away to Dumbarton in what must have been a humdinger of a match, that played only eight more games that season, not losing a single one, turning its attention instead back to the old game. The Glasgow Celtic Society had donated a cup to be competed for by West of Scotland shinty teams. In its inaugural year it had been won by Glasgow Cowal. In its second year the final was between Vale of Leven and Glencoe with Ferguson's team winning 4-2 after extra time. Indeed such was the strength of shinty still in the Leven Vale that in 1881 and 1882, although Glencoe would take both Celtic Society finals, the losing opposition on each occasion, with Vale of Leven re-involved with football, would be its nearest neighbours, Renton, similarly knocked out of the Scottish Cup early.
For all Jake Ferguson's football, shinty and athletics or strictly shinty, athletics and football prowess he, despite his athletics' history, would never take the professional, footballing shilling. Perhaps he was simply too old to have been worth the interest of English clubs. However, it is noticeable that none of what was called the Old Vale team would take the road south, for footballing reasons anyway. That would be for the next generation of players as the team was rebuilt in the early 1880s but never matured. As they came through they were picked off. Four went to Burnley. Perhaps they might have stayed with Ferguson's guidance but he too was gone, not from Scotland but from Leven Vale, to be a publican in Kilmarnock, which is where he died in 1929 aged 81, clearly remembered by his friends, who had thrown a huge party for him on his eightieth birthday but never sufficiently appreciated by either by football history and us, the Scots football of today.