- the first tactician
Read some accounts and Scottish football, Scottish, “scientific” football, which would sweep all before it at international and club level and became so valued in the developing “shamateur” and then professional game in England, might be believed to have arrived fully formed. It did not. In fact it was a process taking a minimum of a decade; one, which started in 1872 with one man, Robert Gardner, actually Robert Gardner Jnr..
On the 30th November that year twenty-two men stepped on to the West of Scotland Cricket Ground in Partick in front of about 4,000 spectators. Kick-off was at 2.15 in the afternoon allowing barely enough time before winter nightfall for the first ever official Association football international. However, two venues had actually been offered for the meeting. One, at no charge, was the then Glasgow Academicals' rugby ground at Burnbank to the south side of the Clyde along the Great Western Road from opposite St. Mary’s Cathedral to Burnbank Drive. No longer there, now built on, it was an area at least 140 yards by 70 yards; understandably more or less the standard size of a rugby field but also that of an English, Public School football pitch. The offer was turned down. The second, the accepted venue, the West of Scotland cricket ground at Partick, is still there, to the north of the river and a mile or so further out of the city. On the face of it it could have been about the same size, but played east-west with the bank as still exists to the north and a crowd behind each goal as shown in contemporary illustrations would have been at least as wide but shorter, measuring perhaps a little over 100 by 70 yards. And for its use Queen’s Park Football Club, the organiser and provider of all the Scottish players, was prepared to pay £20; £10 down and £10 from receipts.
That Queen’s Park, from south of the river, was prepared to pay for a cricket ground north of the Clyde seemingly less convenient than an apparently more suitable rugby ground offered at no cost is in itself curious. £20 represents almost a fifth of what would be the day’s takings of £102. For it there must have been a reason and it may have been tactical, decided upon by Gardner, Queen’s Park’s and that day Scotland’s captain; a man at the forefront of and with insight into all aspects of the then game, a former forward, who had newly succeeded James Grant, one of the club's founders, in goal. In attack he in an earlier game prepared cards for his team-mates with instructions on where and how to play. Now he turned his organisational talents, his talents as the game's first tactician to the other end of the pitch.
When the teams stepped out on that November afternoon England lined up as expected – in the Public School formation, a “Spinning-Top”, 1-2-7, with the roving goalkeeper of the times, able to knock the ball down with the hand anywhere in the team’s half, one full-back, two half-backs, and seven forwards hunting as a pack or, some say, with two full backs and a “fly-kick” in front, almost rugby style, behind the same seven in attack. It was a setup made for the long, narrow pitches of Eton and Harrow, Charterhouse, Oxford and Cambridge with their 2:1 length to width ratios, their ethos of individuality with its great emphasis on dribbling. However, it was not so suitable for what they found at Partick, which was, by chance or, perhaps by design much more like the shorter, wider, Scottish park pitches of the time and those to come. Milburn Park, the future ground of Queen’s Park’s great early rivals, Vale of Leven, measured only 120 x 75 yards, Ibrox from 1899 just 115 x 75 yards, as did Hampden Park, even on its rebuilding in 1903. Cathkin Park, Hampden Park as it was from 1884 until 1903 and from then until 1967 the home of Third Lanark is still there today, with its current pitch 100 x 65 yards and never capable of being more than 120 x 75 yards. As a result there were acres of space on the flanks but lengthwise space was compressed, particularly for dribbling and in front of goal. On that basis alone perhaps it suggests planning that might have been worth £20 to the smaller, lighter, more mobile but tenacious Scottish opposition.
That opposition that day, also organised by Gardner on the field, was, from defence to attack, neither 1:2:7 or even 2:1:7. His team took the field in a formation never seen before, a 2:2:6 with the same roving goalkeeper, but just six forwards and back-four of two half-backs but also two full-backs, left and right in a central box-formation. It also in approach distinguished itself from the English in two ways. The first was ethos. Unlike England with its emphasis on attack, Scotland under Gardner was built from the back. The second was practice. 1:2:7 left the two half-backs to mark all four wingers, the full-back the three central attacks and the team as a whole vulnerable to attack directly on the goal once the half-backs were by-passed, as they could be more easily on a wider pitch. However, 2:2:6, would naturally leave the full-backs to take care of the wingers, particularly the two “outer” ones that would evolve, and the half-backs and the goalkeeper the central forwards and the “inner” wingers. It was a response that soon became the distinctive feature of the Scottish style of play and, in time as the style was further developed, one of its perhaps two greatest gifts to World football.
That it became so was because Gardner's system seemed to work. England attacked but failed to score. Scotland defended, the “box” able naturally to compress in front of goal, attacking only on the counter and again failing to net. The final result on the field was a seemingly unsatisfactory 0:0 draw but its effect off it was unimaginable. Football in Scotland took off. Within a year the Scottish Football Association was formed. In two the Scottish Cup had been played for for the first time. In three the number of clubs went from perhaps 15 at most, with several having collapsed and several more teetering, to more than 200, from fewer than 200 players to more than 2000.
Some of those players’ names we know, long gone now as are many of their teams. They are in the newspapers of the time. Certainly in that first official Scottish team. Gardner was in goal and organising a defence in front of him of Taylor and Ker, full-backs, and half-backs, Thomson and James Smith. Joseph Taylor is described as,
“one of the finest backs Scotland ever produced, full of speed, a sure and strong kick, with a wealth of resource”.
J. J. Thomson was the enforcer,
“at half, a stalwart, a man of weight, equal to any attack, paying back with interest hard knocks, and always at the point where he was most needed. His partner, James Smith, one of the famous brothers, a man of great experience in his team, plucky and reliable;”
And from contemporary descriptions of the game that day we also have indications both of how the defenders and forwards worked in attack, the former attacking from deep and the latter doing what we now call ‘tracking back’. At left-back Ker,
“was the hero of the day, one run of his, from his base to the enemy's goal, electrifying the crowd”
as the six forwards worked, whether intentionally or not, together. On the right wing were Weir with his crouching running style,
“"prince of dribblers," and a dead shot for goal”
with Leckie,
“a fast and brilliant dribbler also, and he too could find the gap between the posts”,
the two of them a recognised pair.
On the opposite flank the dynamic was different, with two more independent players, James's brother, the robust Robert Smith,
“a heavy charger, a very quick and wide dribbler, with a great turn of speed”
who stayed out wide with the lighter-weight Alex Rhind inside him,
“a fine forward, who went straight ahead, dribbling towards his goal; ............, he had plenty of dash and speed, and was not easily dispossessed.”
And in the middle again there seemed to be two players of differing, if complementary styles.
“Of the centres, W. M'Kinnon, the most distinguished man in the position of his day and generation, was the hero of eight consecutive Internationals against England, of which this was his first; his dribbling and passing were a revelation, and his shooting capacity splendid. D. Wotherspoon was one of the original Queen's Parkers, a founder of the club, a great player, strong, with speed and judgement, and a first-class kick with either foot—an athlete to the manner born.”
Yet despite the Scottish attributes there is no doubt that England was a gifted and powerful team, something that Gardner seems to have noted in advance.
“England, especially forward, astonished the spectators by some very pretty dribbling,......”
and,
“The Englishmen had all the advantage in respect of weight, their average being about two stones heavier than the Scotchmen, and they had also the advantage in pace.”
Nor should it thought that the Scots players did not indulge in individualism. Weir and Leckie, Robert Smith, Rhind and McKinnon were all said to be blessed with not inconsiderable dribbling skill. Only Wotherspoon, a close friend of Gardner, the best-man at his wedding, is excepted with more pace, timing and two-footedness his great, almost modern virtues.
However, there was something else in all their games. It was Weir, Rhind, Wotherspoon, Leckie and Ker; Ker, the attacking left full-back, the right-wing pairing of Leckie and Weir, the more advanced of the centre-pairing, Wotherspoon and, Rhind, who might later in football’s history be described as an inside-forward, the first inside forward; who would be remembered fifty years later for combining to break up at least one dangerous attack.
“Once the home goal was only saved through a combined effort on the part of Weir, Rhind, Wotherspoon, Leckie, and Ker, the last named passing all opponents and bringing the ball to midfield”,
where no doubt it would have been played on to the passer of the team, McKinnon, who was with Robert Smith, the specialist on the break-away, one of the only two to have remained up-field, for half the game at least until he and Gardner swapped.
And there was something else in the approach too. It was recognised that Scotland,
“not comprising so many brilliant players as were in the English eleven, worked from first to last well together through knowing each other's play”
and
“had to act somewhat on the defensive”
Gardner was on his goal-line with, under pressure, James Smith, who,
“broke the English forwards that-day”
and the eleven as a whole reverting, in extremis, even to a formation with effectively four, perhaps even five, across the back.
All this required planning and preparation with Gardner's mark on it all. The field of play had been effectively doctored, chosen even at a financial cost to be as advantageous as possible to the Scots. It was the first example of deliberate home-advantage. Then an innovative formation had been introduced, one that required an equally innovative, defensive tactic. Gardner had for the first time attempted to "park the bus" and it had worked. In fact it worked so well that England adopted it for the international the following year and won with it, yet for all its novelty in football at least the box-four defence was not a new sporting tactic. It was more than likely simply an adaption, I suggest, from a game of much greater vintage that Gardner would have been well aware of,
shinty.
As to Robert Gardner himself, football's first tactician, even if he seems to have got things done, he might not have been the easiest of men. He was born in Glasgow in 1847. He died from pneumonia in 1887 in South Queensferry aged just thirty-nine, whilst working on the Forth Road Bridge for its constructor, Sir William Arrol, his wife's uncle. In between had been a life lived and for Scotland fifteen years of sporting success and prestige before a collapse 1888, which with Gardner's death he would never see.
Gardner was not strictly a Glasgow man, although his origins were not far away. His parents were from in and around Paisley and had humble backgrounds, and humble origins were something shared with the Arrols, who were firstly weavers and then textile factory managers from nearby Johnstone. His father, also Robert, Robert Snr., had been an agricultural labourer, who became a grocer but seems to have fallen on harder times. In 1861 he was living in Tradeston in Govan working in a warehouse and a decade later he was still there now a porter.
Robert Gardner Jnr. must have become associated with Queen's Park very soon after its foundation. For 1868-69 season just turned twenty he was already club secretary. In 1869 he was team captain and would remain so until late 1872 or early 1873. However, why and how he joined the club are something of a puzzle. He seemed to have had nothing to do with drapery, haberdashery or gents' outfitting, the businesses a number of the original members shared. He would later work as a travelling grain salesman. However, the connection may either have been Jessie, his older sister. She was a milliner. Or it could even have been his father, the warehouse he worked in being for cotton yarn and therefore wholesaling to the clothing trade. Indeed, that might explain why one of the members of the club's first committee is recorded not as Robert Gardner but specifically as Mr Gardner Senior. Perhaps, he was not Robert Gardner aged 20, Scotland's future first captain, as the club's history indicates but his forty-nine year old Dad. Otherwise the only explanation is that there was a second, younger Gardner at the club's foundation. Certainly Robert had a younger brother, Alex, but he was aged just sixteen at the time.
Robert Gardner was re-elected Queen's Park captain in 1870. The following year, aged 23, he was living with his parents still in Tradeston and now an "Assistant Commercial Traveller". And the year after that the consolidation of his place in World football would begin but not without outside help. That year Robert Gardner would convert from a forward to goalkeeper, replacing John Grant, who had been elected club President for the 1871-72 season and was the man, who by writing to and for newspapers ensured the club and the game it played had wider publicity. Of course, being a 'keeper meant then that he was still essentially an out-field player, just one who had the extra capacity to handle the ball, at that time anywhere in his team's own half. And in Gardner's case it also meant that the organisational tendencies he, as captain, had already shown in attack, handing out written instructions to his players in at least one previous game , were now applied from defence and now with a wider view, not just of the forwards but with the whole game in front of him. It was the equivalent of today's captain and centre-back, except that then there was no concept of centre-back, never mind centre-half. There was hardly even a concept of defence. Gardner was to change all that.
However, the crucial factor in the real emergence of Queen's Park as a proper football team seems to have been the Smith brothers, Robert and James. According to the club's own history there were three, who were involved. John was the youngest. He joined the club in 1870 and remained in Scotland. James was the eldest. He left for London in 1871, aged twenty-seven. And in between was Robert. In 1869 he was referred to as having been,
"one of the principal props"
of the club as, at the age of just 21, he had earlier also left for London. There he had become a member of South Norwood F.C. and must have impressed. In November 1870 he was the only Scots-born member of the Scotland team that faced England in the second of the unofficial internationals, all played in London, that preceded the first official one in November 1872. He was also there for the next two as a forward and in the third as a goalkeeper. However, he was not there for the last in February 1872. Perhaps he was saving himself for Queen's Park first FA Cup game two weeks later.
By then Robert Smith was joined in London by his brother. And it can be no coincidence that, whilst Robert may have been the one to initiate Scottish contact with the English F.A. or have it initiated with him through the "internationals", the arrival of James and his also becoming a South Norwood member, was very quickly, within just months of his arrival in 1871, followed by acceptance firstly by Queen's Park of the English F.A.'s footballing rules and secondly its participation in the first F.A. Cup. From that moment World football as it was then, a handful of English clubs and one Scottish one, was singing from the same hymn-sheet. Moreover, both brothers, in addition to willingness to liaise with the English in London, also were prepared not just to take part in the FA Cup game Queen's Park was to play in there but to travel back to Scotland to take part in the one that in the end would be literally the game-changer. Both were there on the pitch in November 1872 for the first official international. Indeed, both were integral parts of Gardner's game-plan so must have known of it in advance, indeed may have been part of formulation. James was solidity itself at left-half in the newly conceptualised block-four defence and Robert would cover for Gardner in goal, from the right wing changing positions with him for part of the match, precisely replicating what he had done in earlier the "unofficial" games.
After the success of the November 1872 match and the one the following March, in which Robert but not James Smith played, Robert dropping back into his brother's old position, Queen's Park as a club seems to have had internal problems. Neither Smith played for the club again. Indeed Robert emigrated to Canada and then to the United States. James would in 1876 aged thirty-two die in Scotland, in Banffshire from "sunstroke" at the home of yet another brother. Several others seem also to have left it, including another of Scotland's first team, David Wotherspoon, and Gardner himself. The explanation given by Queen's Park was that the parting was due to,
"some dissatisfaction in connection with his representation of the club on the committee of the Scottish Football Association"
It must have happened after March 1873 because he was still captaining Scotland then and selecting the team, including Wotherspoon on the right-wing, as a Queen's Park player on 8th March and the SFA was not formed until a week later. And perhaps it was he, who disagreed with Queen's Park's attitude to the new organisation and not the other way round. Then, of course, there is a much simpler explanation. Queen's Park seems to have had a slightly strange attitude to men marrying. Its first President, Mungo Ritichie, had stepped down for precisely that reason and on 25th June Robert Gardner, grain salesman, married Mary Arrol, the niece of the future Sir Robert Arrol and a milliner, which suggests they may have met again through his sister. And David Wotherspoon was best-man.
Both Gardner and Wotherspoon from Queen's Park joined Clydesdale FC. Wotherspoon came close but never played for Scotland again. Gardner did but the next time not as captain. The seven members of the team for the 1874 encounter with England refused to have him. It had to be one of them. Nevertheless Gardner still had an influence, he wanting the best players he could get. Consequently his right-back was John Hunter of 3rd Lanark, Vale of Leven's
John Ferguson was one of the right-sided forwards, even though he was a left-footer, left-wing was
Frederick Anderson
of Clydesdale and the reserve forward was David Wotherspoon. Scotland won for the first time.
And the pattern was repeated, if not enhanced, the following year. John McPherson of Clydesdale was centre-forward and the defence was partially reconstructed. John Hunter was still there, although he too had changed club, joining Glasgow Eastern, whilst at half-back were too new faces, McLintock, another from of Vale of Leven, and Kennedy, also of Glasgow Eastern. It meant the only Queen's Park player remaining was captain that day, Joseph Taylor. Scotland drew in London.
And Hunter, now back with 3rd Lanark, Taylor, Kennedy and McLintock were the defence for the 1876 encounter also. John Ferguson was back also in a much changed team that had only three from Queen's Park, exactly as many were from Vale of Leven. And there was a new goalkeeper. Gardner had been replaced by McGeoch of Drumbreck but he was still there on the pitch, as the Scottish umpire in the days when each team had an umpire on the field-of-play and the referee sat in the stand as arbiter. Neither Charles Campbell or Moses McNeil of Queen's Park got a game. They and two from Clydesdale not including Wotherspoon were were amongst the reserves. As was James Lang. Scotland won again, 3-0.
In 1877 McGeoch was still in Scotland's goal and there was no sign of Robert Gardner. Yet the team still seemed to be constructed somewhat in his image and for the first time apparently with three half-backs in front of just one full-back. Ferguson was still there, scoring for the first time in an international match from a free-kick. Charles Campbell came in and Scotland won, for the first time in London. However, Gardner had not gone away. He was about to become President of the SFA.
Gardner's tenure of the SFA Presidency perhaps marks the high-point of his footballing and, indeed, personal life. He was by then a father, a son, another Robert, and would soon be a father again, a second son, another Alexander. He would also have a swan-song. For the 1878 international against England, aged thirty, he was back in goal but still not captain. That was Charles Campbell. The game was played at Hampden. Excitement was enormous. 10,000 were inside the ground, another 5,000 outside. Scotland was 4-0 up at half-time, 6-0 up in 62 minutes. Then in the 65th minute left-back, Tom Vallance, was injured and had to leave the field with no substitutes. England scored two and Scotland one more. The final result was 7-2.
Gardner would be referee for the match that three weeks later ended the 1878 internationals, against Wales, just as he had the first in 1876. Indeed, he might well have been instrumental in Wales playing Scotland before anyone else. After all in both matches the Welsh fielded a Scot,
Dr. Daniel Gray. Then in 1880 he had stood to become Secretary of the SFA on the death in April of the office holder, William Dick, but was defeated by the interim incumbent, James Fleming. It was unfortunate not just for Gardner but perhaps for Scottish football long-term. In 1881 he was living in Glasgow with his wife, his two boys and a sister-in-law and was somehow unemployed. And the question will always remain as to what impact his energy and imagination would have had on the game north of the border through the 1880s had he succeeded, this as the SFA first stumbled a little, then made some "strange" decisions, was dominated by Queen's Park and became increasingly conservative.
The sequence is as follows. Fleming would not not stay long, moving to London mid-season in 1881-2. He was replaced by Robert Livingstone, who at the end of the season stood for re-election but was rejected. In his stead John McDowall was chosen with the possibility of "political" interference. McDowall was just twenty-one but he had been a minor, player, peaking as captain of the 2nd XI at Queen's Park. And once in place he would remain for a remarkable if perhaps unhealthy forty-six years and in 1928 die still in harness. It was a tenure that meant the only club to remain and still to be in the Scottish League as amateur had a power-base at the centre of an organisation that had no choice but to embrace first professionalism at home and the internationalisation of the game in general. It is perhaps not coincidence that Scotland played not a single fixture against non-British opposition until 1929, under the presidency of Bob Campbell from 1927 and a new secretary, just a year after McDowall's death.
Meanwhile Robert Gardner had to find other work, seemingly relying on some help from his wife's family, work which just five years later was to end fatally at Queensferry. At which point he seems simply to disappear. He would be survived by his parents. They would live into old age. His children seemed to have been parked out with his sister, his wife would remarry but of him there is nothing. It is not even known with one small caveat where he is buried so that some sort of honour can be paid to a man, who, despite perhaps some faults, was without doubt the source of much of the drive that embedded football in Scotland and then propelled it into its first Golden Era. Martin Donnelly, the esteemed football historian and a man who knows more about the locations of graves of prominent Scottish footballers of the past than is frankly healthy, has found one that corresponds in name and dates of birth and death. The only problem is that it is in Paddington Cemetery, London with no known connection of our Robert Gardner to it. At least not yet!!