Goalkeeping has, to mix metaphors and badly, always been something of a movable feast. Once in the distant and now dim past a 'keeper was simply the man allowed to knock down the ball with his hand or hands, as long as he was in his own team's half of the field, that is. Then he became a man marked out by not just by the sanction to handle but by an item of clothing, a colour, a combination of the both perhaps but little more. And within those parameters techniques were developed. Robert Gardner narrowed angles, some keepers would punch, ostensibly ball, sometime man and ball. Others would knock down and kick, coordinating eye, hand and foot in almost a single movement. Others too would become known for using their ability to head to good effect. But these players still had to be able to run and tackle, scrimmage and dribble with the best. They were effectively sweeper-keepers, a modern expression for an old concept, patrolling an area, still un-delineated, in front of their goal behind or between the full-backs depending on the formation being played in from of them, in the early days 2-2-6 as amongst Scots or 2-3-5 elsewhere.
It meant that 'keepers would often be not the fat one left over when the rest of the team was picked but players of versatility. In the first international ever, the same Robert Gardner of the angles had been a forward before becoming "goal-minder" on the stepping down by James Grant, during the game swapped places with Robert Smith on the left-wing and a decade later another Scottish international would do the reverse, just not in the same game.
The 'keeper in question was James McAulay. He had been born in 1860 in
Bonhill in the
Leven Vale and where his father was a grieve, an estate manager. Bonhill is just across the river from
Alexandria but in March 1882, aged twenty, he had been selected, whilst playing for Dumbarton as one of the two centre-forwards against Wales. At the time he was living at 2, College St. in the town and working as an engine pattern maker. Archibald Rowan of Queen's Park was 'keeper and captain that day. Scotland won 5-0 at Hampden. McAulay scored the fifth goal in the 88th minute. Then in the next game, almost a year later and in the all-important fixture against England he was between the sticks, figuratively at least. England put two past him but Scotland was always ahead and score a decisive third four minutes before time. And he must have impressed, remaining the 'keeper of choice for four more years until 1887 and seven more caps before a decade by the Scottish selectors of chopping and changing.
Why he was by Scotland dropped is unclear. He was still only twenty-six, by which time he had also won the Scottish Cup once and been runner-up also once amongst other honours. It may have been that he emigrated to America. In July 1887 shortly after his last recorded appearance for Dumbarton and his last caps, both as team captain, a Jas. McAulay , listed simply as a labourer, sailed from Glasgow to Philadelphia, where "soccer" was taking off. Its first league was formed in 1889. But then at some time he also seems to have returned, dying back in Dumbarton in 1943.
After McAulay's departure the Scottish selectors seemed to have havered between three Leven Vale 'keepers, McAulay's replacement at Dumbarton, John McLeod, Vale of Leven's James Wilson and Renton's John Lindsay after which there was just confusion. There may also have been a fourth 'keeper in favour, Ned Doig, had he not turned professional with Blackburn and almost immediately Sunderland in 1889. Certainly in 1896 a eight years after his first cap it was he that was turned to after its was decided that professional player playing in England could be selected. That was before a new talent was unearthed and turned to from 1900. His name was Henry George Rennie.
Rennie had been born in Greenock in 1873. His father was a wine and spirits merchant. And the young Rennie was no dunce. At seventeen he was a law clerk but he was also playing not in goal but as a right-half for a local junior side. He is even said to have played in a junior international before transferring to Greenock Morton still as an outfield player. He came in to cover the Morton incumbent on 22nd April 1895 and was formally signed by the club four days later as Dundee also showed interest.
However, he did not stay a half-back for long. In September 1896 it was announced he would, as cover, keep goal in a game against Leith. Then in pre-season in August 1897 he was between the sticks again, put in a few appearances outfield once more before in November that same year he seemed to be there permanently with now Sheffield Wednesday said to be showing interest. In fact he would move but not to England but Hearts. There he made nineteen appearances in the 1898-9 season, twenty-four the following one, winning his first cap, a 3-0 away win against Ireland and a second, an even better 4-1 home victory over England, all the goals coming in the first half, three of them from Toffee McColl. England was captained that day by the half-Scots
G.O. Smith, Scotland by
Jacky Tait Robertson and for Scotland too auspiciously it was
Alex Raisbeck's first game.
It was at this point that Celtic seem seriously to have wanted to sign Rennie and the public began to be aware of Rennie's developing approach to keeping goal. Off the field before games he was said to throw himself on the concrete floors of changing rooms to harden himself up, whilst on the pitch could be seen the most visual aspect of his thoughtful approach to his art. In the period when there was neither a penalty or a goal area just a line at each end twelve yards from and parallel with each goal line Rennie would be seen marking the pitch to help him with his positioning and angles in defense and in attack sweep right across the pitch still in his own half but not far the half-way line. It was also noticeable how different physically Rennie was to some other goalies, particularly in England. At 5ft 11 ins and eleven and a half stone he was for his time not a small man but he was smaller than Wales's Leigh Roose at 6 ft 1 ins and thirteen stone or nothing like England's "Fatty" Foulke at 6ft 6 ins and at his largest almost twenty-four stone. Foulke relied on sheer size, Roose on physicality, timing and bravery, all of which he had in spades, and Rennie on agility, mobility and thought, the last two perhaps in part a product of his earlier experiences as an outfield player. He would, in a way that that would today be considered standard, compile dossiers on opposing forwards, their preferred foot, how they moved and shot, how penalties were taken.
It clearly worked. In 1900 after two years at Tynecastle and Hearts rising from fourth to second above Celtic in 1899 the Parkhead club tried to sign him. And, although the deal fell through, why is unclear, he did move. He simply went across Edinburgh to Hibernian, where he would stay eight seasons, be capped a further eleven times, the team would take the 1902 Scottish Cup, Rennie making several notable saves, and also take the 1903 league title by a margin of six points, losing just one game all season with Rennie and Hibs's Welsh-Scot,
Bob Atherton, playing in every game. Admittedly after that Hibernian then oscillated for the next half dozen years between the upper and lower half of the division and struggled in the Cup to get much beyond the second round. However they would inevitably be defeated by teams that would go on to the final. Meanwhile Rennie until 1904 and aged thirty-one was his country's keeper of choice. After 1904 a number of other custodians were tried until Peter McBride was settled on as the gradual replacement. Rennie still continued to be selected, however, until his final game in 1908, a 0-5 away win against Ireland, one of four international clean-sheets. That year too marked his move from Hibernian to Rangers, there as second string for a season and a half but thirty-three appearances nevertheless.
And it was from Rangers he made his final moves from the end of 1910 season, homeward to Kilmarnock for the year and then returning to Morton as back-up until final retirement in 1913 a couple of months short of his fortieth birthday. By 1911 he was living back in Greenock, listed as an engineer, and remained in Renfrewshire for the rest of his life. And it was also that same year, which would see his style of goalkeeping really come into its own as the penalty area, introduced only in 1902, became the goal area. First employed in 1912 it saw the goalkeeper's handling of the ball reduced from the whole of the half to what we know today. At a stroke it did away with the preference for tank-like keepers, also on the one hand taking away Rennie's known ability to kick or throw the ball from the halfway line into the opposing goalmouth but on the other making his pioneering pitch marking and positioning still more relevant and the mobile goalie that he was a necessity. Indeed the marking and positioning tactics he had developed within a short period after the Great War became the norm, one which he would directly pass on by continuing to work with local goalkeepers. Of them, and not long before Harry Rennie's death in Renfrew in 1954, the most notable was Jimmy Cowan, Morton and Scotland custodian between 1944 and 1953 and 1948 and 1952 respectively, described by the SFA, much as Rennie had been in his day, as "the outstanding goalkeeper of his generation".