the Cradle
When Leven Vale with its towns and villages from Loch Lomond to the Clyde, Balloch, Jamestown, Bonhill, Alexandria, Renton and Dumbarton, has produced so has Scotland. It is a simple mantra and, if not entirely true universally, is in footballing terms at least worth perhaps not repetition but certainly spot-lighting. For example, Scotland's national team just now has no-one born there. Need I say more. Results say enough. Geographically there is no-one nearer than Glasgow and the closest in time is James Smith of Celtic with two caps in 2003, just as a substitute. There have been no starting caps this century. Perhaps the last Leven Vale players of note were John O'Hare, born in
Renton, who started his career at Sunderland, was at Derby, Leeds and Nottingham Forest with Brian Clough, played thirteen matches for Scotland and retired from the game in 1981 and Bobby Kerr from
Alexandria, who finished his career a year later having played three hundred and sixty-eight times again for Sunderland, captaining it to the 1973 FA Cup against Leeds, but never for his country. However, his position on the right of mid-field was also Billy Bremner's.
John O'Hare played his last game for Scotland in 1972. It was almost to the year a century after the first cap for a Leven Vale man. He had been John Ferguson, the captain of Vale of Leven, The Vale, Alexandria's Highland team, the first flyer on either wing for club and country, indeed in World football. But he was more than just that. He was a prize-winning sprinter, an accomplished shinty player, the captain and the principle forward when and where pairings, forward pairings, were first introduced at least to the new game on the block. They had been an integral part of successful shinty from time immemorial. And it was those pairings which would make the difference between Scotland and England on the field and lead not just to Vale of Leven and, after a brief hiatus, Renton being all-conquering at club level with Dumbarton not far behind but also to Scotland's "Scientific" style of play and its first Golden Era; just a single international defeat in more than a decade from 1874. Indeed,
Vale of Leven itself would in 1877 replace Queen's Park as Scotland club team, winning the Scottish Cup three years in succession from 1877 to 1879 and It would also prove its international worth still at club level in 1878 in, as Scottish Cup holders, beating the English FA Cup holders 4-0 away, ad becoming the first, if unofficial, World Champions.
Yet it was done without probably the best full-back in the country, Scotland or Britain as you wish. The player was Tom Vallance, born in 1856 the son of an agricultural worker at Succoth Farm on the hill above Renton and at eighteen already in the first team, but not for Renton, nor indeed Vale of Leven or even Dumbarton but, because of later Rhu connections with the McNeills and Peter Campbell, in Glasgow at Rangers. At twenty he was club captain. At twenty-one in 1877 he was an international left-back and a fixture, apart from injury, until, as an amateur, in 1882 and for work, he set sail for India. He would return in 1883, be elected club president for six successive years but, weakened by Blackwater Fever would not play beyond 1884, thirty-seven clubs appearances in all and not adding to his seven caps.
In truth the period of Vallance's presidency of Rangers was not the most successful. On the field the Ibrox club struggled against a revived Queen's Park and the Leven Vale's three main teams, which throughout would be amongst the country's five best. Vale of Leven would remain a force but the two others formed at much the time in 1873, Dumbarton and Renton, would be, if anything, over the piece more successful still. In 1884 Queen's Park would win the Scottish Cup defeating The Vale. In 1885 the winner was Renton, with again The Vale the losing finalist. In 1886 it was Queen's Park there with Renton runner-up. In 1887 Dumbarton was once more in the final, losing to Hibernian, and 1888 the winner was Renton once more, this time defeating Cambuslang. Five finalists, two winners in five seasons.
In fact Renton, with its youngish team might well have repeated that same success for several years. And it would have done so with a unique style of play. The style was The Cross and its was to prove irresistible and in several ways. On the field, just as a decade earlier Vale of Leven had travelled to England to be crowned World Champions, so Renton itself, following the 1888 Scottish Cup victory, had taken the same road. In the summer of 1888 it travelled south to beat not just the then current FA Cup holder, Aston Villa, but on its return to Scotland also its successor, West Bromwich Albion. Off the field the style was noted and, in the sincerest form of flattery, copied. It, with its attacking centre-half in a new concept, the mid-field, would become within a decade Scotland's standard form of play, transferring over the same period to many teams in England and within a generation to developing, footballing nations outwith the British Isles.
However, it is a style that seems to have no obvious source. On the face of it a club from a small, industrial village in an otherwise seemingly unremarkable valley between Loch Lomond and the Clyde had by 1888 over the previous four season seasons seemingly plucked a footballing revolution out of the ether. True it had done so with what proved to be a remarkable generation of footballers, players who would be would means via which the Renton innovation the would be disseminated but it offers no explanation of its origins. Yet there might be one. I
n that era most tactics in most teams were decided upon by the captain. In Renton's case he was Archie "Baldy" McCall. He was at twenty-six the winning eleven's oldest player, a man, who clearly looked more than his years, who had been in the first team since 1884 and was already a winning Scottish Cup finalist. In other words he was experienced and, I might add, was a full-back in a team, whose style required unconventionally wide-full-backs to function optimally.
However, Renton's 1888 success would never be repeated. In fact within a decade it would drop out of top flight football and in 1922 be dissolved. The reason was simple. Its teams would over that last years of the 19th Century be plundered of players and the raiding would start at the moment it achieved the pinnacle of
its success. Renton was a team drawn largely from not just from what was
really little more than a large village but specifically from two streets, with just two players from outwith the village. One was Neil McCallum from nearby Bonhill, the other John McNee, serendipitously like Tom Vallance born at Succoth Farm. Understandably one of the streets was Main. Archie McCall and his younger brother, James, on the wing lived there. So did
Andrew Hannah, Donald McKechnie and Henry and John Campbell. The other street was Thimble. John Lindsay lived at one end. Bob Kelso at the other and
James Kelly between them.
And it would be James Kelly, t
he man at attacking centre-half around whom the Renton system turned, who would be the first to tempted away. Born in Renton but of Irish parents, he was one of several with Irish Diasporan backgrounds, he had perhaps already flirted with the idea playing for Hibernian in Edinburgh but when newly forming and clearly shamateur Glasgow Celtic came calling he could not resist. Nor was he the only one. Team-mate Neil McCallum went with him and is credited with scoring Celtic's first official goal. In fact not just the original Renton team but its squad and replacements were decimated to the advantage not just the Scottish game elsewhere but also that in England. In all eight of its players would go. Hannah would move to West Bromwich, Everton and when Liverpool was founded in 1892 back to Merseyside to join the new club. Duncan McLean would do much the same, without Birmingham sojourn. James McBride would go straight to Liverpool and the contagion would spread. The target would become not just Renton but be extended to the whole of the Vale. John Miller would leave Dumbarton again for Liverpool, Alex Latta Dumbarton Athletic again for Everton and then Liverpool, Jack Bell Dumbarton also once more for Everton and they would be joined by Jamestown-born, Malcom McVean. Four of Liverpools' first ever team, the 1892
Team of the Macs, were Leven Vale boys.
Nor would the raids north cease. If Andrew Hannah had seen Birmingham and decided against the Cowan brothers had not such problems. James Cowan, playing initially for Renton, then Vale of Leven was in 1889 on his way south and in 1890
aged just twenty already at Aston Villa as its equivalent of James Kelly. Five seasons later in 1895-96 he was joined by his younger brother, John, who had played on the left-wing first for Vale of Leven and then for Rangers. Villa would win the title that year. James Cowan would step into the Kelly's shoes in the Scottish national side against England Scotland would win for the first time since 1889.
And Villa would win the league following year too and also win the FA Cup to complete the double. The final was against Everton. Jack Bell scoring it consolation. Scotland would win again.
Meanwhile, before Bell had left Dumbarton he had replaced another local boy, Jake Madden. Madden, also Irish in background, had been another, who would move to Celtic. But before even that he had played at centre-forward inside Neil McCallum and in front of James Kelly in the scratch team that in 1888 has announced the new club's arrival. With it
he would become a Scottish international, the only player in a Scotland vest ever to have scored four in a single game and on retirement develop as a noted coach. But it would not be in Scotland. Nor, indeed, in England. He went to Prague, where he remained until his death, marrying there and coaching the Slavia club side for forty years, also coaching Bohemia and on its independence Czechoslovakia to several European trophies. Even today seventy years after his passing he is revered figure with an annual pilgrimage to his grave by Slavia fans and a twenty-foot-high photo-portrait of him adorning the main entrance to the club's stadium.
Nor would Jake Madden be the only son of Leven Vale, indeed Dumbarton, to find his way to the training pitches of early football in Eastern Europe. In 1911 a half a dozen years after Madden John Tait Robertson was in charge of MTK Budapest. He stayed just two years but his route there was if anything more convoluted than that of his townsman. At eighteen in 1895 he had been persuaded south by Everton. Then for a season he dropped into the Southern League with Southampton, one of many notable League players, as the Football League imposed a maximum wage and the Southern League did not. At twenty-two he was back in Scotland at Rangers, where he stayed six seasons and sixteen Scotland caps playing at half-back in the national team's rebirth with
Toffee McColl, R.C. Hamilton, Alex Raisbeck,
Peter McWilliam and others. That was before at twenty-eight he was tempted south once more. This time it was to Chelsea as player/manager as the club bought itself into the Football League but his stay was brief , a single season, before two at Glossop again as player/manager, two more as reserve team manager at Manchester United and finally two in Hungary.
And it was from Dumbarton Football club that Leven Vale's next and perhaps finest talent would emerge. He and his brother would both play for The Sons but again both be born in Renton; the brother, Walter, the centre-forward, in 1898 and Alex, the winger, in 1905. In 1911 both were living in the family home on Lennox St., the southern extension of Main St, from where it would be the older Wattie, who would first make his mark, with three seasons at Kilmarnock but the younger Alex who was the real talent. Alex Jackson has to be considered one of the two finest players of his era, the other being Uruguay's Jose Leandro Andrade. Indeed there is a case for him to have been one of the World's dozen best players ever not simply for his ability but his innovation. The perfection of the centre for the centre-forward inside the full-back is his to claim but he was also a prolific goal-scorer in his own right, not least with his head.
Alex Jackson was a character, not perhaps as wayward as, say, George Best but his routes in and out of football, indeed life were unique. He was born the son of an itinerant tin-smith, a pipe-worker, born in Kirkcaldy. He died a Major in the British Army in Egypt in a road traffic accident in 1946 at the age of just forty-one. In the meantime he had found his way, or rather his way back, into Scottish after two seasons as a teenager at Dumbarton via soccer and America, his way out via France and in the interim been a quite extraordinary talent. He played well over 300 league games, won seventeen caps, scored eight international goals and was only in one losing Scotland side. He caused a stir at Dumbarton at seventeen years old. He dazzled at eighteen in Pennsylvania and he bowed out at thirty in Le Touquet, meanwhile playing for Aberdeen, Huddersfield and Chelsea, might even have played at Arsenal had Herbert Chapman had his way but he ended up at Nice, which was nice but ultimately a waste. There is an air of if not chaos then un-tidyness about a career, which was not fully fulfilled, which seems strange in a man who in wartime proved himself to be an excellent soldier, rising from private to officer, and clearly knew not just what he was, what he had and but how to think.
And it is with thinking that I want this piece to end. In 1960 a player, who had just retired after fifteen years at Rangers was appointed Scotland manager. He was a man who had from the age of eighteen had spent almost his entire senior football career under
Bill Struth. He was his captain, tasked as was Struth's want, with tactics on the field. He appreciated the value of system and organisation. As a defender, part of the "Iron Curtain", he had employed both as he did in the profession, for which meantime he had also qualified from Glasgow University, engineering. But he was not a Glasgow boy. Even though he understandably preferred to be called Ian, perhaps today Iain, he had been born John McColl and in Alexandria.
In fact
Ian McColl had both Leven Vale origins and pedigree. His grandfather, William McColl, had not only been a third generation Vale man but also in 1895 had won a single Scottish cap, against Wales, whilst playing for Renton. He had been one of the Scotch Professors, one who, like Jake Madden, had clearly played professionally in England but still retained amateur status on returning north of the border. Starting with Vale of Leven, then moving south to play, if briefly, in his mid-twenties for Accrington and Burnley he returned, turning out not just for Renton but also then well into his thirties for The Vale once more. In fact his one cap was also Madden's second and something of a curiosity. It had been in a 2-2 away draw, Madden scoring one of the goals, but McColl seemingly played out of position. He had taken the field not as he was normally at inside-forward but centre-half, perhaps seen, if apparently mistakenly, internationally in role as a second James Kelly.
Ian McColl himself had initially followed much the same path. His first club had also been Vale of Leven. He then spent two seasons with Queen's Park and finally made three hundred and forty-two appearances for the Ibrox club. He wasn't a one club club man but almost.
At Rangers he also won fourteen caps for Scotland but perhaps his proudest moment was when in 1960 he was appointed Scotland manager. He replaced Scotland's first ever national manager, Andrew Beattie. Until 1954 the team had been chosen by a selection committee. But he did so with a difference. Andrew Beattie had been part-time. At the same time as he had charge of the national team he also was club manager at Carlisle. McColl had no such other commitments.
It was McColl's first managerial appointment. Seven months before his first game in charge he had played his last Rangers' game in winning the 1960 Scottish Cup Final. Now he faced completely different problems. There was none of the systematic approach he had known on and off the pitch at the Gers. There was certainly talent but within the pool from which he could draw were Scottish- and English-based players with in both countries, but particularly in England, in teams employing various tactical approaches and therefore with no inherent player understanding. The team he inherited was drawn from eight teams, had three English-based members, including from Tottenham Dave Mackay and John White and included two from Rangers, Eric Caldow, the captain, and David Wilson. His first team drew on seven clubs, five from Scotland, two from England but not the same two. Four members were from Rangers. Caldow was still captain. There were three new caps, two from Rangers, and one was Jimmy Baxter, who had just turned twenty-one.
Ian McColl's second team also drew on seven clubs, two from England. The late Billy McNeill got his first cap. Rangers supplied both full-back, Caldow one of them. Baxter wasn't there. England, the opposition, won 9-3. Jimmy Greaves scored a hat-trick, Smith and Haynes a brace each. England was three up at half time. It was 5-3 after seventy-five minutes and then the Scottish half-back line already rocking simply imploded. Yet it seems McColl saw a message in defeat. His third team was drawn from six clubs, one only from England. Baxter was back and he was there again for the fourth, five clubs, no English. Then came the first game of 1962 World Cup qualification and again the inclusion of just one player from an English club, the same player, David Herd. A decision appeared to have been taken in order to have uniformity of playing style to select only Scottish-based players except where impossible. The result was a bad beating by Czechoslovakia at which point it looks as if the manager had a re-think. There had been a message in the 9-3 England defeat but it was not the one he had initially understood. He changed his approach. He started to open out and to experiment but around five players; Caldow, Baxter, White, St. John, Law and Wilson. Three were Scottish-based, all at Rangers, and three in England.
By the fourteenth game of McColl's charge, after three more wins and only a single, additional defeat the team was made up of players drawn from five clubs, three of them English. The spine of six was there. There was a new goalkeeper, Bill Brown. The match itself was another win and it was not just against England but at Wembley. The score was 1-2. Baxter scored both Scotland's goals but perhaps more importantly for McColl the penny seemed to have fully dropped. Having chosen four of the team from the Rangers he knew including Baxter and captain Eric Caldow, the other Scottish players were from a single club, Dundee, where its manager still played as had Struth's Rangers with strong elements of Scottish Old Style. That manager was Bob Shankly. And McColl's English-based players also showed the same pattern. Three came from Tottenham, managed by Bill Nicholson who, although English, had learned from the master, Inverness-born Peter McWilliam. Nicholson's push-and-move, passing style was modified McWilliam's. As for the others, fine players as they were in their own rights, they were drawn from Manchester United, manager Matt Busby, and Liverpool, the other Shankly, Bill, both of whom had also learned their football between the Wars and Old-Style. Once again the the Leven Vale man had thought and understood. Jake