You might have noticed from the rest of this blog a more than slight obsession with Scots players by today's eligibility criteria, from Wylie via MacRae to the Baker brothers, who did not play for the national team but did for others. And of them perhaps John Goodall might be judged the best with younger sibling, Archibald, Archie, not far behind. John, a centre- or inside-forward would win 14 caps for England at not far off a goal a game, Archie, a half-back, ten for Ireland.

They were born the sons of a Clackmannanshire soldier, Richard Goodall, from Fishcross between Alloa and Tillicoultry. His father had been a grocer. He himself was in the Scottish Fusiliers, a Corporal. And their mother, Mary, her father a Silk Weaver, was from Tarbolton in Ayrshire, the couple had been married in her home town in 1860, whilst Richard was at the Wellington Barracks, presumably the one in Central London, and therein lies the crux of the story. John would be born in June 1863 in Westminster in London, presumably at the Wellington, and Archie eighteen months later but in Belfast. Indeed, their younger sister would be born two years later still in another posting but this time close to home, in Edinburgh.

But between 1866 and 1871 Richard Goodall met his death, for by the latter date Mary was a widow, aged just thirty-three and living with her three children under ten in Scotland in Kilmarnock, earning some sort of living as a Hand-Sewer. There is no mention of his passing in the Home Nations so it seems likely he died in India or perhaps Burma. The regiment seems to have been posted abroad. And Mary was to remain a widow for a decade until in 1880 she had remarried, to a widower, Joseph Barnes, a Boilermaker, and their two families combined. By then John was seventeen and Archie sixteen, with the former probably just about to step up, but not by joining the town's senior club, the present Kilmarnock F.C.. Instead he and other local boys were signing for Kilmarnock Athletic, captained by the formidable John Inglis, with its ground a mile away at Holm Quarry.

Kilmarnock Athletic was never a top, top club but it was not far off, more than a match for Killy. Founded in 1877 it had entered the Scottish Cup in 1878 and did well to begin with, reaching the fourth round, albeit to be badly beaten by Beith. In comparison Kilmarnock did not get beyond the first. But the following two season it stuttered, not progressing beyond Round Two as its local rival made the second and then the third. However, in 1881-2 both town-clubs would make their ways to the fifth round, the newer club then defeating Arthurlie in the quarter-final. Moreover, in the semi-final it would only lose to the eventual winners, Queen's Park by one goal in five, at which point heads elsewhere were clearly turning.

In part it was timing. From 1882 pressure from Down South to recruit Scottish talent was beginning to build up. "Agents" are said to have begun to appear. But, as Athletic once more reached the semi-final at the end of the following season this time to lose to Vale of Leven but only after a replay, turned those heads would stay with the most obvious of the team's talent, the elder Goodall, the first to tempted away.

He went to Bolton's Great Lever, his departure making an immediate on-field difference. Without him in 1883-4 Athletic only made the Fourth-Round. But it did not stem the interest. The start of the 1884-5 season would see eight more players from Kilmarnock's teams, the combined Kilmarnock pool, take the English shilling. Indeed, over the next three seasons Athletic itself would be virtually stripped of players, Archie Goodall in 1885 initially departing to Liverpool Stanley, to the point that in that same year the club was simply dissolved.

As to the brothers themselves from a now defunct Holm Quarry both would go on to have long careers, John playing until he was forty, from 1903 as player-manager at three clubs, most notably Watford, but also in France and Wales. But before that and after Great Lever there had been four seasons, a Cup and a League win at Preston and over two hundred appearances for Derby to 1899. And in that period too, in spite of his Ayrshire tongue there would be, at a moment when Scotland could certainly have done with him, his English, international career; one which would come to an end a year before his younger sibling's Irish one began.

After Liverpool Archie had also turned out before his brother for Derby, and then jump annually from club to club including Preston and Derby once more, both now alongside John. And it was at Derby that he would find his most permanent home. He spent fourteen years there, making not far off four hundred starts, before gradually winding down his time playing to finish in 1906. And it would be from Derby too that the Irish came calling from 1899 to 1904 with in the final campaign something of a high. Ireland would by beating Wales and drawing with Scotland for the first time not only finish runner-up in the Home Championship but a point ahead of the land where he had learned his game .

John Goodall would on retirement from football live out the rest of his life in Watford, where he became a groundsman, mainly cricket, which had also earlier for Derbyshire played to county-level. In fact on his death still in the Hertfordshire town in 1942 he is recorded as a "Cricket Groundman" with no mention of his winter game. He is buried in the Vicarage Road Cemetery just a short distance from Watford's ground and what was an unmarked grave until the club created and placed a fitting headstone.

As for Archie, on leaving the game he turned his hand to a number of things including touring the music-halls in this country, the Continent and the USA as part of strong-man act before settling in London. And it is in East Finchley that he died in 1929, aged sixty-four. But he is not buried there. His Derby-born wife would see him interred in her city in the Nottingham Road Cemetery. And here too just last year a new stone, crowd-funded by County fans, was equally fittingly placed on his grave.