Peter Andrew
- perhaps really the first professional?
Peter Andrews played once for Scotland. It was in 1875 in the game against England, the fourth of its kind, the second at The Oval in London and a 2:2 draw. He played as a forward, probably on the left. He scored the second equaliser but was perhaps unlucky. His inclusion was between in 1874 Frederick Anderson, the first Scot to score an international away-goal and founder of football in China, and in 1876 John Ferguson, Scotland's first flying winger. 

The Scottish Football Association on its web-site says the following of Andrews.

"Peter Andrews was born in Glasgow date unknown, probably in the early 1850s. A key player in the early development of the game he is thought to be the first Scottish player to have moved to England, although he moved for business reasons rather than professionalism. A left winger, he played for Glasgow Eastern but his work took him to Leeds early in 1876 and he subsequently joined Sheffield Heeley. He represented Sheffield against Manchester in December 1876."

The problem, however, is that almost none of the above is accurate.  In fact Peter Andrews was probably born on 10th November, 1845 and baptised almost two weeks later. It means that for the 1875 game he was already in his thirtieth year. Nor was he born in Glasgow but in Kilwinning in Ayrshire. Moreover, he was not even born Peter Andrews but Peter Andrew. Furthermore, he was not the first Scottish, indeed Scotland player to move to England. That was Robert Smith, who played for Queen's Park in game up to 1869 and for the national team in the first two internationals ever in November in 1872 and March 1873. What is true is that he played for Glasgow Eastern, probably before that as early again as 1873 for Callander, despite the name also a Glasgow club, that he moved south, probably in 1876, perhaps as a result of being replaced by Ferguson and that he represented Sheffield against Manchester in December 1876.  And finally it turns out that his move to Yorkshire was perhaps not as non-professional as might be thought, which would make him and not, as I previously thought, James "Reddie" Lang, the first player to have taken the English shilling. Let me explain.

In 1861 a fifteen year-old a Peter Andrew was living with his mother, Marion, and his elder brother, Maitland, seven years his senior. He was an apprentice baker as was his brother. His mother was a washerwoman. There was no sign of his father. They were living at 4, West Portland Street in Troon. His mother had been a washerwoman ten years earlier also, when they were living at Templehill still in Troon with still no sign of their father, recorded on Peter's birth certificate as James and also a baker.

However, none of this would have mattered but for an entry in the English census of 1881. It showed a Peter Andrews, born in "Trow", read Troon, his wife Anna, born in Ayr, both recorded as aged thirty-nine, amended to thirty-four, and four children, three boys and a girl. Of the boys a James was born in Glasgow, aged twelve so in 1868 or so, and Peter and John were born in Ayr, aged eight and six so in 1872 and 1874. And the daughter, Anna, was nine months old but, so born in 1880 and in England. Peter senior himself is employed as a Commercial Clerk employed by a "steel files and saws" manufacturer, which might have been fine had it been in Leeds but firstly the census recorded him as living in Heeley in Sheffield, precisely where he was said to have been playing football and he had been there from at least 1880 because his daughter's birth place was precisely Sheffield. 

On the basis of Sheffield residency alone doubt might have been cast on Peter Andrews as an amateur player but there are other facts that cast further doubt still. Not least he seems to have been a master of many trades. In June 1866 a Peter Andrew married an Annie McDowell. Both were Glasgow residents. Both were said to be twenty-one. He wasn't. He was only twenty. She was a domestic servant. He was a baker, just like the Peter Andrew in Troon, his mother Marion and his father James, a baker once more. Furthermore in 1871 a Peter Andrew, baker and not a clerk, Anna Andrew, both aged twenty-five, both Ayrshire-born, and James Andrew, aged three and Glasgow-born, were living there in Springburn. Moreover, in 1891 a Peter Andrews, now not Andrew, wife Anna, sons Peter, eighteen, John, aged sixteen, and now three year old Arthur,  but no James, plus Anna, aged eleven, joined by Beatrice, aged nine, also born in England, were back in Scotland. But they were not in Glasgow or Troon but in Paisley, where  Peter senior was a thread mill foreman. In other words he worked for Clarks or Coats. 

Peter Andrews senior would still be a thread mill foreman in 1901, now born still in Ayrshire but in Kilwinning ten miles from Troon. In 1911 he was still, again Kilwinning-born, a widower now with the death of his wife in 1904 and Beatrice and Arthur continuing at home and it would be in Paisley that he himself would die in 1916, having remarried in 1915.  His son, John, would die fighting in Flanders in the Great War and Arthur in Paisley in 1960 at the age of eighty. Both Anna and Beatrice emigrated to New Zealand where Anna married and Beatrice did not.  They died in 1966 and 1974 respectively.

Now there is no definitive proof that the Paisley Peter Andrews is the Troon or Kilwinning Peter Andrew, although it seems likely. Nor is there any precise verification that the same Troon and Kilwinning Peter Andrew was the footballing, Glasgow Eastern Peter Andrews but there is a thread from birth to death and if followed seems to point to a man, who changed profession, not once but twice, and radically, and whose early life gave no indication of accounting ability. It is also strange that whilst Peter Andrews is said to have moved to Leeds he soon ended up in Heeley in Sheffield, precisely where he is said to have played his football. There could be a simple explanation. He went to Leeds first and moved from there to Sheffield for footballing convenience. However, there could also be an equally simple alternative. 

Peter Andrew alias Peter Andrews was a professional footballer in all but name. If correct, he and not Lang, would have been The First Professional. He was recruited to Sheffield but pretended to be living in Leeds to cover his tracks. And he was not really a clerk. In order to be paid for his footballing services he was said to have been employed as such by a local, Sheffield businessman, no doubt a Heeley supporter one way or another, whilst training and playing, a shamateur pattern that would soon be repeated throughout the English game over the next nine years and then in time worldwide. 

I know what I think. I'll leave you, the reader, to make up your own mind.