It is said, not without some justification, that all good footballing sides need a solid spine, from goalkeeper through to central attack. It was the existence of that spine or the lack of it that until the Great War and a little beyond defined Scotland’s international team from the moment in 1896 that, with the inclusion of Anglo-Scots, Scots-born professionals playing in England, it could at long last draw on the entire country’s footballing talent. However, that spine would not be today’s – a goalkeeper, centre backs, central midfield and, more often than not, a lone striker. In the last years of the 19th Century and the Edwardian years in Scotland and in part in England it would be simpler, the goalkeeper, still able to rove throughout his own half of the pitch, the attacking centre-half and the centre-forward. With all three of those positions filled with established players Scotland prospered. Without one or more of them it struggled.
It was with inclusion of Anglo-Scots that Glasgow in 1896 had finally seen a home-win against England, the first for seven years. It was a team to an extent built around the Birmingham-based skills of
James Cowan, ex- Renton and by then Aston Villa’s centre-half, but not entirely so. Up front was
Tommy Hyslop of Stoke so also winning his first cap and Neillie Gibson at Cowan's side. Neil Gibson was the latest of several players that William Wilton had begun to produce at Rangers as the Ibrox club began to consolidate and finish the century as the country’s strongest. 1894 had seen it win the Cup for the first time. It would take it again in 1897 and 1898. In 1896 it finished runner-up in the league. It would again in 1898 but take the title in both 1899 and 1900. Hyslop would go on to be a major influence in soccer in America.
Remarkably perhaps there would be a second Scottish win the following year, 1897, this time in London so away with Cowan still pulling the strings, Gibson at half back and now with the experience of Celtic's Dan Doyle behind them as one of the full-backs. Two of the forwards, Queen’s Park’s Lambie and Everton’s John Bell also played in both games as did Hyslop, having recrossed the border and turning out for Rangers
However, in 1898, Scotland would lose badly to England at Celtic Park, 1:3, having been 0:2 behind at half-time, this in spite still of Doyle at full-back and Cowan at centre-half, with Gibson to his right and a new name,
John Tait Robertson to his left . Doyle and Cowan, the latter said to be more than a little hung-over, would seemingly take much of the blame, perhaps a little unjustly as the problems appeared neither entirely in the last line of defence or midfield. The England goals were all scored by the inside-forwards suggesting, with the Scottish convention of full-backs marking wingers and half-backs on inside-forwards, problems at outside half-back not centre-half. However, neither Doyle or Cowan would play for their country again, with Cowan probably deemed to have failed in his responsibility as captain and because the likely facilitator of the goals was the England's centre-forward,
Gilbert Smith perhaps the last great amateur, born of a Scots father but unfortunately in Croydon. However, interestingly nor would the goalkeeper, Queen’s Park’s Kenneth Anderson, after just three caps ever play internationally again suggesting some fumbling.
So it was that in 1899 in the last England-Scotland encounter of the old century Scotland had a new centre-half, Queen’s Park’s Alex Christie; professional replaced by amateur. Gibson was retained. Tait Robertson was dropped and in goal amateur replaced by professional with Ned Doig. Doig was with
Harry Rennie and Peter McBride one of the three 'keepers, who for the next decade would be first choices, a critical position filled. And it would be much the same at centre-half. Christie would be replaced by
Alex Raisbeck and he and then
Charles Thomson were fixtures until The Great War. But it was in the forwards that the most significant changes were made and continuity again established. At centre-forward there was yet another Queen’s Park newcomer and beside him the Rangers’ captain in a season the club would be unbeaten in Cup and league. They were the two Roberts, respectively Smyth McColl and Cumming Hamilton, R.S. and R.C. a lethal combination together but each in a way representing the way Scottish and Scots football would go separate ways in the future, the former into England and the latter abroad.
R.S. McColl, Glasgow-born in 1876, played for Scotland 13 times between 1896 and 1908, scoring as many goals, an amateur centre-forward for Scotland against the Auld Enemy for three successive years and in 1902 once he had joined Newcastle professional. He was top scorer in the Home Championship in 1899 and 1900, at just 5ft 7 1/2 ins tall and eleven stone part of a succession starting with Renton's John Campbell via Jimmy Quinn,
Hughie Gallacher, Jimmy McGrory, Lawrie Reilly and the like until the 1960s of mobile, stocky centre-forwards, who would play for Scotland and one,
Joe Baker, even for England. He was a proto-Sergio Aguero. And McColl is a name that still is a part of everyday, Scottish life, with him and his brother founding in 1901 the highly successful chain of ubiquitous newsagents and earning R.S. the sobriquet “Toffee Bob”.
R.C. Hamilton, an international from 1898 to 1911, would play against England alongside McColl on one more occasion before in 1903 leading the line on his own against the Auld Enemy. He would follow McColl as top-scorer in the British Home Championship in 1901 and 1902. For Rangers he would be its leading marksman from when he joined to when he first left. He would go and come back. But he is significant in two further ways.
The first was that he was just the second Scottish football international from above the Highland line. Born in Elgin in 1877, Hamilton was the son of a local mother and a father also from Ayrshire and played for Elgin City as a sixteen year old from the club’s foundation and the formation of the Highland League. A highly intelligent man, R.C., as he was known, on leaving Elgin Academy moved south to attend Glasgow University. However, he would retain his links with his home city, returning each summer again to play cricket for the local team, on retirement from football settling there for good, from when he worked in education and was twice Provost.
In footballing terms he had followed in the footsteps only of John Macdonald. Born in Inverness in 1861, schooled in Ayrshire, Macdonald had studied medicine at Edinburgh University, for which he played centre-half, defensive centre-half in a three as was the fashion in Auld Reekie at least. He also played for Queen's Park and once for the national team. It had been in 1886, he at left-half in a pair in a 1:1 draw against England at Hampden. Said to have played outstandingly well he might even have become a regular. However, that same year he returned to the Highland capital to start a practice, became its chief medical officer, patron of the Highland League and returned to his other sporting love, cricket, at which, against the Australians, he had also at university represented Scotland. No doubt Macdonald and Hamilton's paths would have crossed, if not beside a football field then in the cricket pavilion.
However, Hamilton in the long-term and in spite of his exploits for Rangers and Scotland, more than a goal a game, should perhaps be better remembered for his second contribution, something entirely different. Many players from all the home countries, under pressure from league clubs and a wage-cap imposed from 1898, joined a number of ambitious teams in the English Southern League, where there were no such restrictions on pay. It was why in 1898
John Cameron, amongst the first, had gone to Spurs and for the 1906-7-season R.C. joined Fulham. There he played in a team coached by
John Hamilton; the same Jock Hamilton, who would spend the following summer passing on his knowledge in Sao Paulo in Brazil, the first professional trainer in that country. But more significantly on the field he was alongside one
James Hogan; the same Jimmy Hogan, who would soon take what he had learned no doubt from both Hamilton but specifically for R.C. to Central Europe.
At Rangers six feet tall and slender R.C. played with a novel approach, perhaps already developed in early years in Highland football, where the innovative might not have been coached out. Both at inside- and centre-forward he was noted for attacking from deep and shooting and scoring from distance. He was not just at times the deep-lying Cameron-type No. 10 but at others in essence the first False No. 9., a style at Fulham that in 1907 was to take the team to the Southern League championship but also stay with Hogan, as he later carved out a coaching career, initially in Hungary, then Switzerland and Austria. As coach of the Austrian team in the 1920s and 1930s he found in Matthias Sindelar, nicknamed the Paperman on account of his slight physique, a player, who would play with great success in a fashion so remarkably similar to R.C that it could not be coincidence. Then in the Hungarian team of the late 1930s there was Sarosi and in the Magic Magyar of the 1950s, who were open in their acknowledgement of the influence of Hogan on their all-conquering style-of-play, the deep-lying Hidegkuti played a role derived, it seems, from Elgin.