Why Scottish Football Was Different and Other Matters?
(This article could not have been written without an immense contribution from the BBC’s Mr Shinty, Hugh Dan MacLennan)
Sometimes the obvious can be ignored. It is an oversight. Sometimes that ignorance is wilful; there were, still are other agendas; cultural, nationalist, even linguistic and nation-building ones. Sometimes it's simply failure to identify and understand a sequence of events correctly. And in the case of shinty, camanachd in Gaelic, there is evidence of at least a measure of all three.
In Scotland chronologically it has not been helpful that the Camanachd Association was set up only in 1893, whilst both the Scottish Football Association and the Scottish Rugby Union had already been formed within ten days of each other exactly twenty years earlier; the latter first, the former a reaction. In fact all three are significant in that they can be seen as the moments, in Scotland at least, when, what were until then little more than pastimes, what in North America would be called pick-up games, became sports, but it makes organised shinty look like an afterthought rather than what it was in reality on the field, a precursor and therefore capable of formative influence.
As it happens of shinty having influence on rugby there is no evidence. In football, however, there is, and at much the same time as across the Atlantic there had also been the emergence of a new sport, in the story of which Scottish-ness has had, if anything, more of a pivotal role. Its first association had already been founded in 1883; its second and surviving one in 1886. Its national one would follow in 1905 and its roots are not just in the Auld Country as a generality but specifically with the Auld Game, shinty.
There is no doubt shinty is a Highlanders' game and has largely remained so but that it has not travelled, as maintained by some, be it wilfully or not, is demonstratively untrue. European colonisation of New Zealand began officially in 1825, in earnest in 1840 and by November 1847 the Wellington Independent newspaper carried an advertisement for a shinty game to be played on the last day of the month, St. Andrew's Day, of course. Indeed shinty was quite probably European New Zealand's first field sport. Modern New Zealand's national game, rugby, did not arrive until a generation later, brought in 1870 incidentally by Charles, the son of Edinburgh-born, David Munro. Formal association football arrived at some point in the next decade. And in addition, shinty was also being played at much the same time "across the ditch". An Australian painting by Scotsman, John Rae, is of a game that is almost certainly shinty and has been dated to 1842. Moreover twenty years earlier still a game called “shinny” was being played in the USA, on grass and at Princeton University in the state of New Jersey, a state that had and would see substantial Scots immigration and would later be one of the five centres of nascent, American soccer. And, this “shinny” playing was not only long before soccer existed but also before rugby and the grid-iron game that would come to dominate American college sport, including at Princeton itself.
That shinty was not a game that was adaptable is also unjustifiable. It was not just played rurally on ground 500 yards or more in length but also in areas, abroad through emigration or in the Lowland cities, to which middle-class Highlanders were drawn by betterment, playing their game on pitches more limited in size, and poorer Gaels were displaced, notably in the famine of the 1840s, An Gorta Mor, which devastated Ireland but also wreaked considerable but less lethal havoc in the Scottish countryside. Cut-down versions of the game, where something else was found or a ball halved to push and slap with home-made sticks, were played in the streets of Edinburgh, in industrial Paisley, Glasgow, the burgeoning villages of Lanark and elsewhere.
What is true, however, is that nowhere outwith the Highlands did the game become embedded, that is with one exception, one which has become a national obsession but as a variant to suit local conditions. The country is Canada. The sport is ice-hockey.
On the other side of the Atlantic colonisation of North America had begun two centuries before New Zealand but the land that would become central Canada was British only from 1763, be free from threat from the United States from 1812 and combine with the Eastern Provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, settled earlier and already heavily Scots-influenced, finally in 1867. It was thus only from 1815 that mass immigration had taken place. The thirty-five years to 1850 saw some 800,000 new arrivals, in the main both to central Canada and from the British Isles, many Scots amongst them, Lowlanders but also Highlanders, actual and town-displaced. And with this new wave of immigration would come shinty or rather more shinty, a new influx to begin with co-existing with what had been the same game but which, already established by the early 19th Century in Nova Scotia, had there made the transition in colder winters than in the Auld Country to one played on the flattest surfaces available, not grassy fields but frozen lakes.
This Nova Scotian "new shinty" was an ad hoc, outdoor game of oral rules depicted in engravings from the time as played on ice with a caman, that is a shinty stick, and a ball, with and outwith skates. In fact it was known as "shinny, precisely what in Canada remains the modern name for a pick-up game of “hockey”, i.e ice-hockey, what at Princeton almost two centuries ago was also the name given a grass game and what even today in the Highlands, when talking of the game that started it all, is with the Scots glottal stop is said somewhere between “shenty” and "shinny". The glottal stop has been nothing if not pervasive, as have Scots themselves and the name appears no less as durable.
However, here it is that nation-building raises its head, if somewhat myopically. And here even calm Canadians are no exception. There is from them much talk of Nova Scotia’s Mi’kmaq Indians as the originators of proto-ice-hockey but there is also a strong element of grasping at nationalist straws. That native Americans played ball games is certain. What we know as Lacrosse is theirs. That Mi’kmaqs would make "hockey", that is ice-hockey sticks, is equally certain. They knew the woods and wood. That they also played a lacrosse like game on ice using sticks and bone skates is again certain. They were seen doing so in 1749. Nevertheless, to try to ignore the obvious link between Scotia and Nova Scotia, between shinty and shinny is simply perverse. The oldest known ice-hockey stick is recognised to have been made in Nova Scotia in the 1830s for a William Moffat, a Scot by origin or descent. He may have made it himself or had it made for him, by Mi'lmqs possibly but it is a caman, a shinty stick, by any description. And it was Nova Scotia again that in 1866 saw the first patenting of skates specifically to play a game, which, as much as it was not original shinty for there was no grass, nor field hockey since it did not exist, nor yet ice-hockey on an indoor rink for the same reason, was most likely to have had sources not in one tradition but an amalgam of two. Scots came with shinty. Nova Scotia had ice not grass. Watching Mik'maqs suggested to the newcomers shinty on ice.
Emergence of what would become modern ice-hockey began in 1872 with James Creighton. A fourth generation, Anglo-Scottish Nova Scotian that year he moved from his home-town across newly uniting Canada to Montreal, from Halifax's University of Kings College, where an ice-shinny of some sort had been played since about 1790, to McGill. The name Hockey would, it is said, be derived in 1855 from Colonel John Hockey, who at Fort Edward, again in Nova Scotia, used shinny matches to get his troops fit, with the soldiers then referring to them as Hockey Games. And Creighton brought with him the Halifax Rules, unwritten codification of the game of his childhood and youth, outdoor shinny, and also an ability to skate. He carried too or developed a love of rugby. In Montreal he found no suitable open space for his outdoor shinny but did join the Victoria Skating Club, with its enclosed rink. It was there in 1875 he organised a demonstration game of effectively indoor shinny, captaining one of the teams, winning the match and using instead of a ball a wooden disc, a puck, an idea, it is said, also brought from Nova Scotia with “puc”, coincidently or not being the Scots Gaelic word for push or shove. The demonstration was a success. Other ad-hoc indoor shinny teams were formed. Creighton himself became a captain of the first organised one, the McGill University Hockey Club and has moreover been called the “Father of Organised Hockey”, ice-hockey not to be confused with field-hockey. The latter would not be codified for a decade and its rules largely modelled on those of an an equally new sport, Association Football.
The title of “Father of Organised Hockey” was an honour Creighton always declined. He was by nature modest but also recognised that the McGill Rules that emerged in 1877 as the game's first were not just his. He had wanted the backward passing of rugby to be adopted but it was the forward, backward and sideways passing of the far older grass and ice shinny, of the Halifax rules, of ancient field shinty in far-away Caledonia that won the day. Which takes us neatly back to Scotland itself.
It was serendipitously also in 1877 back in Scotland that a team of a different sort was making its impact in another sport as that year and for the next two it won Association Football's Scottish Cup, defeating Queen's Park once and Rangers twice. The team was Vale of Leven, said to have been formed in 1856 but, of course, not as a footba' club. “Soccer” did not then exist. Its first rules were compiled only in 1863 with the founding of the Football Association in London. Those rules had then really only reached Scotland in 1871 with their adoption by Glasgow's Queen's Park on acceptance of an invitation to take part in the first English FA Cup. Prior to that from its formation in 1867 Queen's Park had played to its own variant of the rules and its games against external competition were counted on two hands, possibly only one. Different clubs, the potential competition, played different games; rugby, cricket. The Vale's game was shinty. Indeed when in late 1879 it was knocked out of the Scottish Cup early it would turn its attention back to the Auld Game, in 1880 taking the country's then foremost shinty trophy, the Glasgow Celtic Society Cup.
The playing of shinty, in fact, was at that time widespread in western Dunbartonshire with its border with Highland Argyll. It had been the predominant sport both in rural and newly industrialising areas. In 1849 Glenfrien met Gareloch and was then challenged by Leven Vale. Glenfrien runs north-west to the Gare Loch from Loch Lomond just north of Balloch, which is where the River Leven leaves Lomond southwards on its way to the Clyde. Rural shinty neighbour had met equally rural neighbour and had in turn been called out by the urbanising neighbour on the other side. And a generation later and very much from a position of strength in 1870 the Vale of Leven itself had issued a shinty challenge that was not just local but effectively Gaeldom- and Highland-wide, to "Inveraray, Lochaber, Badenoch, Inverness or Sutherland". It was not taken up, not least because so good was Vale's team that it not only had remained undefeated but never conceded a goal.
Footba' arrived in the Leven Vale in late 1872. Queen's Park came to Alexandria, to the shinty park, to play one of a number of demonstration matches across The Lowlands, during which proceedings would be stopped to explain rules and tactics. It is clear the Vale opposition had no idea of either. They lined up as they knew, as quite possibly the country's foremost exponents, in shinty formation. Yet unknowingly it matched at least in part the tactical approach of the senior opposition. Days earlier in the first official Scotland-England international under the guidance of captain, Robert Gardner, Queen's Park as Scotland had in Glasgow at Hamilton Crescent taken the field with a daringly “innovative” formation, the block-four defence, two full-backs either side of the ‘keeper, two half-backs in front. But it wasn’t a new formation at all. It had in fact been borrowed straight from a 2000 year-old game with long-established tactics and positions, the block-four defence one of them. Nor is it likely that Gardner was doing it on a whim. He knew what he was about. He also almost certainly knew his shinty, from Paisley, from where his family came and in Glasgow, where he grew up. Who is to say that he himself had not taken part in street shinny in either or both and who also is not to say that Leven Vale that day recognised the defensive formation as merely a “loan” from shinty to football and then also applied in attack working as pairs and inter-passing, something they knew, if only out of habit, again from their game, where a small ball got stuck in thick grass and made dribbling impossible?
What Queen's Park as Scotland had introduced at Hamilton Crescent was also noted elsewhere. The following year England had adopted it. What Queen's Park intended in Alexandria also clearly worked. Within months not one but four Leven Vale football clubs – Vale of Leven, aka "The Vale", the Highlanders' club, nearby and non-Highland Renton, and two from Dumbarton, Dumbarton itself and Alclutha – had been formed. And it seems too that three of them at least proved to be quick learners or perhaps it was that they were, if unknowingly, bringing something old but new to the party, the unintended consequence of which was to give them almost immediate, if temporary, advantage and in short time lift the new sport in Scotland at least to a still higher plane.
The chronology begins in 1873-4, the first year of the Scottish Cup, where Queen's Park in the final defeated Clydesdale. It was hardly a surprise. In the then new game in town, like Leven Vale in shinty, the Auld Game, the Hampden Club had also never conceded a goal, never mind been defeated. What was, however, remarkable was that in the first season of Leven Vale football Renton at home had defeated Dumbarton by a single goal in the quarter-finals and then only lost in the semi to the eventual winners. Two Vale clubs had almost gone all the way and Vale of Leven might have been amongst them, perhaps going further still but for a stoochie for a completely non-football reason. It had meant Dumbarton had in the first round had a walkover against The Vale, in what was the first, if certainly not the last, example of footballing politics.
The cause of the stoochie was thus. Vale player and later captain, John Ferguson, was an all-rounder. He was also a formidable shinty-player and a noted runner. For the latter he had won prize-money, as a result of which Dumbarton before a ball had been kicked objected to him on the grounds of professionalism. The Vale in response refused to field a team. Dumbarton advanced. There was then something of reprise the following year. In the first round Clydesdale was held at home by Vale of Leven and then again for the same reason as Dumbarton once more objected to Ferguson, who meanwhile had been selected and played for Scotland. He had done so outside Harry McNeil of Queen's Park, another noted shinty-player and, indeed, shinty-coach, meaning Scotland’s preferred football left wing was a pure shinty pairing, note, pairing. This second time around The Vale's response was to resign as both Renton and again Dumbarton advanced further than the previous season and in the case of one almost as far as possible. They would meet in an all-Leven semi-final that had to be replayed to get a result, whilst in the other all-Glasgow semi it took two replays to separate Queen's Park and Clydesdale before the former triumphed by a single goal, going on to defeat Renton in the final.
By the third year of Cup the Ferguson problem had been smoothed over, not least because A.S. McBride, first President of Vale of Leven FC became President of the SFA. The new man in charge ensured his player would not face not just objection at club level but be restored to Scotland's forwards. The Vale defeated Renton in the second round of the Cup. Both the Vale and Dumbarton would reach the semi-finals and both lose. The latter would be after two replays to 3rd Lanark. The former was to Queen's Park by the odd goal in three at the opposition's Hampden Park and watched by a remarkable 10,000. It was, however, a case of the shinty boot on the other foot, the first time the Glasgow club had conceded a goal in a senior game.
In 1876-77 Dumbarton defeated Renton in first round, fell in the second but Vale of Leven would defeat Queen's Park again at Hampden in the quarter-finals and go on to the final. There it met Rangers and after two replays the Leven Vale finally overcame Glasgow. However, it was not to be the only occasion or sport, in which The Vale that year would similarly win. Two months earlier a "grand" twenty-a-side shinty match had taken place between Glasgow and the Leven Vale. Harry McNeil had been one of the Glasgow team. Equally seven of the Leven Vale selection, John Ferguson amongst them, had or were playing football for The Vale, including three from its very first team. And one of Leven Vale's umpires was A.S. McBride, role he would also fulfil just weeks later at the Scottish Cup Final. He was clearly a man who knew his football and shinty rules in the same way his and other shinty-men could play both codes.
By the time of shinty's "Grand Match" it had been three years since Ferguson had become one of the first four non-Queen's Park players to play for Scotland, coincidentally or not alongside McNeil and in Scotland's first international football win, and both were clearly able to play not just football but the Auld Game too and for the moment with little conflict. Competitive club and regional shinty fixtures were fitted between equally competitive club and Cup football games. As a club Vale of Leven had in April 1876 conceded its first shinty goal yet in February 1877 it would beat Inveraray and become shinty Champion of Scotland. Then in April 1877 The Vale would also add the football equivalent by winning the Scottish Cup, this whilst in the meantime Scotland had at football in 1876 beaten both England and Wales at home with McNeil and Ferguson in the teams, then in March 1877 won away against the Auld Enemy with just Ferguson present but scoring a brace. And there would be additional obvious cross-over. In the shinty championship Inveraray had played bare-footed and in kilts as was traditional, The Vale in light shoes and kit, perhaps their football boots and strip, whilst in 1977 three of Scotland's six football forwards, Ferguson amongst them, were from Vale of Leven, including the centre-forwards again as a pair, with one, John McGregor, a fellow shinty-man, no doubt applying shinty attacking play .
It was, however, perhaps at this point that shinty belatedly recognised the more general challenge of football as a rival one and not simply complimentary. Whilst in October 1877 the Glasgow Shinty Association was formed and The Vale was a founding member as it had been of the Scottish Football Association four years earlier, at New Year 1878 The Vale would lose its shinty crown to Inveraray. It was a heavy 12-1 loss, the first in its twenty-two year history, with no mention of footwear but with football games and priorities crowding in on either side possibly, by choice or not, a depleted team. It did, however, not have the same problems on the last day of March retaining its football crown, and nor in the meantime did Scotland in defeating England at home by a resounding 7-2. Ferguson did not play but Harry McNeil and John McGregor did and were joined by a third Vale shinty-man, Andrew McIntyre at full-back. It meant, firstly, that direct shinty experience, previously confined to attack in the national side was now also being applied in defense and suggested at club level football might have been prioritised.
Given the above it comes as no surprise that in 1878 shinty’s wake-up continued. In September the Glasgow Celtic Society would offer the city’s Shinty Association a cup to be played for annually. It was clearly a game trying to emerge as a sport in its own right with, perhaps fatally belatedly, its own Cup structure at least equivalent to that of football, where interest and crowds were increasing exponentially. And Vale of Leven would try to remain in the picture. On 17th February 1879 Inveraray were the opponents in a friendly. A week later the again friendly opposition would be Cowal but there was pressure building. Vale would win the friendly but that year Cowal go on to take the first GCS Cup. Having won the semi but Cowal objecting, The Vale, with football obligations piling up and for the first time obviously seen as more important, failed to contest the replay and had to be satisfied with just footballing success; a mere matter of its third, consecutive Scottish Cup.
Perhaps, indeed, in the end the football v. shinty pressure told. In 1879-80 The Vale would be knocked out in the First Round of the football trophy by the odd goal in seven at Dumbarton. It then seems to have returned more seriously to its older alternative. It would take the second playing of the GCS Cup by beating Glencoe, this whilst Scotland's football team would win at home with three shinty-men in the team once more having notably lost away the previous year with just one. And nor was Vale’s defeat to be the only Leven Vale footballing failure that same year. Whilst Dumbarton would reach the Scottish Cup semi-final to lose by a single goal away to eventual winners, a rejuvenated Queen's Park, it had done so by also knocking out Renton in the third round. Renton's competitive football season had been over on 1st November. Moreover the following season it would be earlier still, in Round Two, upon which in both years it would refocus. Thus it was in football Dumbarton, having beaten Vale of Leven in the semi-final, would reach the 1881 Cup Final against Queen's Park, whilst Renton reached the GSC equivalent. True it only did so due to a late postponement of match against and by The Vale, for which The Vale was disqualified. True too that it would against Glencoe lose the final but then there is guarantee of a win. Dumbarton would lose its final also. But then it was not to be a one-off. It would be almost precisely train of events the following year in 1882. Dumbarton would again reach the Scottish Cup Final but win it. Renton would reach the GSCs Final, again to lose but surely demonstrate two things and possibly a third.
The first was that shinty prowess was not solely a Vale of Leven club preserve. The second is that The Vale at club level might have been the main initial source of shinty's footballing input, which north of the border had not just fundamentally influenced but changed the game, but it would not be the only one that would initiate change. Renton would also play its part. Indeed, even as the number of obvious shinty men declined in the national team from 1882 onwards to zero the differences the input of their like had instilled already were both feeding outwith Scotland but at the same time continuing to produce further change. At first those differences reached across the border, with the export of the Scottish Professors to England and then Ireland. Then it was reapplied within Scotland but with a twist. Like Vale of Leven Renton had been by 1880 been one of twenty-four shinty clubs known to exist. Interestingly sixteen of them were urban, six in Glasgow, five more in England. But unlike Vale of Leven, which had been formed in 1854 and therefore predated football Renton had only been founded in 1878 or 1879 and post-dated it. It meant that, whilst Vale of Leven had applied what it knew from shinty and distilled into football, Renton took that first distillation, applied it to its football and quite possibly back into its newly adopted shinty before reapplying what it learned from both and carrying out a second distillation that resulted from 1884 in the new Scottish style, The Cross, that emerged by 1888, sweeping all before it. And finally the differences were spread across the World in the feet and minds of amateurs of the game globally carrying what they understood to be the word; Scottish style football, which, whether they knew it or not, at a literally fundamental level tactically, stylistically, even philosophically had been influenced mainly via the Leven Vale by an ancient game, which, in large part but not entirely and certainly without sufficient recognition, it had by then internalised.