The Cross
Sometime earlier than but within a year or so of 1888 a new style of football was born. It is true that at first sight it might be seen as a variant of what there was already, 2-3-5, The Pyramid/The Top, with its suggested origins in North Wales but already widespread, particularly in the English Midlands and South. But this style had entirely different and specifically Scottish ancestry. It was The Cross, better explained numerically as 2-2-1-2-3, and a product of Scots tactical thinking or at least tactical thinking of a particular part of, indeed a particular place in Scotland. It would take a decade to be shaped, to evolve, a process that would run parallel to that of The Pyramid, would almost be engulfed but serendipitously survive and, as The Pyramid has lost almost all its relevance, remains today the basis of most modern football.
But to understand the superiority of The Cross and its now five generations of descendants the true story of The Pyramid needs to be told, not least to spotlight its strengths and the weaknesses that would ultimately see its demise. Myth has it that The Pyramid first saw the light in 1878 in Wrexham in Wales with the pace of John Price allowing his central, forward partner, Edwin Cross, to drop back into the half-back line. That made sense. Since the day in 1872 when Scotland had first played four defenders and not the previous convention of three, football's path to ever-more defensive formations has been more or less irreversible. Scotland's box-four defence that day had been the first step. Edwin Cross was the second.
Of course, myth is myth and newspaper records show that within months of club rather than past-time football beginning in Scotland in 1873 2-3-5 had already been tried. It was found wanting and went no further, at least for the moment. It did not cross the border southwards in the way that it would begin to filter across the Welsh one into England seven or so years later. However, even before it is said to have touched English soil The Pyramid had been given another try, again in Scotland, by none other than both Rangers and Queen's Park.
On 10th April 1880 Rangers played Dumbarton at home. Rangers took the field as 2-3-5, Dumbarton as what had become the Scottish convention, 2-2-6, the box-four defence and three pairs of forwards, one on the right, one on the left and one up the middle. Then two weeks later Queen's Park in facing Vale of Leven did the same, before, two weeks later still this time in the Glasgow Challenge Cup, repeating the experiment. It did so in drawing with Rangers, which had in the meantime returned to 2-2-6, and repeated its use once more in the replay four days later. Yet three days later still, when it, Queen's Park, played Clapham Rovers, the English FA Cup holders, in a sort of World Championships it returned to the Scottish 2-2-6, precisely what Clapham also employed.
However, it would not be long before the first English teams were themselves clearly looking at the new system. On 6th November 1880 Queen's Park hosted Nottinghamshire, Notts County by another name. It was a pivotal game on a number of fronts. In the Hampden team was Andrew Watson, recently recruited from Parkgrove and quite possibly the reason for the its experimentation with 2-3-5 six months earlier. Then he had played as one of the three half-backs. Now he was full-back and captain in a 2-2-6., whilst its was Notts which played 2-3-5 with as one of its full-backs a Diasporan Scot by the name of Stuart McRae.
And then came a flurry of 2-3-5. In England there was Brentwood against Old Etonians, Pilgrims against Royal Engineers, Norfolk versus Suffolk and the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. In cross-border fixtures Middlesbrough adopted 2-3-5 in facing Govan, as did Dumbarton against Darwen, Glasgow University versus Cambridge University and Glasgow, when confronted by Lancashire. In Scotland too Dumbarton was reported as employing it against Queen's Park and Rangers, whilst it was on the receiving end to Vale of Leven. And there was still further experimentation, particularly south of the border. Royal Engineers toyed with 1-3-3-3, Wednesbury and nearby Aston Villa, 1-3-6, and Nottingham Forest, 1-2-2-5, as did Blackburn Olympia.
However, there was one game that stands out firstly because it was perhaps the first since 1873 where 2-3-5 is known to have been used by both teams, secondly its location and thirdly the quality of the teams involved. Yet it did not take place in Wales, nor in England, nor in Glasgow. The game took place in Edinburgh between Hearts and St. Bernards, then the city's two major clubs, with Hibernian, although founded in 1875, not emerging as serious competition until the following season. And it marked an affinity with 2-3-5 that in that city would endure.
Hearts use of 2-3-5 would continue to the end of the 1880-81 season. It would also continue, as would St. Bernard's into the next season. Hibs, however, preferred 2-2-6. When the two faced each other on 1st October 1881 that was the way, as it was for the rest of the season, into the next and in 1883. It seemed in Scotland there was a split, Whilst in Glasgow and the surrounding towns 2-2-6 was by then unchallenged, already in the early 1880s two thirds of Edinburgh was playing 2-3-5 and only one third 2-2-6. It might not have seemed of importance at the time but it would be not just influential in English football but within the decade pivotal for the Scottish game and eventually for World football.
Meantime in England both systems had also been used and experimentation continued, Aston Villa still at the forefront trying 1-3-6 and even 1-1-1-2-5. And below Hadrian's Wall football was growing, albeit at an uneven pace. In the south of the country that growth was literally leisurely, in the Midlands more professionally, whilst in the industrial North it was exploding.Whereas in Lancashire, the hotbed, a decade earlier a crowd of 1,000 for a game was noteworthy by 1883 it was 10,000. There was money to be made. For regular games spectators paid their sixpence, today's equivalent of £3 to stand and watch; children were half-price, ladies free. Another sixpence got you into the grandstand. For important games those prices would be doubled. And money-men became involved, money talked and rules very quickly began to be bent.
What was true in the North could not be said for Southern England. Crowds there were a half or less than those in the Northern industrial towns. In fact there was only one other area of Britain where the rush to football was at least comparable, if not greater; lowland Scotland. There the game too was not only expanding exponentially but it was, as the success of the national team showed, simply producing better players who had first moved south from 1877 and began to do so in increasing numbers to more and more clubs from the early 1880s.
J.J. Lang, having demonstrated his prowess for Clydesdale and in representative matches for Glasgow was probably the first. He had wandered south to Sheffield and what is called in Latin countries “brown amateurism”. The following year Archie Hunter had left a successful 3rd Lanark team and ambled his way to Birmingham. There he became centre-forward in experimental Aston Villa captained by ex. Glasgow Rovers George Ramsay. And a couple of years later Archie was joined via the same route by his brother, Andy. Lang and Ramsay were from Glasgow, the Hunter brothers from Ayrshire but the next shamateur players of note were also brothers, Nick and Jimmy Ross, and they were from from Edinburgh, as were several others who followed them, attractive to the clubs not just for their ball skills but their tactical knowledge of 2-3-5.
And where club football had gone so the international game would follow. Scotland had officially first played England in 1872. Wales had played its first game in 1876, against Scotland, and from then on too was an annual fixture. England played Wales for the first time in 1879 and Ireland in 1882. Ireland first met Scotland in 1885. By then three of the four countries had adopted 2-3-5. The exception was Scotland.
The first to do so had been England on 15th March 1884. It had been against Scotland, at Cathkin Park in Glasgow in defeat and the man to take on role of centre-half played for Notts County. It was his fifth cap but not for the land of his blood. He was none other than Stuart McRae, the son of the McRae's of Conchra clan chieftain, Scots by up-bringing and final resting-place. His father was born in Nairn and his mother on Harris. He went to school in Edinburgh. His brother would be the man who would reconstruct the Eilean Donan Castle we know today. And on Stuart's death in London in 1927 his body taken by train to Inverness and then to Kyle of Lochalsh to be buried beside his parents and his brother in the clan graveyard on the shore of Loch Duich. And the reason for his taking the field for England, by the rule of the day, a rule that would be changed three years later, was as he was born in India under the Empire rule he could not play for any other country.
Stuart McRae's reign as centre-half would last just that one game. Selected for the next one against Wales two days later he had picked up an injury and had to drop out. His place was taken by James Forrest of Blackburn Rovers, almost a decade younger and now seen as the England's and therefore the World's first fully professional international player in a team that was finally regarded as having gone beyond even brown amateurism.
The Wales game was where for the first time both teams lined up as 2-3-5 and the appearance of Forrest was one of the factors that would provoke a reaction. At club level objections had already been lodged against professionalism, objections to which at first the English F.A. was sympathetic. Objection at international level was now added. However, club objection in particular caused a rebellion by a number of the powerful, Northern clubs. Indeed it almost caused a split in the FA in England until it drew back, reconsidered and eventually in 1885 agreed to legitimise was de facto was the case anyway. Professional football had officially arrived.
In England it was the end of the matter but not in Scotland. The SFA responded by requesting/demanding that no professional players be allowed to take part in any games between Scottish and English teams. In other words amateur should only play amateur. In fact so serious were the SFA's continuing objections it might well have split British football in the way essentially the same issue would cause schisms in the game in several other countries. However, the SFA's position was fine in principle but an immediate problem for teams on both sides of the border with many cross-border games, notably in the Scottish winter break over Christmas and New Year and in the FA Cup. For the Scottish clubs it meant weakened and less attractive opposition and therefore less revenue. For English clubs, which often struggled even with professionals in the teams, it meant potential early elimination from the Cup, the revenue from which they depended upon.
In the circumstances the English FA refusal of the Scottish request/demand was inevitable. The Scottish FA responded by withdrawing its teams from the FA Cup. But it helped no-one. All that resulted at first was polarisation. English teams played other English teams. Scots teams played Scots. But there were also gains. South of of the border there were notably more North-South confrontations, which spread professional standards southwards. In Scotland the major teams were forced to spread their net wider to find alternative opposition. Dundee teams, notably Old Boys, Strathmore and Harp, became more involved, Arbroath too. Aberdeen appeared, playing Penicuik and there was a further spin-off. All six teams of those adopted not 2-2-6, but 2-3-5. The Scottish East Coast followed Edinburgh not Glasgow.
In the meantime ten weeks before professional legitimisation in England back in Scotland an eighteen year-old had played his first first-team game. It was in an all Leven Vale encounter for Renton against Vale of Leven. Both teams lined up as 2-2-6. The young, local man took his place in the forward-line as the inner or back-up forward on the right. His name was James Kelly.
In the end the Scottish FA position proved unsustainable. It had to back down. Scottish teams were briefly able to return to the FA Cup, which they did in increasing numbers, five in 1885-6 and seven in 1886-7. Nevertheless, the episode contributed to the creation of the International Football Association Board, a talking-shop for precisely such problems, which met for the first time in June 1886. It in 1887 would be the forum that would at the instigation not of Scotland but Ireland change the rule that had kept Stuart McRae out of the Scottish team. The rule was amended to a player born in the British Empire being able to chose, if he so wished, the country within the United Kingdom of his father's birth. Under the new rule McRae could have chosen Scotland.
However, still in 1886 James Kelly continued to learn his trade at Renton in the forward-line in the central or right pairing and The Pyramid consolidated its hold on England and Wales and in Scotland advanced northwards into Fife and Angus and westwards. Third Lanark had been converted, other major Glasgow teams, Rangers, Vale of Leven, even Queen's Park would adjust and against English opposition at times match up as 2-3-5, whilst lesser teams in and around Glasgow like Battlefield and Paisley's Abercorn would turn increasingly to it. Even Renton would eventually succumb. On 15th May 1886 in the Glasgow Charity Cup Final Vale of Leven faced Renton once more. The Vale would use its usual 2-2-6 formation but Renton would win by 3-1 and line up as 2-3-5 with James Kelly no longer a forward but at left-half.
It seemed a one-off although around him still more teams seemed to be turning; Dumbarton and Morton for example. At the start of the 1886-7 season Kelly was back on the right wing in a 2-2-6 against Hibernian and two games later he was at right-centre. But in the game in-between Renton had played 2-3-5 and for the first time he had been at centre-half. Yet it seemed too to be a blip. The next game he was back in the forwards at centre-right, the one after that there again. But it was as still more teams crossed the divide, now Clyde, Cambuslang and Dumbarton Athletic, and Kelly it seems was not immune. He returned to the half-back line. However, this time it was not for Renton. He was turning out for Hibernian against St. Bernards at right-half. Was he looking to move clubs? It seemed he might have been. He was not in the Renton team for its next game. But then once more he was back, against Blackburn Rovers, in a 2-3-5 and at centre-half.
It was then the process, which had taken almost a decade, seemed to come to a conclusion. The date was 27th November 1886. On that day for the first time almost every team in Scotland seems finally to have taken the field in The Pyramid formation with Renton the only exception, an anachronism, stubbornly holding out. In its fixture Kelly would played left-half in a pair and over the next two months was once more playing either in the half-backs or even the forwards not because he had been replaced at centre-half but simply because Renton, unlike almost every other team north of the border, did not have one. In fact it would be almost four months before , on 19th February, he would play the position again and once more it would seem to be a one-off.
In the meantime Scottish problems with professionalism in England had were mounting. The different attitudes either side of the border had resulted in a still greater flow of Scottish players to English clubs in addition to which professionalism was raising its head in Scotland itself. Vale of Leven after defeat in the semi-final of the Scottish Cup by Hibernian objected to an Hibernian player, Willie Groves, on the grounds that he had accepted money from the club and was therefore professional. Groves was one of several working-class, Glasgow, Catholic players, who had been drawn across the country to play for Hibs in Edinburgh. And he was not doing it out of largesse. He was almost certainly professional or at the very least very brown amateur.
The case came before the Scottish FA, but only after Hibernian had gone on to win the 1887 Scottish Cup defeating Dumbarton. The Scottish FA was in a tricky position. The evidence was hearsay but this was the Cup winner that could be breaking the rules. A ballot was taken of the member clubs. Nine thought Groves and therefore Hibernian guilty, nine innocent. The chairman had the casting vote. He was if anything in an even trickier position and he bottled it. He tried to bury the matter by deciding for Groves. The hope was that the matter then would simply go away but all his action did was set in motion the wheels that opened the doors not wide but certainly wider.
And before the Groves case had even taken place the differences between Scotland and the other Home Nations had reappeared. A meeting of them had been agreed to take place in Liverpool to discuss further representation at both club and international levels. Scotland, Ireland and Wales turned up. England did not. At the last minute it sent a telegram, saying firstly that as far as it was concerned the matter of who could represent England internationally was settled. Essentially it and the each other country could choose who it wanted, whether amateur or professional. And, secondly, for clubs games it accepted an Irish proposal that professionals could play amateurs but a player from one nation but playing in another could only play against a team from that player's home nation after three years residence in the country of the club for which he played. Since England had virtually no players playing outside England for it it made no difference. For the other countries it did but the English attitude was in essence take it or leave it. It was taken but the Scottish FA ordered the withdrawal of its members from the English FA Cup ad infinitum. Non-friendly cross-border games effectively ceased. And the result: a void was created that the English clubs would within months fill with the Football League, discussions about which were started early the following year, in January 1888, and which kicked off in September that same year. Scotland had no such filler.
Meantime James Kelly, centre-half, had finally come of age. The date was 2nd April 1887. He was twenty-one years old. Renton was playing Kilmarnock. It was the end of the season. They then played Burnley and Bolton. Next came Vale of Leven, and two Cup Final games against Rangers, a second final, the Charity Cup, against Vale of Leven and a charity game against Hibernian. Kelly was at centre-half in all except possibly one when he may have been at right-half but in three. And the following season it continued. Kelly remained at centre-half throughout a run of wins that would only be broken on 11th February in the Dumbartonshire Final. Renton, with Kelly playing, was defeated 2:1 by Vale of Leven. Then the run resumed, right the way through to the Cup Final, in which Renton, having disposed of Queen's Park in the semi 3-1, defeated Cambuslang 6-1. It seemed that Scotland had discovered its successor to Stuart McCrae except that Kelly had a quite different approach and style of play to the Diasporan.
The difference was in part due to Kelly himself. He did not play like Stuart McRae, nor an English centre-half of his day, nor indeed like one from Edinburgh, a Ross or even Kelly's immediate predecessor in the Scottish team, Third Lanark's John Auld, the first to play centre-half in a Scotland shirt. Kelly was not a defensive but an attacking centre-half positioned not between the right- and left-halves but centrally in front of them. Part of that was due to him having been a forward dropping back, although he was not the first. Partly it was because he was not an ageing player losing a little pace. In April 1888 he was just twenty-two. Partly still it was because of the way in which football had developed specifically in the West of Scotland and how uniquely that same West of Scotland had eventually found its way to 2-3-5, Pyramid and now otherwise.
The weakness of The Pyramid is immediately obvious. It is the flanks. The dropping back of one of the central forwards between the two half-backs of the Box-Four defence resulted in a crowded centre of the field and wide open spaces on the wings. The obvious reaction was for the right- and left half-backs to move outwards. It seemed to solve two problems. It gave the centre-half space and blocked the advance of the opposing wingers, the outside-halves becoming exactly what they would be called, wing-backs, and marking the wingers. However, it also meant that the full-backs had to remain tight together or the ball over the centre-half fell into space that the more central opposition forwards could now run onto. But tight full-backs then resulted in space behind the wing-backs. Beat them and the opposition wingers had two options, the early cross inside the full-back into the path of advancing central forwards or a run to the goal-line outside the full-back and a centre onto the feet or increasingly the head of the centre-forward. And that was precisely the pattern of play that developed in England after 1882 and more importantly in Eastern Scotland even earlier.
Players in the West of Scotland, of course, faced exactly the same problems from opposition attacks, but they responded differently. They did not abandon 2-2-6 but adapted it. Pairings had been an organisational development that in 2-2-6 had been a first reaction to opponents also using 2-2-6. But it was just as quickly embraced and incorporated by the Pyramiders because in both systems it provided a link between defence and attack. The second reaction was purely defensive and could not be passed on. It was the widening of the full-backs with as a corollary the convention growing up through the early 1880s of the full-backs and not the half-backs marking the opposing wingers. It made sense. Wide full-backs filled the space, into which with narrow full-backs the wingers would otherwise run but against 2-3-5 left just two in mid-field against three and the possibility of being overrun.
And that is where James Kelly came in. His evolution as a centre-half but a Scottish centre-half forming not a line but because of his advanced position a triangle in mid-field provided not just at least two and a half against the three in defence but also a third link between that defence and attack. In defence a little might still be lost but in attack a whole lot more was gained. At club level in the Scottish league it proved a revelation. It re-floated the boat of traditional football in the West of Scotland. It made Kelly the Scottish game's greatest prize to be courted. On 14th April 1888 he was playing as a guest once more for brown amateur Hibernian and against Hearts. Five days later he was back at Renton against Queen's Park and again on 2nd May. On 12th May he was again with Renton facing and beating Cambuslang once more, this time in the Glasgow Charity Cup and then it was on to the "World Championship" a week later still. Scottish Cup-winners Renton played the winners of the FA Cup, West Bromwich, and won 4-1. The title, albeit unofficial, was theirs just as it had been Hibernian's had the previous year in defeating Preston North End and neighbours', Vale of Leven, in 1878 in overcoming The Wanderers.
At that point Kelly's season quite possibly should have been over. He must have needed a break yet he played in an exhibition match the following week, the Scoto-Welsh versus the Scoto-English, whatever they were, then a World Championship reiteration. It arose because in the meantime in England West Bromwich had suffered defeat to the Ross brothers' Preston North End, 2-0. It threw into question the validity Renton's champion's tag. Perhaps the English team was the better. A match was arranged to find out. It took place on 2nd June and was a close affair, Renton, the home team becoming champion now of champions scoring four but Preston replying with two.
Then too the Kelly season might have been over but still there was more. On the 9th June Renton played and just beat Lanarkshire, 4-3. A certain Jake Madden of Dumbarton guested at centre-forward. And in the meantime both Madden and Kelly plus Neil McCallum also of Renton and Tom Maley of Cathcart guested for a new Glasgow team, formed seven months earlier. The team was Celtic, the opponents the Rangers touring team, the Swifts.
There was in this period just one blot on the Kelly CV. Scotland had against England on 17th March taken the field for the second time in a 2-3-5 but it was notional. Kelly and therefore a Scottish-style, attacking centre-half at the fulcrum of The Cross had been chosen instead of the English-style one of the previous year. It was a disaster. Scotland was not only beaten for the first time for a decade, it was a home and the margin was by five goals without reply. England, a team with eight professionals, proved itself to be faster and fitter. Indeed Scotland was four down by half-time, the fourth scored by an “English” player raised in Kilmarnock, none other than John Goodall. Yet little of no blame was attached to Kelly. With two goals from corners and one from a free-kick the problems were at set-pieces. Dumbarton's Leitch Keir at left-half was rounded on and never played for Scotland again. Kelly would be persisted with and be back the following year in defeat again but a narrow one away, in home draw in 1890, twice more against England and eight in all.
And on 4th August 1888 Kelly played his first game of the new season. It was not for Renton, nor for Hibernian. It was for Celtic and Celtic would not look back. Sadly the same cannot be said for Renton. Its 1888 team was exceptional. With Scots all, but openly Protestant alongside Catholic, the sons of Highlanders, Lowlanders and Irish alike playing alongside each other it was inclusive. It might have gone on to greater things and more might have been written and be known about how it played but it proved transitory. It had taken at least three years to build based on an unchanged goalkeeper and back-four. It had taken eighteen months, perhaps two years of that to evolve from simple all-out attack to for the first time a recognisable yet at the same time revolutionary mid-field, if only of one man. Nevertheless within months it had fragmented. Six of its members would in time take the journey south to play in England. Two would move to Glasgow, joining the newly-created Celtic. The transfers club to club would be done. The advance of The Pyramid had been halted, and just in the nick of time. Reversal would take a little longer but the stylistic, the eventual, worldwide, tactical transfer of The Cross had begun.