William McGregor
What was it about the rural, southern fringes of the Highlands in the middle of the 19th Century that produced not so much footballers themselves but founders of clubs, organisers and administrators? The ball itself is said to have been made the short trip south to Glasgow from Callander in Stirlingshire, carried by John Connal. Madderty, 30 miles away in central Perthshire, was the home village of Mungo Ritchie, first president of Queen’s Park. One of Rangers’ founders, William McBeath, was also from Callander and the village of Braco, half-way between the two, was the birthplace in 1846 of one William McGregor.
It is said that McGregor first became interested in football after watching a local game at Ardoch. Braco lies in the parish of Ardoch. The game would, of course, not have been association football but a version of the ball game that was historically played throughout the region, in nearby Dunning and with Hansel Monday’s games in Callander being the best known example.
From his home village McGregor moved as a young man to Perth to take up an apprenticeship, as a draper. And it was from there that he also took the wandering road south. In 1870 at the age of 24 he followed his elder brother to Birmingham, opening with him a shop, a drapers and haberdashers, in Summer Lane, Aston, then on the city’s edge.
Still a young man McGregor initially joined a club, a football club, Calthorpe, on the other side of the city. It had been formed by a fellow Scot, John Campbell Orr, who probably had his introduction to football of some sort at school in St. Andrews and at St. Andrew’s University. He had studied there for two years until 1870, moving with his family to Birmingham in 1873 and remaining when the family returned to Scotland in 1877. He would go on to be for many years the Secretary of the Birmingham and District Football Association.
William McGregor was by all accounts not much of a player but he was a man of enthusiasms and commitments. He was a non-conformist Christian, a teetotaller, a supporter of the Temperance Movement. He would seem to have been ideal YMCA material and is known to have been an active member of the local branch of the Liberal Party until he became so heavily involved in football that his membership lapsed in 1882. He was also involved in the early attempts to establish a baseball league in the United Kingdom, perhaps as a summer alternative to cricket, serving as the honorary treasurer of the Baseball Association of Great Britain and Ireland.
In terms of football McGregor would initially arrange for his shop to close early on Saturdays to allow him to watch matches. He would later sell football kits at the same shop, which became a popular meeting place for other football enthusiasts. By 1877 he is known to be umpiring games. At the time two umpires, one from each side, controlled matches on the pitch. Referees would not be introduced until the end of the decade and then not as we know them. In the circumstances it would, therefore, not be unreasonable to assume it was his involvement on the field not as a player and coincidental Scottish connections that prompted McGregor’s invitation that same year to join the administration of Aston Villa.
Villa had been founded in 1874 by members of the Wesleyan Chapel cricket team at Villa Cross, otherwise known as Aston Villa, close to Summer Lane. It was now McGregor’s local club and, as it prospered rapidly, playing initially at Aston Park, replaced Calthorpe in his affections,. In 1876, playing friendlies, captained by 21-year old George Ramsay, it took on its first ground at Perry Barr. The ground had been found by another club player, “John” Lindsay, and Ramsay himself, both of whom realised that to prosper the club had to take gate-money.
Ramsay was an early wanderer, a Glaswegian, born in 1855, who was said both to have played for Rovers, a Glasgow team founded in 1873, to have already arrived at 16 in 1871 in Birmingham, to work as a clerk, and be playing on a casual basis for Villa soon after formation, having been asked, it is said, when walking past, to join a kick-about. All are possible, certainly a Ramsay played for the Rovers' team in Glasgow, but, whatever the truth of the matter he was a gifted player, who later described his new club's approach to the game as
"a dash at the man and a big kick at the ball"
in contrast, just six years after the games arrival north of the border, to his already distinctive, controlled Scottish style.. Indeed the other players, so impressed by his ability, wanted him to remain, he was soon made captain, with spectators said to come especially to see him play and also took charge of training, introducing the “passing game” with a dramatic improvement in results.
John Lindsay, actually James, was also a wanderer but only temporarily. Nor was he not the only Lindsay in the Villa team. He and Ramsay played alongside James’s older brother, William, known as Billy. The brothers were in Birmingham, probably to learn more about the ironmongers’ trade. However, curiously, although both Scots, they were not from the Lowlands, although they must have learned their football there. It had not yet spread elsewhere. Both were born in Golspie in Sutherland with Caithness connections, Billy also in 1855, James, two years later, the sons of James Lindsay, a blacksmith in the town. By 1881, if not earlier, Billy Lindsay had left Birmingham, returned to Thurso, there to run the local branch of the family business, Lindsay & Co., and had married in Wick a girl from Latheron. James would return to Golspie, where on the main street there is still a hardware store, an ironmonger that bears the family name.
Aston Villa played their first game at the new Perry Bar ground on 11th October 1876 in the rain against Wednesbury Town. Billy Lindsay played up front, James Lindsay in defence. It is assumed George Ramsay was also playing, again as a forward. Villa won 1:0. Seven years later The Birmingham Daily Mail, would write of Aston Villa:
"Until 1876 there is little of note with which the club can be identified, but towards the end of the season of 1876/77 (ed: this should be 1875/76) they were joined by three Scotchmen, two brothers named Lindsay, who came from Golspie in Sutherlandshire, and Mr G. B. Ramsay.The Lindsays showed the Villa how to play a good back game, and Ramsay, who had for several seasons previous been considered a very fair forward in the Glasgow Rovers, a club which when it died gave several good players to the Queen's Park, taught them dribbling."
It seems inconceivable that with three Scots in the Villa team in 1876 and McGregor as a fellow Scot officiating he would not have been noticed and in 1877 invited to help his local team. Once involved with Villa, McGregor quickly became club administrator, as the following year, 1878, Villa recruited their other early Scot, already mentioned for his description of the football he had played as a child and the man who would a decade later lift the F.A. Cup for the club for the first time.
Archie Hunter had played first for Ayr United and then for Third Lanark been a member with J.J. Lang of its Scottish Cup-losing side. He had originally arrived, with more than a suggestion of some sort of financial arrangement, in Birmingham, aged just 19, to join John Campbell Orr’s Calthorpe F.C., could not find the club and was instead persuaded, by whom is not clear, to join Villa, where he was joined by his brother, Andy.
Archie Hunter would later write:
“Aston Villa (seemed) to me as a club that had come rapidly to the fore and asked me to become a member of it. I hesitated for some time, but at last my friend told me that a "brother Scot," Mr. George Ramsay, was the Villa captain and that decided me. Mr. Ramsay was a Glasgow man and had exerted himself very considerably to bring the Villa team into the front rank.”
In the late 1870s William McGregor would help the club survive early financial troubles. In 1880 it would win its first trophy, the Birmingham Senior Cup, shortly after which he became the club president. The following year he became a member of the club's board of directors. In 1885 he represented the club in discussions of professionalism. Although said to be against it initially he came round to acceptance and actually admitted his club was one already paying for playing. On the field progress continued to be made, with Ramsay, after his retirement as a player in 1881, as trainer. He became club secretary in 1884. In 1887 the club won the F. A. Cup, defeating local rivals, West Bromwich and becoming the first from the Midlands to win the trophy. Archie Hunter as captain, scored in every round.
The Cup win had put Villa and McGregor in a powerful position. In early 1888, frustrated by the cancellation five Saturdays in a row of Villa's matches and the low crowds, in comparison with Cup games, drawn by friendlies with all the financial implications for a now professional sport, he wrote to his own board and initially four other clubs as follows:
“Every year it is becoming more and more difficult for football clubs of any standing to meet their friendly engagements and even arrange friendly matches. The consequence is that at the last moment, through cup-tie interference, clubs are compelled to take on teams who will not attract the public.I beg to tender the following suggestion as a means of getting over the difficulty: that ten or twelve of the most prominent clubs in England combine to arrange home-and-away fixtures each season, the said fixtures to be arranged at a friendly conference about the same time as the International Conference.This combination might be known as the Association Football Union, and could be managed by representative from each club. Of course, this is in no way to interfere with the National Association (The FA); even the suggested matches might be played under cup-tie rules. However, this is a detail.My object in writing to you at present is merely to draw your attention to the subject, and to suggest a friendly conference to discuss the matter more fully. I would take it as a favour if you would kindly think the matter over, and make whatever suggestions you deem necessary. I am only writing to the following – Blackburn Rovers, Bolton Wanderers, Preston North End, West Bromwich Albion, and Aston Villa, and would like to hear what other clubs you would suggest.I am, yours very truly, William McGregor (Aston Villa F.C.)P.S. How would Friday, 23 March 1888, suit for the friendly conference at Anderton's Hotel, London?”
It is certainly one of the most important letters in the history of modern football, if not sport in general. It is the professional blueprint for both everywhere. The meeting took place as suggested on the day before the FA Cup Final. With no interest from southern clubs, a second meeting took place in Manchester, which led to the formation of what was renamed the Football League, giving its professional member clubs a guaranteed fixture list each season. It was a name chosen specifically with no reference to England in the title, so as to allow for the joining, as was, indeed, McGregor’s hope, of Scottish clubs, banned the previous year by the SFA from entering the FA Cup. In the end no Scottish Club took the opportunity. They could not. The English clubs were professional. Instead McGregor’s idea was duplicated north of the border, with the amateur Scottish Football League's foundation in 1890, only turning professional in 1893.
The Football League, with McGregor as chairman, made up of 12 clubs, initially with no more than a one from a town or city and all from the North and the Midlands, kicked off on 15th September 1888. It was easily won in the first season without losing a game by FA Cup winners, Preston North End, with Villa as runner-up. Bizarrely Preston had John Goodall at centre-forward and Villa Archie Hunter, Scots from towns just fifteen miles apart, one who could not play for Scotland but could for England, the other who could play for neither. Importantly it also caught the public imagination. More clubs were attracted and in 1892 it was expanded to two divisions.
However, sadly 1891 had seen the final game for Archie Hunter. At the age of 35 he suffered a heart attack on the pitch, whilst playing a league match against Everton. He never recovered enough to play again and died in Aston in 1894. Nevertheless success for Villa continued to be achieved on the field still under the guidance of George Ramsay as club secretary, by then a combination of manager, coach, trainer and director of football with almost complete overall control. The Cup was won in 1895 and in the Double year, 1897. The League title was taken in 1894, 1896, 1897 and 1899, before the arrival of the new century, and again in 1900. Ramsay was to remain as club secretary for 42 years. In all he would win six league championships and six FA Cups, only retiring at the age of 71. He died at the age of 80 and is buried in Birmingham.
Throughout the period from 1888 to 1894 McGregor would continue to serve not just Aston Villa and the Football League but also the Football Association. It must have been a strain. In 1892 he stepped down as chairman of the League for reasons of ill-health. He was immediately made president. He also stepped down from the FA in 1894 and was also made life-president.
In the meantime he had seen his club’s revenues and those of the others grow. It is said Villa’s income increased more than six-fold in the decade from 1889. Clubs elsewhere were encouraged. More clubs joined, Manchester United in 1892 and in 1893 Arsenal, the first from the south, did the same. Clubs invested in stadiums. Everton opened Goodison Park also in 1892. Villa moved in 1897 from its Perry Bar ground to Aston Lower Grounds, now known as Villa Park. Numbers increased still more. For example, Perry Bar had an absolute maximum of 26,000. Villa Park took 40,000 and in 1899 was averaging 21,000. More southern clubs showed interest. In 1900 Bristol City was admitted, then in 1905 Chelsea and Clapton Orient. It was Fulham in 1907; Tottenham in 1908.
In May 1910, William McGregor was taken ill. His condition worsened towards the end of 1911. On 19th December he underwent an operation and, after a brief improvement, he relapsed, died the following day and was buried in Birmingham, having been recognised with a knighthood for his services to the FA just two years earlier.