There is no doubt that Scotland's international results in the 1920s were remarkable. In fact from the mid-point of the decade they were quite exceptional, better even than in the first Golden Era of the first half of the 1880s.
In crowd terms the figures speak for themselves. In terms of trophies too, 1925, the year before the change in the off-side law came into effect, would see the national side win all its Home Championship games, as it had in 1921. It would do so again in 1926 after the change in the off-side law, share the championship with England in 1927 and win it again in 1929 as it had in 1922 and 1923, eight in ten years. Still more impressive is that from 1925 to 1929 in nineteen games played, there were fifteen wins, draws against Germany and Wales, both away, and just two losses, against England in 1927 and Northern Ireland in 1928, surprisingly both in Glasgow; at three points for a win and one for a draw forty-seven points won of fifty-seven. And within that there was from 1925 to 1927 a run of eight games unbeaten, a win in 1928 over England at Wembley, the greatest since
Andrew Watson's 1:6 victory at The Oval in 1881, and the following year a 3:7 result against Northern Ireland that was regarded by
Alex Jackson, a member of the Scots teams in both London and Belfast, arguably the best footballer of the era, as a better performance still.
It suggests one of three things – that for the best part of a decade Scotland was simply producing better players than the other home nations, that half-way through it it adapted better to the law-change than the others, or a combination of the two. There is evidence for all three.
However beyond the results there is something else significant about the 1928 and 1929 results in England and Ireland. The Scots team against the Irish was drawn from just eight clubs. Against the English the squad had been drawn from just fifteen, with a Scottish First Division that had just twenty members. In the team itself each and every player was from a different club, eleven of eleven. Just one came from Rangers, none from Celtic and it included an amateur, the goalkeeper. It points in turn to a shared tactical awareness acquired on the park by those players emerging specifically not from the Old Firm but the other clubs in the Scottish League. It spotlights an ethos, an understanding produced by a wide-spread, distinctively Scottish footballing style and self-confidence that would first appear in 1921 and have its serendipitous high point in 1928 with the Wembley Wizards. There may even have been a fourth factor, the emergence of an enlightened SFA under the leaderships of Tom White and especially from 1927 Bob Campbell
that enabled the flowering only to see it come to an end, indeed, from 1930 to have the breath squeezed out of it, firstly, by foolishness that pre-dated it, secondly, fate and, thirdly, failure to do what had always been its strength, to innovate not imitate.
But what of 1928 itself. Although ending well it might be argued that until then it had been a good year neither for Scotland nor the Auld Enemy. Wales took the Home Championship ahead of Northern Ireland, Scotland finishing third and England fourth and last. However, it disguises a simple truth. For internal reasons, not for the first time due to an element of complacency, that season Scotland had not played anything like its best team until that March day. It might also be argued it was a day when a gamble was attempted and came off spectacularly but it was also one of selectoral courage, when Scottish footballing style was given complete free rein in a way it had not been for a generation, would not be again perhaps until the 1960s with
Caldow,
White,
Law
and
Baxter
and has not been since.
The result was 1:5 to Scotland. Alex Jackson, recruited to Huddersfield by
Herbert Chapman via Aberdeen and Pennsylvania, scored a hat-trick, and Alex James of Preston North End via Raith Rovers, but who would join Chapman at Arsenal the following year, a brace. In joining the London club James with his passing, his sheer technical ability would solve a conundrum that Herbert Chapman had been facing, providing with guile, the link between defence and attack that the manager had at club level thus far struggled to find and which Chapman might have seen at international level that day at Wembley. Certainly Arsenal would win its first trophy within two seasons. Jackson, more in the mould of the traditional
John Ferguson-type Scottish winger, and like Ferguson Renton-born, provided both proven skill but also, perhaps unknowingly, a new tactical appreciation.
Ivan Sharpe, noted amateur footballer-turned journalist of the time, who was the FA Cup Final’s first commentator on the radio wrote,
“It was Jackson who first brought home fully to British football the fact that with the change of the offside law more goals could be scored by outside men, but it was not alone by running into goal with the ball from the wing that Jackson did it,”
It suggests two things. Firstly that the art of out-and-out wing play had seen a decline before the off-side rule change in 1925. Wingers, perhaps Chapman's wingers at successful Huddersfield, were, as favoured by his mentor,
John Cameron,
increasingly feeding the centre-forward and not attacking directly. Secondly that Jackson had added another dimension to its post-rule-change revitalisation. He, specifically he, did not just attempt to beat the full-back on the outside but, not least against England’s formation, could also cut inside centrally and almost as an additional central- forward,
“He also took up the position in goal alongside his centre-forward for centres from the opposite wing, and it is this happy knack of being on the spot in this way for a chance centre that has made Jackson a menace in every match. ‘Jack in the box’ Jackson is a good description. He bobs up and scores so unexpectedly.”
The game took place on the last day of the month. The weather had been forecast to be poor, with rain, as had been the case for several days previously. Scotland that season had already drawn away 2:2 to Wales and then played Northern Ireland at home, losing 0:1. In the drawn first game the team had contained five Anglo-Scots. Two more players were from Rangers and one from Celtic. In the second, the loss, just one Anglo, John Hutton of Blackburn Rovers, ex of Aberdeen, had been included with the whole half-back-line from Rangers, including the captain, Tommy Muirhead, and David Meiklejohn at centre-half, presumably marking Curran, the Irish centre-forward and goal-scorer. It was also pertinent that Robert Campbell, the President of the SFA at the time, indeed critically from his election that same year, 1927, until 1933, was not from Glasgow but St. Johnstone and therefore free-er to think out of the Central Belt box.
Campbell had himself been a player for the Perth club during the decade from 1892. He was a football not a money man, with perhaps a resultant understanding of the difference between an eleven, simple selection, and a team that might draw together, blend, play for each other and be more than the sum of its parts. He also after a few months in position must have been more confident of being able to express, certainly introduce and perhaps impress his footballing views on the national selection committee.
Against England only two of the team against Ireland were retained – the forwards, Alan Morton of Rangers on the left-wing and Hibernian’s Jimmy Dunn at inside-right. The whole defence was replaced. Even Meiklejohn was out, demoted to reserve. All potential prejudices were set aside. The professional goalkeeper, Allan McClory of Motherwell, was replaced by Harkness of Queen’s Park, making it three home-based players, and in came eight Anglos, or seven Anglos and one Gallo-, Nelson of Cardiff. There were no Celtic players. Ex. Airdrieonians and now Newcastle's Hughie Gallacher, returning from a long injury, was preferred to Parkhead's Jimmy McCrory at centre-forward, and there was no religious bias. At least three were Catholics including the captain, Jimmy McMullan.
On the day itself there is also no doubt that the footballing Gods were on Scotland’s side. The rain continued. In defence new cap, Tom Bradshaw, in his only international appearance, played a blinder, snuffing out the renowned, England centre-forward, Dixie Dean, who the previous year had scored a brace. The Wembley Wizards, also known as the Mighty Midgets, with a forward-line with no player taller perhaps than 5 feet 8 inches and the mobility of small men reminiscent of games from the 1870s and 1880s, ran the English defence ragged. The away team, having had a scare in the first attack when England hit the post, was 0:2 up at half-time. Gallacher tied up the centre of the English defence. England scored its only goal in the very last minute after in the second half the Scottish wingers in their different ways had done the damage. By sticking to the by-lines, they pulled wide the English defenders, particularly the wing-halves designated to mark them, with Morton centring for Jackson and leaving space inside on the left in front of the full-backs and behind the centre-half for James in particular to exploit. This was whilst on the right Dunn pulled his marker, the full-back, out of position allowing again Jackson on the right-wing to cut inside England’s right wing-half and across the right full-back onto goal.
Whilst Jackson, nick-named “The Gay Cavalier”, was an enigma, as was the pocket centre-forward, all five feet five of Hughie Gallacher, and James was a craftsman it was perhaps Bradshaw who was that day the most surprising cherry on the tactical cake. At 6 feet 1, he was by several inches the tallest in the team. In itself it was not surprising given the position he played but he was for Scotland an innovation. It was the first implementation of the new tactic, at least by the national team, that had been developed by Herbert Chapman, instigated by one of his players, the Diasporan Scot, Charlie Buchan; that of centre-back.
Prior to Buchan’s innovation, and indeed until Bradshaw’s inclusion, Scotland had played a centre-half; a conventional, Scottish, attacking centre-half. From 1922 until 1933 the regular incumbent with 15 caps had been and would be Meiklejohn of Rangers, six times national captain. At five feet seven, he was an altogether different animal to Bradshaw. Meiklejohn was an artisan but one brought up in the Rangers system. It would be the one Scotland, forced as much by circumstances outwith its control, would also de facto more adapt than adopt in the 1930s but first there would be Wembley in 1928 and the run of matches to follow that arguably was the best Scotland has ever had, the result of exceptional players and tactical superiority. It would derive from an understanding of all involved of a distinctively “Scottish” style of play and, fortuitously perhaps, its and the resultant formation's natural compatibility with the new off-side rule. Its basis and the corollary of the weakness of England’s national, but unequivocally not Herbert Chapman’s, approach to the game, was best summed up by Scotland’s captain, Jimmy McMullan, on the day. After the game, when asked what had been the difference between the teams, McMullan remarked that Scotland’s full-backs had marked the English wingers, i.e. a la Buchan and Arsenal and traditionally in Scottish football, whereas the Scottish wingers had been marked in the English tradition by the wing-halves allowing the Scottish forwards unprecedented space, which they exploited to the full.
He said,
“I want to emphasise that all our forwards are inherently clever,”
adding,
“But I wish to say that the English tactics were wrong. The Saxon wing-halves paid more attention to the wingers than the inside forwards – therefore the latter were given a lot of space. It is a common thing in England to let wing halves, and not fullbacks, mark the wingers. It doesn’t pay and I don’t know why they pursue it.”
Jimmy McMullan was an old head. In 1928 he was already in his 33rd year and a footballing Indian summer. Born in 1895 he had started his senior career in 1912 with Third Lanark for a season. He had been brought up on Scottish football Old-Style and was now just about the last of the pre-Great War footballing generation still playing in the top flight. He had seen the change of goalkeeping rules in 1912 and the new offside in 1925. He had seen it all, and, as another thinking footballer, understood the implications and adapted to them in thirteen years after the Lanark at Partick, before moving late in his career in 1926 for a further six seasons at Manchester City. He knew what he was talking about and was not afraid to criticise, when justified. That day he and his team had been lucky. The weather Gods had blessed them but above all on the pitch Scotland, through daring and skill of players and administrators alike, had earned the right to be nothing less than spectacular.