On 5th July 2017 Johnny Caolas died, on his beloved island of Tiree and at the age of 91. Sixty-three years earlier with 130,000 other Scots he had been at Hampden Park, where that day there were at least three lingua-francas. There was a football match going on so one of the languages was that of the opposition. But it wasn't just any opposition. It was one of the top half-dozen internationals teams the World has ever known, beaten only once in the previous five years, and that was five months earlier in a World Cup Final that even the winning Germans call The Miracle of Bern. They had found themselves two down in eight minutes and scored the winning goal only in the 84th minute.
So back to Johnny. The year was 1954. The opposition team was, of course, the Hungary of Puskas and Hidegkuti, playing Scotland for the first time. The first language was therefore Hungarian, the second English, or at least Scots, the language of most of the onlookers but here and there amongst the home fans there might have been some with another mother-tongue. And even if that day there had been none in the crowd, there was one on the pitch, on Scotland's right wing, John Mackenzie. As they said he, the Firhill Flyer, could curse the referee in two languages. He knew English fine well but his mother-tongue, that was the Gaelic.
The Hungary game was John Archibald Mackenzie's seventh cap. He would win two more in an international career of two years from 1953 but a club career that spanned sixteen years, beginning at Partick Thistle in 1944, he aged nineteen, and ending in 1960 at Derry City in Ireland. In between he would play for two seasons in England, at Bournemouth in 1947-48, before returning to Partick, and then be briefly at Fulham in 1958. He would also play two seasons at Dumbarton from 1960 but nearly 400 of his more than 450 known appearances were from 1948 to 1960 at Firhill, hence the sobriquet.
But why the Gaelic? John Archie MacKenzie had, after all, been born in Glasgow, on 4th September 1925. That was how his name was recorded at birth, Mackenzie with an “a”. However, his father came from Skye and his mother from Tiree. The family would return to the latter and there he would grow up speaking the tongue, returning to Glasgow only later to complete his schooling, begin an engineering apprenticeship and play the game . As a junior he turned out for Petershill, was spotted by Rangers but, as
Bill Struth
dithered, not something that could be said too often of one of the great, if unsung, Scottish managers, he was minded to join Thistle. And there with a minor interlude he stayed for almost all his career.
When playing finally came to an end in 1960 Johnny returned to engineering and remained in Glasgow until his retirement. But then he went home, to Tiree, to a wee house by the harbour, where he was known, in the way of the Highlands and Islands, as John-Archie or Johnny Caolas, after the clachan, the village, on the north end of the island, from where his mother's people had come. And for years it has been claimed that John-Archie has been the only Gaelic-speaker to have played for Scotland. Who knows what the shinty-playing McNeils and Campbells, who had founded Rangers in 1873 spoke. They too might have been bi-lingual but in Glasgow it did not seem important to fill in that part of the census form at any time. Perhaps the same applies to the Leven Vale, so it is also impossible to check the members of the great Vale of Leven team that was cup winners at football and shinty from 1877 to 1880, John Ferguson, Alex McLintock, John Campbell Baird, John McGregor, John McDougall, Andrew McIntyre, Robert Paton and John McPherson. The chances are that at least one of them would have been. But there is one player, one Scottish international player who has been recorded as bilingual, on top of which he was for a single season the most expensive player in the World. And there is one other Scots player and also international who just might have been.
The name of the one we know for certain is Andrew McCombie. In 1904 he moved from Sunderland to Newcastle for a then world-record £700 but there was more to the transfer than meets the eye. He had argued with the club about money, he said paid, they said lent to him from a testimonial match. He was clearly right, or at least believed. The dispute that followed would be enough to have the club charged by the Football Association and for its manager to banned from the game. McCombie would suffer no punishment.
Andy McCombie was a full back, and a good one. In the newspapers of the time he was described as follows,
“a good-looking and a good back. A hidden gem discovered in Inverness. Played in the Capital of the North …...for the Thistle, and still has a sting with him. Strong, hardly, fearless, capable, he is a rare defender, never losing heart but playing up to the last like trusty, trusted and courageous Highlander. Prefers deed s to words, and would rather stand a dab from a skein dhu than a stab from a carping critic.”
And he was a big man too, even in today's terms, six feet and three-quarters of an inch, and almost thirteen stones. After arriving at Sunderland in 1898 at the age of twenty-one he had played over a hundred times for the Wearsiders after four years at hometown Inverness Thistle and representation at county level. And he would play more than a hundred times on Tyneside in a twelve year club career. And precisely fifty years before the Firhill Flyer between 1903 and 1905 he would win his Scotland caps, four in all, of which two were against England. And the reason he had the Gaelic was because, as Johnny Caolas was an Islander so McCombie he was a Highlander, his birth registered in Dingwall.
He wasn't the first Highlander to play for the National team, nor quite the last, although there have been few since. The first had been Inverness-born John MacDonald. He was a doctor, who in 1884 had qualified from Edinburgh University. There he had represented Scotland against the touring Australian cricket team, whilst in the 1884 season he was also captain of both the University cricket XI and eventually its football team. It was at college he had switched from rugby to football attracting attention as a more than useful half-back. In 1885 he represented Glasgow against a London XI in the English capital, a 5-2 win. He was by then also turning out for Queen's Park, in the team, which that year lost the English FA Cup Final to Blackburn Rovers, and in 1886 he not only was once again in the Hampden team that lost a second Cup Final against the same opponents but also played for Scotland against England in a home 1:1 draw.
It would be his only international appearance before he would return north to the Moray Firth. In 1891 he was living in Inverness with his parents and in general practice. And there was Gaelic in the house. His father had it. So did the family cook but his mother did not and nor, it seems, did any of the children.
John Macdonald was to be closely involved with the Highland League, which was formed in 1893 and from which four notable players quickly emerged. From Elgin came
R.C. Hamilton, who would attend Glasgow University, play for Queen's Park, Rangers and Scotland and be one of the most influential players in football at the time and since but did not have the Gaelic. Simultaneously Roddy McEachrane would be born and play his football in Inverness before travelling south, turning out for Thames Ironworks, a precursor of West Ham, and for a dozen seasons at Woolwich Arsenal. At Arsenal he still holds the record for the greatest number of appearances without scoring a goal. But there is no note of his having the Gaelic either, although his mother hailed from Loch Carron. Then there was
Peter McWilliam, who played his whole career at Newcastle, much of it at left-half in front of Andy McCombie at right-back. McWilliam, known as Peter-the-Great by the fans, would make 300 or so club appearances, win eight Scottish caps and captain the side. He would be a pioneer in his playing position and go on to be equally pioneering as a manager, particularly at Spurs but also as chief-scout at Arsenal on the death of Herbert Chapman. But, although he was also born in Inverness; in fact his doctor was John MacDonald, his parents came the from Scots-speaking Banff-shire.
And that leaves Andy McCombie. He and Peter McWilliam, three years apart in age, lived five doors apart in Inverness, on Argyle Street. But McCombie was not born in the city but ten miles north in Dingwall in 1877. Both his parents were Gaelic-speaking, his father from Conon Bridge, his mother from Fodderty a couple of miles or so up the strath from Dingwall, and he was brought up with it too. It shows just that in the 1891 census.
That might have been it at least for now but there are amongst Scots footballers more widely two more possibilities, albeit slight, and two absolute certainties. Before Lionel Messi the man who held the record of the most goals in the fewest games in top flight football was Archie Stark. He too had been born in Glasgow, in 1897 and about half a mile from Firhill, the second youngest of eight children. However, he had emigrated to the United States not in 1910 aged thirteen as claimed but in 1912 with his mother and younger sister, his father and the other children having crossed the Atlantic the previous year. He had clearly played football in Scotland but all his senior career would be in the United States and his international caps would be won not for the Auld Country, he never played the senior game here, but his new homeland. Nor was he alone. His eldest brother was thirteen years his senior. His immediate elder brother, Tommy, was just three years older and he would also play for their new home country, winning one US cap. And why the possibility? Their father was Robert Stark, born in Glasgow of Glasgow people. But their mother was Mary MacDonald and she had been born a hundred and twenty miles and another world away on the shores of Loch Sunart in Ardnamurchan. And she had the Gaelic. The census forms say so and who is not to say that maybe her children including Archie and Tommy, even though both of whom would live out the remainder of their lives in the United States, did not have a wee bit of it as well. But then perhaps not. Precisely the same claim could be made of Donald Trump.
And lastly there are the McKinnons twins, Ronnie and Donnie. Born in Govan they were the sons of Murdo Ross MacKinnon and Annie MacArthur. He was born in a crofting community, Diurinis by Glenelg on Skye, she in another, Carloway on Lewis. Both had the Gaelic and they passed it on. Even in the city they spoke it at home and on their regular visits with the boys to their first homes. Indeed Ronnie would return to live the last eighteen years of his life on Lewis, but only after over three hundred games for Rangers and twenty-eight caps, as Donnie made over two hundred starts for Partick Thistle, appeared at two World Cups, 1978 and 1982, as the national team physio and is forever immortalised for his playing of the coach in Gregory's Girl.