And when you are done looking at this site for the Scots input on football world-wide, here are two more.
For those who literally want to trace on the ground the local development of Scots and Scottish football in our own and other countries there is the newly available and ever-expanding site of:
The Scots Football Historians' Group
And on Scottish sports history in general but inevitably including fitba', see Andy Mitchell's inestimable:
- First Try
It is commonly agreed, even common knowledge in Argentina that the country's Father of Football was “El Ingles”,
Alexander Watson Hutton. It is less common knowledge but nevertheless true that he was not English at all but a Scot, born in Glasgow, raised in Edinburgh. It is even less commonly acknowledged firstly that his footballing paternity was limited to Buenos Aires and specifically not to the Argentine's second city, Rosario.
Nor, secondly, is it recognised that if he were the Father of the Argentine game he did not act alone or was even its founder. True he became in 1893 the first President of an Argentine Association Football League (AAFL) but a president doth not a committee make nor was the organisation, over which he presided, the country's first football or even its first league.
Let me explain. Two years earlier, in 1891 a first football league had been formed in Buenos Aires, also called the AAFL and ran for a year. Watson Hutton was not involved in it other than referring. He had other things on his mind. The President was a Mr Woolley, a railway man, but the Secretary, the organising force behind it, was one Alexander Lamont. That might have been interesting but not crucial but that same Alex Lamont was also the Secretary to Watson Hutton's presidency of the AAFL. He was effectively the man, clearly with a deep and enduring interest in football, who ran not one but both organisations, giving the second reincarnation such a solid start that its exists to this day. Yet Lamont is almost never mentioned and this is an attempt to tell what little we have known of his story and what has gradually .
Watson Hutton had arrived from Edinburgh in Buenos Aires in 1882. He was not quite thirty and a qualified teacher previously at George Watson's, presumably the Ladies' College. He came, recruited by St. Andrews, the school associated with Buenos Aires's Presbyterian church of the same name. Indeed the church still has the same name as does the school. A university has even also grown out of it. He was one of a line of Scottish teachers tempted across the waters by the Scottish school and he did not arrive alone. He was accompanied by Margaret Budge, born in Fife, previously a fellow teacher also at Watson's, he to be Headmaster, she to teach the girls. It is not clear whether they were a couple but then not being married may not have been surprising. In Scotland it would have meant instant dismissal for her as a teacher and no doubt even in Buenos Aires the St. Andrews Scotch Church School would have had the same rule.
Watson Hutton and Budge remained at the school for a relatively short period, just two years before both would leave to set up their own establishment, still in the centre of the city and just a short distance away. Much is made of the move, specifically that it was made because Watson Hutton had argued with the school, having been denied the funds to buy a sports field or even not having been allowed to introduce sport into the St. Andrews' curriculum, something that was clearly an important part of his personal, educational ethos. However, that he had real problems with the school's governors is probably untrue, whilst that he was denied funds for sports is almost certainly true but not without reason.
In 1884 is was suspected or had perhaps already been made clear by the Argentine government that it would require the land on which both St. Andrews' Church and the school stood for the widening of the city's main street, the Avenida de Mayo. Buenos Aires was a rapidly growing city. For its grandeur it would become known as the Paris of the South. There could be no argument. New sites needed to be found for both but with no guarantee that they would. In the meantime the school's finances were fragile. In 1881 a member of the congregation, Berwickshire-born James Dodds, was appointed as “Honorary Treasurer”, that is financial controller, and he would not step down until 1894. Investment in a new school was paramount. It would take the best part of a decade to build the new church, the one that stands today, and more than a decade to find a new and permanent site for the school. In the interim investment in sports facilities was out of the question.
Thus it was in 1884 that Watson Hutton and Budge opened their small English High School still in the city centre and clearly with little or no acrimony from their previous employers. The Reverend Fleming, minister of St. Andrews, was a guest and a speaker at the opening. And the school prospered. It became an institution in its own right. Still in 1886 it moved premises, to the southern Buenos Aires suburb of Barracas and Watson Hutton clearly also kept his promise about sport and his game of choice was football. He is even said to have brought, William, the son of his ex-landlady in Edinburgh, Alexandrina Waters, to Argentina with a promise of work; William arriving with new football equipment. And the school's stability with him in total control in that same year, 1886, also allowed Watson Hutton, now in his early thirties to marry Margaret. They would have three children, a son, Arnold, Arnoldo, born in 1887, and two daughters, Edith, born in 1888 and Mabel in 1890.
Now it was, and still is, often argued in Argentina that the British that arrived there in late 19th Century preferred rugby to football. On that basis Watson Hutton's fondness for football appears to be something of a surprise. Indeed, having taught at Watsons, definitely a rugby school, and educated at Daniel Stewart's, another of Edinburgh's famous rugby schools, as my own father would verify, it might have been expected that rugby would also have been his choice, whereas he is said, perhaps exaggeratedly given his life after football, to have loathed the game. But the Argentine assertion is based on four mis-understandings. The first is their confusion of English and British. They struggle to understand the distinction between UK's four countries and therefore their peoples, especially Scots. The second is the non-recognition that in Scotland rugby is a middle- and upper -class game. The general Scots and especially working-class Scots is not the oval but the round-ball game. The third is Watson Hutton's true origins. He was born in The Gorbals with all that means for any Scot in the know in terms of urban poverty, deprivation and disease. Indeed, still a child he would lose his parents and his brother to the latter, move to Edinburgh to live with a grandmother, who also died, be raised an orphan but have the good fortune to be taken in by Stewarts Hospital. And finally there is importance of his date of that birth itself. Born in 1853 he would have been nineteen when in his hometown, Glasgow, Scotland played England for the first time in 1872. He would have been twenty and at university in 1873 when the newly-fashionable game arrived in his adopted Edinburgh and began its explosion into the rest of Scotland. And in spite of reports to the contrary he was a player. In the late 1880s he played for a number of scratch teams, even in a Buenos Aires representative team against one from Rosario.
Let me explain. Two years earlier, in 1891 a first football league had been formed in Buenos Aires, also called the AAFL and ran for a year. Watson Hutton was not involved in it other than referring. He had other things on his mind. The President was a Mr Woolley, a railway man, but the Secretary, the organising force behind it, was one Alexander Lamont. That might have been interesting but not crucial but that same Alex Lamont was also the Secretary to Watson Hutton's presidency of the AAFL. He was effectively the man, clearly with a deep and enduring interest in football, who ran not one but both organisations, giving the second reincarnation such a solid start that its exists to this day. Yet Lamont is almost never mentioned and this is an attempt to tell what little we have known of his story and what has gradually .
Watson Hutton had arrived from Edinburgh in Buenos Aires in 1882. He was not quite thirty and a qualified teacher previously at George Watson's, presumably the Ladies' College. He came, recruited by St. Andrews, the school associated with Buenos Aires's Presbyterian church of the same name. Indeed the church still has the same name as does the school. A university has even also grown out of it. He was one of a line of Scottish teachers tempted across the waters by the Scottish school and he did not arrive alone. He was accompanied by Margaret Budge, born in Fife, previously a fellow teacher also at Watson's, he to be Headmaster, she to teach the girls. It is not clear whether they were a couple but then not being married may not have been surprising. In Scotland it would have meant instant dismissal for her as a teacher and no doubt even in Buenos Aires the St. Andrews Scotch Church School would have had the same rule.
Watson Hutton and Budge remained at the school for a relatively short period, just two years before both would leave to set up their own establishment, still in the centre of the city and just a short distance away. Much is made of the move, specifically that it was made because Watson Hutton had argued with the school, having been denied the funds to buy a sports field or even not having been allowed to introduce sport into the St. Andrews' curriculum, something that was clearly an important part of his personal, educational ethos. However, that he had real problems with the school's governors is probably untrue, whilst that he was denied funds for sports is almost certainly true but not without reason.
In 1884 is was suspected or had perhaps already been made clear by the Argentine government that it would require the land on which both St. Andrews' Church and the school stood for the widening of the city's main street, the Avenida de Mayo. Buenos Aires was a rapidly growing city. For its grandeur it would become known as the Paris of the South. There could be no argument. New sites needed to be found for both but with no guarantee that they would. In the meantime the school's finances were fragile. In 1881 a member of the congregation, Berwickshire-born James Dodds, was appointed as “Honorary Treasurer”, that is financial controller, and he would not step down until 1894. Investment in a new school was paramount. It would take the best part of a decade to build the new church, the one that stands today, and more than a decade to find a new and permanent site for the school. In the interim investment in sports facilities was out of the question.
Thus it was in 1884 that Watson Hutton and Budge opened their small English High School still in the city centre and clearly with little or no acrimony from their previous employers. The Reverend Fleming, minister of St. Andrews, was a guest and a speaker at the opening. And the school prospered. It became an institution in its own right. Still in 1886 it moved premises, to the southern Buenos Aires suburb of Barracas and Watson Hutton clearly also kept his promise about sport and his game of choice was football. He is even said to have brought, William, the son of his ex-landlady in Edinburgh, Alexandrina Waters, to Argentina with a promise of work; William arriving with new football equipment. And the school's stability with him in total control in that same year, 1886, also allowed Watson Hutton, now in his early thirties to marry Margaret. They would have three children, a son, Arnold, Arnoldo, born in 1887, and two daughters, Edith, born in 1888 and Mabel in 1890.
Now it was, and still is, often argued in Argentina that the British that arrived there in late 19th Century preferred rugby to football. On that basis Watson Hutton's fondness for football appears to be something of a surprise. Indeed, having taught at Watsons, definitely a rugby school, and educated at Daniel Stewart's, another of Edinburgh's famous rugby schools, as my own father would verify, it might have been expected that rugby would also have been his choice, whereas he is said, perhaps exaggeratedly given his life after football, to have loathed the game. But the Argentine assertion is based on four mis-understandings. The first is their confusion of English and British. They struggle to understand the distinction between UK's four countries and therefore their peoples, especially Scots. The second is the non-recognition that in Scotland rugby is a middle- and upper -class game. The general Scots and especially working-class Scots is not the oval but the round-ball game. The third is Watson Hutton's true origins. He was born in The Gorbals with all that means for any Scot in the know in terms of urban poverty, deprivation and disease. Indeed, still a child he would lose his parents and his brother to the latter, move to Edinburgh to live with a grandmother, who also died, be raised an orphan but have the good fortune to be taken in by Stewarts Hospital. And finally there is importance of his date of that birth itself. Born in 1853 he would have been nineteen when in his hometown, Glasgow, Scotland played England for the first time in 1872. He would have been twenty and at university in 1873 when the newly-fashionable game arrived in his adopted Edinburgh and began its explosion into the rest of Scotland. And in spite of reports to the contrary he was a player. In the late 1880s he played for a number of scratch teams, even in a Buenos Aires representative team against one from Rosario.
Meanwhile several other figures important in the future of football in Argentina had arrived or returned. One was George Robb. Watson Hutton recruited him, probably in 1887, again from Edinburgh to strengthen the English High teaching staff. The son of an Aberdeenshire tailor he was born in 1862 in Monymusk, at eighteen was living in Aberdeen already a “public school teacher” and at twenty-four was probably en route to Buenos Aires. A second was Colin Bain Calder, a carriage painter from Dingwall and the third Daniel Green, Irish-born but a labourer from West Calder. Fourth was Arnot Leslie, returning probably from school in Scotland, the Argentine-born son of a plumber father, of the same name, and a mother, Janet Easdon, he like Watson Hutton also born in the Gorbals, she in Tradeston. And finally in 1890 there was Alex Lamont.
Bain Calder was destined for Rosario. If there was a Father of Football there it was he. Green would also travel to Argentina's second city, where his son, Miguel, Michael, would be one of that city's first great players and his daughter, Mary, Mrs Bain Calder. Leslie and Lamont would head for Buenos Aires and that was also where Robb would also arrive before moving on.
In 1888 George Robb, aged 27, would leave English High, marry Edinburgh-born Margaret Russell, who had travelled out with him, and also go to Rosario to become headmaster of St. Bartholomew's School. It might have been because of differences with Watson Hutton. He might have been poached. It might have been because he wanted to get married but whatever it was he clearly shared he former boss's enthusiasm for football, his school becoming one of the focal points for the game in the port city on the Parana River. And at about the same time Arnot Leslie would begin work in Buenos Aires's port and also begin to become involved in ad-hoc games, not least with the men who had arrived to construct the city's water and sewerage infrastructure.
Alex Lamont seems to have arrived to work for the Great Southern Railway Company. He may have also been seconded to the St. Andrew's Church and School to help James Dodds with their reorganisations, which seem to have been reaching a point where compensation from the government could be agreed. Construction of the new church at its present site two blocks from English High School first premises would commence in 1893.
In the meantime English High and the Watson Hutton faced a different set of problems. In football terms by 1891 his first crop of boys would have reached an age, where some could play football at a level competitive with men but most could still not. They were not ready. In addition the school was again on the move. Rising numbers would see it in its third premises in seven years with all that implied for him in terms of reorganisation. And on a personal level there may also have been the first signs of illness in his wife that would soon prove fatal.
Thus it was understandable that Watson Hutton and his school did not want or could not in 1891 become too involved in the that the new league consisted of just five teams, Buenos Aires FC, Belgrano FC, both British social clubs, Buenos Aires and Rosario Railway, the club for those who ran it, and the two teams that would tie for first place, St. Andrews, and Old Caledonians, the team of the company constructing the city's water and sewerage system. Arnot Leslie was playing for Old Caledonians, a team of Scots, perhaps just Glaswegians, and he was also on the league committee. Lamont was turning out for St. Andrews, which seems to have been more connected with the Church than the school, which had as headmaster yet another Scots teacher, Lawrence Christie, who had arrived in Argentina in 1885 and had taken over in 1888. He would see St. Andrew's School numbers climb from 65 that year to double that in 1893 and then decline to 85 in 1895, the year before the first stone of the new school was laid. St. Andrews School might briefly in 1893 have had enough pupils to produce its own football team but not in 1891 at the time of the league's foundation not.
With St. Andrews and Old Caledonians on an equal number of points at the end of the 1891 Championship a means of separating them had to found. It was a carbon-copy of the situation in Scotland just months earlier in the first year of its league. A play-off had resolved the situation in the Auld country and with news clearly travelling fast the Scottish footballing community in Buenos Aires adopted the same solution. An Argentine play-off took place and St. Andrews won the trophy with Charles Douglas Moffat, a former pupil, scoring the winning goal. When Douglas Moffat would say in a newspaper interview many years later that Alex Lamont was "Alma Mater" of Argentine football with Arnot Leslie his right-hand man he must have been remembering precisely this period if not this moment.
It seemed as if 1892 would be set up for a second year of the league but in the end there was nothing. That is not to say that there was not football. There were friendlies played and there was necessary reorganisation. On the negative side Old Caledonians disappeared as the water works were finished as did St. Andrews as the church began preparations to move. On the positive side two of Arnot Leslie's younger brothers, William and George, returned in 1891 from schooling in Scotland and in March that same year a new athletics club was formed based on the social club in the town of Lomas, to the south of Buenos Aires then and now a suburb. Its founders were John Cowes and James Gibson. Its first President was Thomas Dodds, son of St. Andrew's James.
Under the Dodds presidency the new club began with rugby in 1891. Cricket was introduced in March 1892 and football in April 1893. That same year would also see a name change to Lomas A.C. and the acquiring of a new ground. The introduction of football with, as captain, Juan Anderson, actually James and the son of a Scot, meant that when that same year a league had been given new impetus with Alex Lamont once more Secretary and Alex Watson Hutton as President there were now five teams but only one of the originals, the Buenos Aires and Rosario Railway. It provided the League treasurer, F.F. Webb and was joined by Quilmes Rovers from the township next to Lomas, Lomas AC itself, both drawing upon Great Southern Railway personnel, Flores, another but northern Buenos Aires suburb and English High School once more. Alex Lamont and Charles Douglas Moffat had joined Quilmes and Arnot Leslie, just 22 but no longer playing, was the organiser, effectively the manager, of the Lomas team that included Anderson, the younger Leslie brothers and founder, John Cowes.
But the league teams were not the only active ones. St. Andrews, now the school team, was still playing friendlies, not least against English High School, for which Watson Hutton would himself occasionally turn out and with another Scot, or at least a young Argentine with Scottish parents, John McKechnie, in goal. His father, William, from Aberdeenshire and Margaret, from Falkirk, had married in Glasgow before emigrating. Lobos too, from the town of Lobos outside Buenos Aires and with a large Irish population, would put out a team, as would Belgrano from another of BA British suburbs. At the same time there was also a Buenos Aires Temperance League, representative games between Buenos Aires and Montevideo, when again Watson Hutton would play, between Buenos Aires and Rosario and select Elevens not least “England and Wales” versus “Scotland and Ireland”. The Leslie brothers played for "Scotland" but Lamont did not. He would turn out in several games for Quilmes, occasionally for St. Andrews and referee others, St. Andrews versus English High School being one.
Lomas would win the new league at something of a canter. Quilmes would be third and English High fourth. Its players, although two years older than at the time of the first league , were drawn from a total of just sixty pupils remained largely boys against men. Watson Hutton sometimes, including against Quilmes and Lamont, would even put himself in the team at a time that must have been personally difficult. Reports of English High describe the post-match tea and cakes provided on several occasions during the season by him and his wife but by August she had died, of a liver tumour.
Thus Watson Hutton found himself alone with three young children and a school to run. In such circumstances, although he continued as President of the AAFL, it was no surprise that his school dropped out for the 1894 season, playing just at under 17 level. Quilmes also dropped out but Lomas remained, joined now by Lobos, Retiro Athletic Club from another Buenos Aires suburb and from Rosario, Rosario Athletic and re-joined by St. Andrews.
That Quilmes had dropped out was perhaps understandable. Before the season had begun its organiser and still league Secretary, Alex Lamont, had announced that he would be leaving for Rio de Janeiro. Whether he was being transferred or his contract, normally four years and with arrival in 1890, had simply come to end is unclear but by the end of April he, having prepared the league for the season and perhaps having played a fixture or two now for Lomas, was certainly gone.
Lomas again won the 1894 league, losing none and drawing just twice. The Leslie brothers and Cowes had already been noted the previous year for their inter-passing play, the Scottish style they had learnt in Scotland. Now it was maturing. Douglas Moffat had joined the club, Fred Jacobs, a regular in the football team and captain of cricket had been elected President and Arnot Leslie was still manager but now also Vice-President.
However, 1895 saw English High School back, a returning, reorganised Quilmes, a reinforced Belgrano that had quietly merged with Rosario and Buenos Aires Railway but a St. Andrews reduced in numbers and gone. Lomas Athletic Club was also joined by a specific Lomas Academy team with some St. Andrew's boys moving across, and the two of them would finish top of six. Lomas Academy would be runner-up, winning six of nine games. Lomas Athletic would again draw two and lose none.
Arnot Leslie's team had now won the title three years in a row. He would do it again the next year, 1896, but with Lomas Academy as he and his brothers switched their allegiance and with some evidence of rancour. It seemed to resolved by 1897 when normal service was resumed. The Lomas Academy team was gone. The school had closed as the new St. Andrews had opened.
Lomas Athletic once more with the Leslies took the title; but only just. It had won one fewer games than newcomer, Lanus, from the township between it and Quilmes and again owing much to the Southern Railway, but also lost one fewer. The two clubs had tied and were only separated after three play-offs and in final one by a single goal. And it had been a league that was much re-jigged. Flores was still there as was Belgrano, and joined by its 'B' team, plus the again Britain-based club, Banfield. It was, however, a league without Watson Hutton as President. He had stepped down, replaced by Alfred Boyd, yet another Scot. The reason was again simple. Watson Hutton was reorganising his school once more and recruiting. As for Alex Lamont. He may to have made a brief visit from Rio to Buenos Aires, unnoticed in footballing terms, and then returned.
That might have been the last of Lamont. But the name was soon to reoccur and in a footballing context. In October 1901 a scratch team organised by Oscar Cox from Rio de Janeiro travelled to Sao Paulo, where against a representative one from the second city it played two friendly games, both drawn, the first 1:1, the second 2:2. And a gentleman already clearly with considerable soccer kudos, openly accepted and praised by both sides for his lack of bias, had travelled with the Rio players and refereed both matches. His name was A. Lamont.
Which leaves the question, who was Alex Lamont? In truth the answer is that we do not know. We have his picture from 1891 but it is of a man who in age could be anything between perhaps twenty and thirty-five. But there are clues. The first is his arrival in 1890, the second that he was a player at least from 1891 to 1894 in the Argentine, the third that in Brazil he appears no longer to have been. The fourth is the kudos he seemed very easily to have enjoyed in both countries and the fifth his 1896 visit to Buenos Aires.
In the record of the 1896 visit Lamont's gives his employment as "diverse". It did not rule out him being a clerk. But it did give an age, 25, which gives a birth-date of 1870 or 1871. It could also almost tie up with the previous 1890 arrival of clerk, if he had travelled once he had reached the then age of maturity, 21. However, the Brazil suggests an older man not beyond running around but past playing, so aged perhaps between thirty-five and forty-five. That gives a date of birth between 1855 and 1865.
Two Alexander Lamonts were born in Scotland in 1870 and 1871, one in Tradeston in Glasgow and the second in Kilfinan in Argyll. It could be either as both grew up with football exploding into the Scottish consciousness but the first was the more interesting. His father was Dugald Lamont, born on Tiree, and was a plate-layer. He had railway-connections, enough perhaps to get his son a railway job, albeit in Argentina. His mother was Margaret McArthur from Inveraray. They were Highlanders and in 1871 they and Alexander lived at 50, Commerce St. It all seemed to fit. A Tradeston Lamont would have had an immediate rapport with fellow Glasgow-born Leslies and Watson Hutton. Arnot Leslie was described as his right-hand-man. Except there was a problem. When in 1881 the Lamonts had moved round the corner to Nelson Street Alex was not recorded. The reason was simple. He had died at the age of seven.
It left the Kilfinan Lamont. His father was Colin, his mother Elizabeth McGregor and in 1871 he had an elder brother and elder sister. In 1881 the family had move to Bute and he had two younger brothers and a younger sister. A decade later the family was still there with two more children and again in 1901, but in neither year was there an Alexander. If it was him then he was known already to be in Buenos Aires in 1890 and in 1901 he was in Rio and Sao Paulo. However, once more there was a problem. A 19 year-old seaman, Alexander Lamont, was reported drowned in the Orkneys on 16th May 1888. It may have been the Kilfinan Lamont but then it may not. 1888 less 19 leaves 1869 or even 1868, not 1870 and there were five Alexander Lamonts born in those years including one from Firth and Stenness, on Mainland Orkney. If it were him that died then the Kilfinan Lamont might still be the mysterious, footballing Alex.
On the same basis there were thirty-three Alexander Lamonts born in Scotland between 1855 and 1865 with almost no further clues. It makes more precise identification impossible except perhaps in one case, one case with kudos. In 1875 a teenager, a Highland and Island boy growing up in the Lowlands as most members were, Alex Lamont was playing for Vale of Leven F.C.. In January 1876, he is leading the line in the Vale’s match against Queen’s Park in a Scottish Cup semi-final. They lose 2:1 but for the next three seasons Vale of Leven will be the best team in Scotland, lifting the Cup. Lamont is by then not in the team, the main central forward is John McGregor, but in 1930 he is shown in a Vale of Leven F.C, reunion photo with 74 his given age. That would give a birth year of 1855 or 1856.
In those years the births of surprising few Scottish Alexander Lamonts are recorded. There are just seven. However, one is in Cardross in Dumbartonshire, and not five miles from Alexandria, the home-town of Vale of Leven F.C.n and including Renton. Moreover, at 15 in 1871 that same Alex Lamont is living with his parents, Donald and Flora, incomers both, born on the Isle of Mull, on Main St., Bonhill, a mile from The Vale's ground and in 1881 he, aged 25, is still in the Vale. Yet by 1891 at 35, at an age when he could still have been a player, he is gone clearly to return later in life, if not to the Vale then at least to Scotland, perhaps not by 1901 or 1911 but possibly on retirement between 1915 and 1920. Hence the 1930 photograph. Which leaves dangling the question, was Alex Lamont born in Cardross the same one who travelled to South America in 1890, to be regarded in Argentina and Brazil as a real footballing man not just because of involvement with the early game particularly in the former but also his Vale of Leven exploits fifteen years earlier?