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:
In 1917 a ship slipped below the waves having struck a mine or otherwise sunk by enemy action. On board was Bobby Atherton, aged 41, one of many presumed lost.
Bobby Atherton was Welsh, by birth at least, as were his father and mother. He was born in Bethesda in North Wales in 1876, but he spoke with a Scottish accent because, as a wanderer in and a wanderer out, he had spent much of his childhood north of the border. His father was a Post Office clerk, who clearly travelled. His eldest two children, including Robert, were born in Wales, his third in England, his fourth in Ireland. However, by 1891 they were all living in Edinburgh in Leith, half a mile from Easter Road, and it was there too that Robert learned to play the game, a contemporary in the same junior team as Hearts' forward and Scottish international, Bobby Walker; the same Bobby Walker, who would argue with manager, James McGhee, cause his dismissal and unknowingly change Scots World Cup history forever.
In 1897, aged twenty, Atherton briefly joined Hearts before moving back to Leith to Hibs. For them between 1897 and 1903 he turned out seventy-five times, scoring at a goal every three games. He played either as a half-back or a forward, either on the left or the right, very much a utility player. In 1902 he was in the team, with Harry Rennie
in goal that won the Scottish Cup, said to have called out “Leave ra ba'”, in a Glasgow accent to deceive the Celtic defence into letting the ball through for the only goal, and for the next season was made captain. It was only in 1903, aged already twenty-seven that he was transferred to Middlesbrough for three season, 66 appearances and again the club captain-ship, and then once more to Chelsea, briefly.
In the meantime he had played nine times for the Welsh national team in a variety of positions, scoring the second-half equaliser against Scotland in 1904. Bobby Walker had netted for the home team in five minutes. It was a bizarre situation with two players that had grown up together, had played in the same junior team registering in the same game for two countries. Had SFA rules of eligibility been different, had they indeed been the Welsh rules of birth or residence then the two might have been playing alongside each other, Atherton at outside-left and Walker inside-right. Indeed their two positions describe more accurately than anything their respective situations vis-a-vis the Scottish national team, Walker very much the insider and Atherton by accident of birth, not.