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:
and more - The Consequences
In 1960 John Miller McColl, who, no doubt due to pride in his nation and his origins, preferred to be called Ian, became Scotland's manager, the first to be appointed full-time. It was long overdue but that was the Scottish Football Association's fault; no-one elses's. He came with a brain, quite a background and with a curriculum vitae to match. He had been born in Alexandria in the Leven Vale, where working-class football had begun. He was the grandson of William McColl, who had played for the neighbouring town's club, Renton,
and won one a Scottish cap in 1895, against Wales, a 2-2 draw away, one of several centre-halves tried by Scotland between the two James, Kelly and
Cowan. Ian, himself a defender, however, had begun his playing career with home-town Vale of Leven, had played two seasons with Queen's Park as he successfully studied engineering at Glasgow University before in 1945 being one of the first post-War signings by
Bill Struth and Rangers. And it was at Ibrox that he would stay for the rest of his career, fifteen years in all, three hundred and sixty-two appearances, many trophies, club and team captain for much of the time and between 1950 and 1958 fourteen caps.
In fact Ian McColl was recruited by Scotland as soon as his playing career had come to an end with no managerial experience. He arrived to find, frankly, a mess. Organisationally, his predecessor, Andy Beattie, by then in charge at Nottingham Forest, had simply walked. To this day no date is know for his resignation. On 8th June against Turkey he had been there. By 22nd October against Wales he was gone. On the field too things were not good. Both those games, though away, had been lost. In fact the last Scottish victory had been over Northern Ireland fully a year earlier.
As chance would have it McColl's first game was also against Northern Ireland and at home. He retained Beattie's goalkeeper and full backs, including former Rangers' colleague, Eric Caldow. He also retained the bulk of the forward line, three of five, but recalled a fourth and gave a first cap to a fifth. The returnee was Denis Law. The debutant was once more a Rangers' colleague, Ralph Brand. However, he completely rebuilt the half-back line. A certain Dave Mackay was moved from left- to right and two again came in for a first time. At centre-half was Jackie Plenderleith, Bellshill boy and former club colleague at Hibernian of Joe Baker, and at left-half another Rangers' man, James Curran "Jim" Baxter. He had just turned twenty-one, so just five months and thirteen months older than Law and Joe Baker and eighteen months younger than Gerry.
And it seemed a new era might have begun. Scotland won 5-2. Law opened the scoring in eight minutes, Caldow fired home a penalty and Brand hit a brace in the last ten minutes. However, it was illusory. As 1960 became 1961 the next fixture was England at Wembley, the home team was three goals up in half-an-hour and eventually ran out 9-3 winners, the worst defeat to the Auld enemy since 1954. True it was with a much changed team both in personnel and captain. Eric Caldow took the armband for the first time. The half-back line had been rebuilt. But, as Jimmy Greaves scored a hatrick against Baxter replacement Bobby McCann and Johnny Haynes and Bobby Smith both hit second-half braces it spotlighted a problem that was to haunt McColl throughout his tenure; that the reserves were thin.
Some team order was restored in the two subsequent games, both against Eire, both qualifiers for the 1962 World Cup home and away and both won. Jim Baxter was back but two notable names were still missing, John White and then Denis Law. Nor were they there for the next qualifying game in Prague against Czechoslovakia as Scotland was thumped 4-0, Pospichal the Czech inside-right clearly getting past Baxter twice, once in each half. However, they were back for the next and return game at home and, in spite of being down in six minutes and again just at half-time, Denis Law, now at Torino, hit two in the last twenty minutes for a 3-2 win. It had not been pretty but it worked in the end with good contributions from two additional changes of personnel, the recallees, Bill Brown in goal and Ian St. John at centre-forward.
It seemed a corner had been turned. Two weeks later Northern Ireland was brushed aside away 1-6 in Belfast. A month after that Wales were then beaten at home. Ian St. John scored a brace. But still there was a hurdle, and a significant one at that. In their World Cup qualifying group Scotland and Czechoslovakia had tied on points and goals. It required a play-off to take place at a neutral ground. Brussels was chosen. Again a changed Scotland team was of necessity selected, it twice took the lead, conceded a second equaliser in the eighty-second minute and had two more fired part it in extra time. Czechoslovakia went on to the 1962 World Cup Finals. In fact it went right to the final itself. There it would take the lead, reach half-time on level terms only to be beaten by two second-half strikes from Pele's Brazil, having in the qualifying rounds drawn with the same Brazil in the group games. Yet it might have so easily been Scotland so tight are the margins; eight minutes to be precise.
Despite the Czech defeat McColl's Scotland recovered well. There was time. Four and a half months later in April 1962 England was beaten soundly with what was by then established as Scotland's strongest available team, one including Caldow, Baxter, Law and White, the reliability of Brown in goal and the somewhat underestimated wing-play of Davie Wilson. Wales was beaten also. The only blip was a home defeat to Uruguay by the odd goal in five, three down just after half time, but recovering somewhat even without White and Law in the forwards. And 1963 started well also. England was again defeated, this time away but at a price. Although he didn't know it at the time McColl's fortune had just turned and not for the good.
It was 6th April 1963. The encounter was at Wembley. Eric Caldow playing his fortieth international game was captain and for the fourteenth time. Baxter, White and Law were there. Bobby Moore thought it the best team ever fielded by Scotland. It was two up in half-an hour and would win. England would only pull one back in the 80th minute. However, in the fifth minute there had been an incident. England's centre-forward was once more Bobby Smith. He went into a tackle with captain Caldow, from which he emerged with a knee injury, only returning at half-time as a passenger. But Caldow did not return. His leg had been broken in three places. He was twenty-eight, at his peak. It would take him the best part of a season to get back to playing. He would manage a full season more with Rangers, then only three games in 1965-66 before dropping down to Stirling Albion and then in 1967 retirement. In between he never played for Scotland again.
Caldow would prove irreplaceable. Several putative alternatives were tried, four by McColl, six over the next four years as one after another they struggled to play at the Rangers' man previous level. Scotland's form too suffered. Next came a game against Austria that was abandoned because of violent play with Scotland in the lead but it was followed by three losses in four games. That was before some balance was restored with a win in a return game with Norway, another against Wales and an away draw with Germany, the last following a second victory over England.
The win against Germany was on 12th May 1964. On the 12th July 1964 John White was playing golf in Enfield in North London. There was thunderstorm. White took shelter under a tree and was there killed by a lightning strike. He was twenty-seven and also in his prime. He, like Caldow, was never replaced but at least he was somewhat covered. Ian McColl moved Denis Law from inside-left to inside right, Jim Baxter from left-half to cover Law and Frank McLintock and then John Greig were brought in to replace Baxter. But in other circumstances there might have been no need to reshuffle. There might have been a ready alternative, in fact two; the Baker boys. Frankly either would have done. Joe, internationally seemingly tried and rejected by England, was at the time hammering in the goals at Highbury. Gerry by then had left Hibernian and moved south once more, to Ipswich in the English Second Division. True Ipswich had just been relegated and struggled for a couple of year even at a lower level but he at the age of twenty-six was playing well. Over the next four years he scored at his usual rate, one per two games at either inside- or centre-forward. But then, of course, it mattered not a jot as Scotland was hit by yet another blow, one which for McColl seems to have been the final straw.
In December 1964 five months after White's death Rangers were playing Rapid Vienna in Austria. They were 2-0 up, 3-0 on aggregate. The game was drawing to a close, when Baxter tried to nutmeg one of the opposition, the full-back, Walter Skocik. It was unnecessary. It was done because he could, as he had been doing all game. Skocik reacted. As Baxter ran round him Skocik caught him and Scot's leg was snapped. The moment would be for Baxter life-changing and, indeed, in the long-term indirectly fatal as the drink took him. For Scotland it meant a third major loss in eighteen months as qualification for the 1966 World Cup had literally just begun. The first and only match so far had been in October 1965, a 3-1 win over Finland with Denis Law as captain and scoring the opener. The next would be in May the following year and by then Ian McColl had resigned. After Baxter's leg-break he had managed for just two more games, two draws, the first against England at Wembley and a second against Spain at Hampden. In both Law was switched back to inside-right and the manager had turned to Bobby Collins to step into John White's shoes. A fine player in his day Collins was still playing at the highest level at Leeds as it, having just been promoted as Ipswich went the other way, would finish as Division One runners-up and losing FA Cup finalist. He would even be awarded Footballer of the Year at the end of that season. But he was thirty-four years old, his last international had been six years earlier and again whichever of the Baker boys that might not been selected earlier try to fill White's boots would have been a more than adequate alternative.
It is clear that Ian McColl's resignation had come as a complete surprise to the Scottish Football Association, finger on the pulse was ever. It was not a surprise to Sunderland, which was where he went and with which he had also clearly been talking for a wee while. Indeed it might have been from the day of Baxter's leg-break. Certainly one of McColl's first acts at his newly-joined club and after four months to allow the leg to heal was to sign Baxter from Rangers. Yet it might all have been so different. At the time of McColl's departure Caldow as he struggled on was still just thirty. He would be thirty-one the following week. John White would have just turned twenty-eight. Jim Baxter was not yet twenty-six, Denis Law twenty-five, whilst Gerry Baker had had his twenty-seventh birthday a month earlier and Joe Baker would not have his twenty-sixth for two months more. McColl might have had a classy left-back and experienced captain and four more, perhaps even five, other World-class players. Instead he had just one. He knew with them all he might qualify for the 1966 World Cup, in essence an almost-home World Cup. He also knew without them all he needed divine intervention. However, he did not have faith; or maybe he was just a realist.
Meanwhile Scotland found itself having to go back to part-time management. It turned to Jock Stein, as he moved from Hibernian to Celtic. He in his first game made one change only. He brought in Neil Martin, the Hibernian centre-forward, for his first cap. Again it might have been either Baker. Stein drew away in Poland. Then he won away, in Finland. In his third game he rejigged or rather reverted. Baxter came back. Scotland lost away to Northern Ireland in a match that did not really matter but that was not the case in the next fixture. It was Poland at home. Baxter was not included. Of the four pillars of McColl's team, Caldow, White, Law, Baxter, only the third featured. Willie Johnston came in for his first cap. Billy Bremner played only his second and as a forward.
The day was a disaster. Having taken the lead in the thirteenth minute but shipping two goals, both in the last five minutes, Scotland lost. It effectively meant the end of its campaign. With two games to go, both against Italy, both had to be won. One was, one not and that was that. Moreover, after the final fixture, the loss the Italy, Jock Stein stepped away, replaced by John Prentice, who lasted just four games before going back to club management as quickly as he came, having, with Law and Baxter in and out of the teams, taken a single point. Malcolm Macdonald then took his place on a temporary basis, won one, drew one, Law and Baxter in one and not the other, until in October 1966 the chalice was passed on to Bobby Brown.
Brown's first game was against England. Law and Baxter were both in, both as forwards. The former opened the scoring but it was Baxter's day at Wembley, the keepy-uppies, the sitting on the ball and 2-3 win. It was also almost his last hurrah. He would either side of his twenty-eighth have just two more caps, both at half-back. Law at much the same age would also almost retire. He played the odd game until 1969 and then another for another four years. And by then not just Baxter but also the Bakers had retired. Joe and Jim Baxter had spent two seasons together at Nottingham Forest from 1967 to 1969. Joe had arrived post-World Cup in 1966. He scored forty-one times in one hundred and eighteen appearances. Forest finished runner-up to Manchester United in his first year, then was in lower mid-table. In 1969 he moved to newly-promoted Derby. In his first year it finished fourth in the top division before falling to ninth and it proved to be the end of his time in England. He returned to not just to home but back to Hibernian. Having finished twelfth in 1970 it was in fourth place with Baker scoring twelve in twenty. And even at the age of thirty-two a division down at Raith he continued, thirty-four goals in forty-nine games as the Kirkcaldy club went from eleventh to fourth and sixth.
Wherever Joe Baker had gone he had scored. Gerry too had not done badly.In his four years at Ipswich he was to make one hundred and thirty-five appearances and at his customary rate score fifty-eight times. Having been relegated the club stabilised in mid-table, climbed and in 1967 was promoted back into the top-flight, at which point he, now aged twenty-nine, was transferred. But he did not step down a division. He went to Coventry City, itself promoted the previous year, where there would be two years of struggle against re-relegation before sixth place and real safety was achieved. At which point Gerry once more moved on, this time finally outwith both the English and Scottish top flights.
And it was at Coventry that in 1968 at the age of thirty Gerry Baker had got the international call. It is said he " held dual US and British citizenship, and when it became apparent that he would not be selected for Scotland or England, he elected to make himself available for the US team." It is not true. At least the first part, dual citizenship, might well be but the second is not. There was firstly no "election". The USA was attempting to qualify for the World Cup, he was asked to help, agreed and did, seven times. And secondly, even with dual nationality the only qualifications to play for Scotland and England were birth or, if born in the Empire, a choice between England and the land of your father. It had been that way since 1877, a stupid rule long past its sell-by date and enforced over the intervening years by, at the very least, pedants. And since neither Liverpool or New Rochelle were, I understand, in the Empire at the time it meant for both boys Scotland was impossible, indeed that they had the choices in Joe's case of England only and in Gerry's neither England or Scotland but the USA, again only, or, of course, refusal of all approaches.
By 1975 both Joe and Gerry Baker's footballing careers were over. For each of them in the purely physical sense at club level both had had their ups-and-downs but each was all-in-all highly successful. Internationally, however, they were less so. Gerry had been a little too old when called up for the USA and the country of his birth in the end failed in its aim of 1970 World Cup qualification. That would not happen for another two decades. As for Joe, had twice been left out in the cold by England, not just twice rejected but, after having been integral to returns to success on both occasions, with suggestions of prejudice, if not racism, the argument being that he did not play as well as he might have had he been raised south of the border. Furthermore there is even a good argument that it lost Scotland a notable manager in Ian McColl and even World Cup qualification at a time when we had a first team of real talent but few reserves. The Caldow and White losses alone might well have made the difference between a place at the 1966 World Cup and the eventuality of none but they might have been overcome in that qualifying group 8 despite those setbacks had it been possible to draw not just on Law and Gilzean, Henderson and Johnstone, but also on Baker and even Baker and Baker. There can be no doubt it might have made a difference, indeed the difference.
However, there is one last point, which has to be recognised as even in football terms potentially more important still than World Cups. It remains fact that Gerry and Joe Baker were two men, who found themselves trapped by circumstances outwith their control. Both were Scots in all but birth-certificate but the footballing authorities did not allow them to be ,and not just to the cost of Scotland and, perhaps, international football itself and football history. What it must have done to them psychologically, and indeed, to many other players before, who found themselves in similar situations, MacRae and Goodall, Maley and Simpson, Gallagher, Kennaway and Battles, to name but half, is simply unjustifiable. And imagine as well what that might have done not just to two Wishaw boy's psyches, their hearts and heads, but to their legs, to their feet. How they might for Scotland have risen on the field to the challenge instead of facing a situation made impossible by an obsolete rule, one revoked in 1971 most frustratingly of all just as two careers, the careers of the last two to be caught by it, had come or were coming to an end. Gerry Baker had retired from the top flight in 1970, Joe would does so in 1974, after which both toyed with management and then went home. It was there Joe Baker died in 2003 aged sixty three and Gerry at seventy-five in 2013. Nor should their departures from football be the end of it. Just as Denis Law and Jim Baxter in 2004, John White in 2005 and Eric Caldow in 2007 are already inducted, both the Baker Boys deserve places in the Scottish Football Hall of Fame not just for who they were seen to be, club and international footballers of real note, but also what they were, Diasporan Scots perhaps but "pure Scots" nevertheless. There are in the SFHoF after all precedents, six in all. Hendrik Larsson and Michel Laudrup, born in Helsingborg and Frederiksberg, respectively Swedish and Danish to the core with no Scottish caps are not even a hint of dual nationality are there as is Terry Butcher, born in Singapore and with seventy-seven caps, like Joe Baker, for England, all three for services to the Scottish game. But then did the Baker Boys not serve Scottish football to the best of their ability too. Then there is Richard Gough, born Stockholm and able to play international football and with such distinction for Scotland not because of birth or growing-up, that was done in South Africa, but nothing more than a rule-change, that the Baker Bays missed, through no fault of their own by a decade. And finally there are Andrew Watson born in Demerara, in South rather than, like Gerry Baker, North America, and Willie Maley, born Armagh, Ireland, eventually excluded by that self-same rule, but at least having been embraced. Would that the Baker Boys had been so lucky.
For the first part of this article "Bakers and Law and More - The Process" click here