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:
Coal was discovered in Balgownie in 1861, Balgownie on Australia's New South Wales coast sixty miles to the south and another World from Sydney. The pit, the Mount Pleasant pit, in the hills at the back was opened that same year and soon employed about 100 men and boys. Football came to the village by 1880, the first ball around then too, said to be brought by Peter Hunter, who had played junior football back in Scotland. The pit was expanded in the early 1880s and by then was just one of several mines operating in the district, the Illawarra District, which also attracted still more looking for work from both north and south of the border. The pool of players expanded as Balgownie Rangers as a club, having existed in name since 1888, was formalised in 1890 with Hunter amongst the founders and Harry Murdoch as first President. Team captain was William Brown, who was also Scots and is said to have played senior football at home before taking the boat to the other side of the World.
Balgownie F.C. was Illawarra District champion in 1894, 1895 and 1896, when with William Brown having moved on the team included Hunter, two Campbells, a Logan, a Syms, Vardy, Shaw, a Forrest, Tommy Thompson and Mick Fitzgibbons, a Scots-Irish mix. In 1900 they were joined by three Rhodes brothers and two Masters, Charlie and Bob, the elder brothers of Judy Masters, the man considered to be the best of Australia's early footballing talent. All were the sons of Alex, also a miner, born in Nova Scotia, which Scots Diasporan enough for me. He was amongst the early officials of the Balgownie club. Their mother, Frances, was a Campbell. As they might say in Edinburgh, one of the Sydney Campbells, which too is more than enough. And all three brothers were born in Balgownie or Woolongong and were home-birds. All would die in the two towns. And all would be at the spine of teams that would provide the captain of New South Wales in 1905, after the Great War fifteen players who would feature in district and state games, Charlie and Bob amongst them, with three more in the Australian national XI ; a team that continues to this day. It is the doyen of Australian clubs, that is the oldest still playing. In 2016 it was 5th in the First Division of the District League.
Judy Masters, real name James William, why he was called Judy I have no idea, first saw life in 1892. At twelve he was captaining the Balgownie Public School team, the same year he joined Balgownie Rangers. At fifteen he was selected for the first team. It was 1907 and just a year later he was in the New South Wales team, at inside-right, this while he was already digging coal in the Corrimal mine, opened in 1870 and close to Mt. Pleasant. And Masters would effectively stay with Balgownie until he retired with only two periods away, when he played for the 1912-13 and 1913-14 seasons in Sydney and then when he enlisted in the Great War, a time away that could otherwise have represented his best playing years but also might have extended his career. He joined up in 1915, was sent to Gallipoli and France, promoted to sergeant, only returning home, already at the age of thirty in 1919. Although in the meantime he had captained Australian army teams in both France and England, in football terms he had done little more. He had, however, met his future wife in England, married her in Woolongong in 1920 and was back playing for his town club in 1921-2 alongside his brother, Herb, in a season when it went undefeated.
Now Judy Masters was not only a good player but he was also interesting. In the time when the game could be brutal and certainly crude he was not tall, 5 ft 7ins, and at 10 stones was slightly-built. But still he played as a forward, even centre-forward, with a toughness that came from the mine, and he did it without in over 400 games ever being cautioned. Coached by his brothers and Tommy Thompson, whose son with Peter Hunter Jnr was now playing alongside him at the club and would with the
Cumberfords,
Bill Maunder and
Alex Gibb represent Australia in its first ever international in 1922, he relied instead on agility, ball-control, an ability to read the game, on being in the right place at the right time, and teamwork. They were attributes that finally at the age of thirty-one would also bring him into the Australian team at inside-left in the last of three home games against New Zealand in 1923. Bill Maunder and Tom Thompson were either side of him, Alex Gibb behind at left-half but it would still be a 1-4 defeat.
Yet Masters must have played well. For the six game series in 1924 he was retained. The opponents were the visiting Canadians, the land of his father's birth. Masters scored twice in the first game, twice in the third, did not play in the fifth and netted once more in the sixth, captaining in all those he played in. And that seemed to be it. On the face of it he won just six caps. In fact he would play twenty-two times in all for national teams, if "B" internationals were included, games against England, China and Czechoslovakia being the only ones played from 1925 to 1932. In fact the high-point of his career might even have been against England at the age of thirty-three in 1925 when selected for New South Wales. In front of a crowd of 45,000 he scored in the first minute, one of the 351 goals he netted in first-class games.
At the age of thirty-six Judy Masters was granted a club testimonial. He retired the following year, turning his attention to organising the South Coast Soccer Association. He continued to work at the mine, whilst serving as secretary, a member of the club committee, selector or coach until 1953 and early retirement from the day job, brought on by the miners' curse, pneumoconiosis. It would be that which caused his death in December 1955. He was just sixty-three. He is buried in Woolongong cemetery but even after more than half a century is not forgotten. Coal might not be mined in Balgownie anymore but the Balgownie Rangers' ground still bears his name.