Think of British forwards to have played for Barcelona and three come most easily to mind, the first a Scot, the second an Englishman and the third a Welshman. They are, of course Steve Archibald, who arrived in 1984, stayed four seasons with one and half on loan, played fifty-five games, scoring twenty-four times, a ration of 44%, the second Gary Lineker, 1986-1989, forty-two goals in one hundred and three appearances, 41%, and the third Mark Hughes, 1986-88 with part of a season lent to Bayern, four goals in twenty-four, 17%. But they in terms of return per game are meagre in comparison with another Scot with twenty-two goals in forty-two, 52%. He was George Pattullo, at the club for the 1910-11 season and a single dramatic appearance marked by two goals the following one. But even his record pales in comparison with yet another countryman with whom he briefly crossed. This final Scot had arrived at the club from Kilmarnock via Manchester City and Spurs in February 1912 and leave in May 1913, for then Southern League Southend. He came as, like one of professional-footballing brothers, a half-back and he left to be the same but in Catalonia he played up front, as the other of his brothers did and his ratio was between 126% and 130%. By one count in some forty-three appearances he had netted an outstanding fifty-six times, in another sixty-two times in forty-nine.

In fact the Barcelona sibling, Alex, Sandy, was the least successful of the three, perhaps as good an indication of the standard of football being played in the city at the time. Elder brother, Danny, had briefly played for Rangers and would then from 1906 spend six years at Tottenham making almost 140 appearances and younger brother, Bobby, would from 1908 turn out just over two hundred and twenty times for the same club. Indeed in 1911 all three of the brothers are recorded as professional footballers along with another, Archibald Wilson, as living at the same address on Park Lane, Tottenham, Danny with his wife and two children. And on one occasion in a Football League game at least, a 0-0 draw in January 1910 against Bradford City, the three brothers would all take the field for Spurs together.

So who were these three Scots boys. Their surname was Steel and they had all been born in the small, Ayrshire, lace-making village of Newmilns, in 1884, 1886 and 1888 respectively, as had their parents, he a lace weaver, who became a lace-tenter.  In 1891 they lived on Loudoun Road, at number 48. The house is still there. And the boys too had also started in the trade. In 1901, whilst Bobby was still at school, Daniel was a "lace bobbin-winder" and Alex a "lace-shuttler". As to the village itself, Newmilns lies between Galston and Darvel. And it and its location might just be integral to the arrival of Alex Steel in Spain as they had already been to the implantation of football in the Catalan capital, indeed to the foundation of Football-Club Barcelona itself. 

The Catalan club's great early rival in 1899,  the first season of real local competition, was Escoces, a team formed largely of workers from Newmilns and Darvel. The lace-makers, Johnston Shields & Co., had in 1893 opened a factory in the city suburb of Pobre Nou, bringing in some forty workers from Ayrshire. The mill, soon known at La Escocesa, is still there, now an artists' centre. And football was from the start one of the main recreations. In fact, when the team folded, the fuller story of which can be found by clicking on "Barca", a number of the players even went on to play for Barcelona, albeit mostly briefly. Most of those players, notably Geordie Girvan, would return to Scotland and to the Irvine Vale, he bringing his Catalan wife with him. Others would stay, most prominently the Mauchen brothers and John Hamilton, probably Darvel-born in 1870. The last was at first a forward, aged twenty-two or twenty-three on arrival in Spain, who would turn defender and then goalie, on the field first feature for Hispania from 1900 to 1903, whilst taking up referring, and for the 1904-5 season, at the age of thirty-four but still a player, take the field for the Blaugrana. Meantime in 1902 he was the first President of the Catalan Referees Association and his last recorded game with the whistle was in 1916. But he was at the height of his officiating in the years from 1910 to 1914.  In 1912 he took charge of the final of the Copa del Ray.  However, the pattern of his playing- and referring careers suggests he may well have moved back and forth, presumably to Scotland, but perhaps to the UK more generally and, of course he came from a village, amongst neighbouring ones, steeped in football. He had been born in the same year as fellow Darvel-boy, John McCartney, who would start with Newmilns, his mother's home village, in 1892 be recruited into the Team of Macs at Liverpool, remain an almost ever present there for six seasons but in 1881 was living just two streets away. He would probably have watched Hughie Wilson in his season with Newmilns FC, 1889-90, in which he became the only one from the club ever to be capped. It would be one of four over the next fourteen years, the other three whilst Wilson had moved on to Sunderland for nine of them, marrying in Newmilns in 1894, then returned to Scotland and Third Lanark and back to Newmilns on retirement. And Hamilton would have also grown up with the unrelated Smiths, Nichol and Alex, who would join Rangers both from Darvel FC in 1893 and 1894 respectively and combined make 574 appearances for the Gers and win 32 caps. Nichol Smith also lived those same two streets and five minutes away, as did Alex in the opposite direction. That they all plus the others, Girvan et all from Pobre Nou, did not know each other, even played with and against each other as children and youths in what were and are still little more than large villages, albeit fountains of footballing talent, is inconceivable.   

It is therefore far from impossible that when Barcelona, having initially had a season's input from Pattullo and a poor-ish one to follow, was looking to source an equally potent replacement it would turn to Hamilton as the one Scot on scene who had played for team and knew the game. And it is far from improbable that Hamilton returned to what or rather where and who he knew with the result that Alex Steel, under-employed in England at Spurs, was recruited and possibly also, albeit very briefly, a slightly younger contemporary, an outside-right equally unemployed at the London club, and also Newmilns-born. It was none other than Archibald "Archie" Wilson. In fact, like the Darvel-boys of two decades earlier once again Steel and Wilsons' childhoods were lived little more than 300 yards from each other and curiously too twenty years later they would be reunited. When after Barcelona Alex joined Southend in 1913 Wilson was already there.   

Sadly Archie Wilson would be one of the many footballers to lose their lives in the Great War. He was killed on the first day of the Battle of Somme in 1916. Hughie Wilson died in Kilmarnock Infirmary in 1940 so probably living in Newmilns, Nichol Smith very young in 1905 of typhoid back in Darvel and Alex Smith in 1954 in the town once more. However, all three of the Steel brothers remained in England. Danny would die in 1931 in London, Bobby, having become a referee and also later captained the England Bowls team, there also in 1972 and Alex in 1954  in St. Albans in Hertfordshire.