With all the personally unedifying shenanigans that that went on before the filming of this programme and the death in the saddest of circumstances of Liam McArdle, the Director, during its making it is good to report that out of a lion that looked moribund some sweetness has emerged.  The programme is a significant first tele-visual step in the longer task of correction, that is removing Anglophone and Anglophile bias from football's, Association Football's, Soccer's history, unwrapping Scotland's pivotal role, indeed multiple roles, in its shaping and beginning to spotlight mistakes, notably but not exclusively made by the SFA en route, so they are not repeated.

The programme itself begins with a bit of a waste, seven and half minutes from various sources on how football had been played in Scotland forever and the inference that it was a Scot, John Hope, who founded the first club and formulated the first rules. Neither is true. Games with ball and foot have been played for centuries and across the World. The Egyptians claim it as theirs, as do the Chinese. The Mexicans claim it for the Aztecs. But here we are specifically discussing not any football, not rugby, nor Gaelic, nor Australian Rules or American or even Swedish but Association Football, so let's cut to the chase. This is not about generic invention but specific foundation and (the) Football Association, our game and our game's first body, was without doubt founded in 1863, in London, in England. It was an English body for an game but with emphasis of the past tense because, as was, thank God,  finally recognised in this programme and openly stated on several occasions, modern association football is not. It is almost uniquely Scots.

So, after the historical gas-lighting the programme finally gets down to it. Richard McBrearty gives a very accurate, excellent description of the way, even with its new rules, "soccer" was first played down South and by whom but then drifts off into Queen's Park mythology, .i.e. they introduced the passing-game when what they did at the West of Scotland cricket ground in what indeed was a "ground-breaking moment" was introduce defence. But at least the programme takes us to that pitch in Partick where the inestimable Andy Mitchell gives some real history of that first game including the invaluable Ralston illustrations, where tellingly, I note, there is a picture of heading, of the bicycle-kick but not one of passing. And more good history follows from Graeme Brown on the Hampdens and pay-to-see football, with a visit by Scott to Cathkin Park.

But now there is a jump, one which ignores, firstly the creation in the Vale of Leven in particular of working-class football and, secondly, the collapse of Queen's Park in terms of performance, its resurrection through reorganisation and in that same period the actual formulation of the passing-game. Instead it moves somewhat oddly to a first mention of  the Scotch Professor and his impact in England, specifically Lancashire, on the now developing, working-class game there a decade later.  And, whilst the analysis of it from both Andy and Richard is sound, confusion then sown particularly by the latter. He mixes London with Lancashire, stating also that the "best players" footballers were brought down. They were not. Very few of the those at Scotland's elite clubs went South at all. They can be counted on one hand. Those who were attracted, fewer than thirty until 1884-5, knew a bit about the game, certainly more than their English equivalents, but were demonstrators rather than teachers and were certainly not professorial. And they came from lesser clubs, lads who for a few years might earn more from football than in a mine or a mill, and all went as far as Burnley, Accrington and Darwen not Beckenham, Eton and Upton Park. The era of the real Scotch Professor was from 1888, when there were over one hundred rising to two hundred and fifty, including top names, by 1896. Moreover, Richard concentrates on Andrew Watson, who was the exception not the rule. A man of considerable wealth in his own right, he went South on a job given to him at The Admiralty and played, at least until late-on, not for a professionalising Northern team but a series of militantly elite and amateur ones, including by invitation Corinthians, the object of which as a club was to demonstrate that the upper class was superior to the working-class in all things including the round-ball game. As such it gained a reputation but failed for an obvious reason.

Scott then moves on to the game outwith the British Isles, making the first of two rapid faux-pas. He states that the game in Brazil was mainly played by elites when actually it was not played at all, and then moves on to Argentina, saying that Alex Watson Hutton restarted the "fledgling" game in 1891. He didn't. He was the figurehead for the a restart in 1893. Moreover Richard equally makes two mistakes of his own.  First, with regard to Tommy Donohoe he confuses the "white" beginning of Rio football even in Bangu in 1/894 with the start of Bangu Atletico Clube only in 1904 and as a works team, multiracial at the final insistence of the mill, Donohoe's employers. Then he states that Watson Hutton founded with Alumni as the first football club in Argentina. Clearly with the Argentine League founded in 1891 there were clubs from that date, notably the joint, first league winners, Caledonians and St. Andrews. Alumni was only founded in 1898.

The actual portion of the programme on how Scots took football to the World lasts five minutes of sixty. The content then returns to Scotland, indeed to Glasgow and the history of the Hampdens, to which I only wish to add that, one of them, the aforesaid Cathkin should, before it is swallowed up "developers" or "entrepreneurs" be declared a World Heritage site; one, I also suggest, with not just the Scottish Football Museum transferred to but an integrated World Football Museum built as near as physically acceptable and possible. Manchester has a "National" Football Museum when "English" would be accurate. Glasgow can aptly have a Scottish and World Museum without such vain-glory.

But moving on, the section that follows is perhaps quietly key to the programme as a whole, not least Archie McPherson's contribution. It both explains and shows in the raw the collective and individual passion that football engenders in most Scots. As such it shines a national light on why Scotland's involvement in football has been so pivotal. It is that passion, which has produced the thought, the thought that has produced the innovation on- and off-pitch, the innovation that has produced the modern game, indeed in terms of administration modern sport all round. But now the programme begins to flounder. Richard states that in the early 20th Century Scottish football begins to lose its way. Yet results and Scots, Diasporan Scots and pseudo-Scots involvement show that it did not. The second best result against England away was achieved in 1929. Scotland began to play against non-British nations from 1929 (admittedly two decades after England , for which only the SFA not the game in general can take the blame). From 1933 to 1939 results were far from bad. Only in the first years of the decade were they poor and there was an reason. For two seasons English clubs refused to release Anglo-Scots. In fact it was only in the 1950s that matters really went downhill, starting with the refusal, strongly and accurately pointed up by Richard, of the SFA to allow a Scotland team to travel to the 1950 World Cup in Brazil and ending in the disaster of 1961 against an England that itself was hardly at the top of the game. 

But there was to be some relief. The programme concentrates on Wembley game of 1967 after England had finally won the World. It does not mention the pre-1966 Scottish team that Ian McColl had snatched from him literally through death and injury, the remnants of which were there in 1967. It does not touch on The  Lisbon Lions but it does move on to the women's game and a surprising but gratifying ten minute analysis of the complete horlicks the SFA made of it almost from the outset. And whilst parts of it I am told are not factually correct nevertheless watch it and wonder.

And so to the fillers and the denouement. The former is enlightened once more by Andy with his revelation that a century ago Dougray's great uncles were noted referees, a reminder that without officials the game except at the kick-about level cannot exist. The latter can be summed by Graeme Brown stating  "history books (are) needing to be rewritten", exactly what this blog has been attempting for the last decade and this programme for all the quibbles has certainly aided. Well done.