Bristol Beginnings

When a city or a town has two or even more football teams there are always stories. It is as true of Rio and Reykjavik, Liverpool and Lima, Berlin, Barcelona and Bristol. And this is the last of these, seen, of course, from the Scots view. Football came to the city  reasonably early. Rovers were founded in 1883 as an off-shoot from a rugby team, the Black Arabs, using that same name and settled in Eastville, well to the north of the city-centre. City came into being just over a decade later in 1894 as South Side, playing originally at St. John's Lane to the south of that same city-centre. But by then there was already a third player in town. It had been founded in 1887 and also to the south of the city, playing its games at Aston Gate, the current home of City. That third team was Bedminster.

Rovers first played only friendly games. That is until 1888. It was year of the creation of the Football League but it, whilst founded by William McGregor of Birmingham's Aston Villa, was mainly a North English phenomenon. Instead Rovers, as Eastville Rovers, took part in the Gloucestershire Cup for the first time. Then in 1892 it and Bedminster became founder members of the Bristol and District League, which  in 1895 became the still amateur Western League to be joined the following season by South Side before at the end of the 1896-7 the league split into two sections, Professional and Amateur. South Side, now renamed City and Eastville Rovers joined the former and Bedminster the latter.           

The first season post split ended with City and Bedminster winning their respective sections. And both were to do it remarkably. City in amateur 1896-7 apparently had no Scots on its books. For the next season there were seven, Hamilton, Wylie, Caie, Russell, Gibson, Montieth and O'Brien, all notable Scots Professors, Hamilton being Jock Hamilton, a centre-half, a Scottish centre-half, indicating the adoption of the Scottish style of play overall at the club, and later coach at Fulham and the first British coach to work in Brazil. Interestingly still amateur Bedminster also recruited Alex Stewart, already a noted professional at Burnley, Everton, Nottingham Forest and Notts County, who would go on to Northampton and Leicester. He would not have played for free. Meanwhile Rovers had a single  Scot on its books,  David Smellie. It meant that none in all had arrived in the city. And that number would the following year rise to fourteen including seven now at professional Bedminster rising in 1889-90 to at least seventeen. But it seems Bedminster had overstretched itself despite being the more successful on the pitch. Both it and City, and indeed Rovers, were by then playing in both the Western and Southern Leagues, the former reduced to just four clubs. In it Bedminster finished second and City bottom. Rovers were top. This whilst in the seventeen-strong Southern League Bedminster was sixth, City ninth and Rovers tenth. Yet the decision was taken for Bedminster and City, the two south Bristol clubs, to merge and St. John's Lane to be abandoned.  It is now part park and part housing estate.

As to the Scots influence in Bristol's football it remained, in the short term at least, much the same. In the 1900-01 season despite the loss of a team the number of players from north of the border remained high, eleven at amalgamated City and four Rovers, fifteen in all. But then, whilst Rovers was being managed, as it would be for the next two decades, by Birmingham's Alfred Homer but City had been guided from 19897-99 by Sam Hollis, formally first team trainer at Arsenal, founded by Scots and where in his time there the number in the playing squad was between ten and twelve, and from 1899-1901 by Robert Campbell, born Renton. He would leave City after disputes with the directors and the arguments were almost certainly about money and perhaps Scots player employment. But he would do it having seen his club elected to the Second Division of the Football League. Sam Hollis, having been at Bedminster for its last season, would then return and it might have been expected the Campbell might have been continued as eighth place was achieved. Yet the number of Scots would fall from eleven to three and then to one with no diminution of performance, whilst incidentally Rovers  doubled its contingent to eight. And meanwhile after a wee break away from the game Campbell would move on to newly Scots-founded Bradford City, just elected to the Second Division of the Football League there immediately with seven and then ten Scots ensuring its mid-table security. 

In fact the sole Scot in the 1902-3 Bristol City team was to be the exception rather than the rule. When in 1905 Hollis was replaced by Harry Thickitt, the team's right-back,  the number started to climb once more. In the five years he was at the club it climbed to seven, then oscillated between it and five and even in the years to the Great War under English managers including Sam Hollis for a third time never dropped below four. Only post-War did that reduce to 2-3. And for Bristol Rovers the pattern was much the same. In the pre-War years the highest number was six, the lowest one with the mean four to five. Yet it was enough. Bristol Rovers would itself join the Football League in 1920.