Let me first say that this article is entirely the result of coming across an article, first published in 2015 in the Northern Echo and written by Chris Webber. It is entitled "When the Saints went marching in", I have used it as the source of my incessant search for Scots involvement in football outwith Scotland and have added what I have been able to uncover and correct. The result is a fascinating insight into Scottish football in the 1880s and the way it involved, due in Scots no matter what their origin.

The "Saints" in question was perhaps the first, probably the second football team to emerge from the industrialising, North English, market town of  Darlington. And its source was the town's Catholic church of St. Augustine's and a certain William Nollie cum Nolli. The story is, to begin with perhaps, a familiar one. A Scotsman arrived in the Durham town. He looked to continue to play the game he had practiced back in his home-town of Edinburgh and found nowhere to do so. So he took a ball into a local park and began a solo kick-about. But he did so not without being noticed. As Chris Webber reported it from contemporary accounts,

"A rumour spread that a Scotsman with bare legs and an Irish shirt was running amok."  

and        

"His antics attracted a crowd of hundreds."

plus

"Soon afterwards, he got several men from St. Augustine's Church to play with him, and thus the first football team in Darlington was formed."

That final assertion, that the team was the first in Darlington, is unlikely to be true. Haughton-le-Skerne F.C. probably predates it. Darlington F.C. would be formed in 1883 and there is some doubt about when Nolli's park antics took place. Yet it would be his club,  Darlington St. Augustine's, that would the first to enjoy success. In 1889 it won the Cleveland Cup and at that time it was reported that the club was eight years old, so formed in 1881. Also added on victory was that,

"Nolli was chiefly instrumental in the club developing from very humble beginnings, from a park team, in fact, into the important football organisation which it is today.....Irish and Scotch songs were naturally well to fore."   

So who was William Nolli? There are clues already. He was Scots. The church was Catholic and the surname was not typical of north of the border. Moreover, it was said that back hame he had played for Hibernian, although Webber reported there was no evidence. In fact there is. Hibs records have a William Nolli, Edinburgh-born in 1857, working as an upholsterer, living at 12 Balfour St. off Leith Walk and a defender, playing for the local club in 1880, so aged 23-ish. That would fit in well with arriving in Darlington as reported locally in the early 1880s. However, there is also a Nolli recorded in December 1884 as playing left-back for Hibs against Hearts in the Edinburgh Shield at Hibernian Park, the ground used by the Hibees from 1880 to 1891. The Leith team won 3-1 and also included James McGhee, quite probably the first Catholic to play for Scotland before actually managing Hearts and then emigrating to Philadelphia. He was also the father of Barty McGhee, who played for the USA to the semi-finals in Uruguay the first World Cup in 1930.

Moreover, in the census of 1881 a William Nolli is to be found at the Balfour St. address, the eldest of three sons and three daughters of John,  and Margaret Nolli. John is a Leith-born Spirits Dealer. Margaret, nee Harvey, is Leith-born too. A decade earlier the family, recorded as Nollie, with John still in Spirits and William a 14-year-old Apprentice Upholsterer is living in Stead's Place, two more streets down Leith Walk. They had been there too in 1861 with William four years-old so born in 1857. In fact he was born in December 1856, by Coltbridge, with his father then a journey-man guilder and carver. That in itself is perhaps a clue. John Bartholomew Nolli had been born still in Edinburgh in 1826. His birth was recorded by the Catholic Church, but by the age of fifteen, an apprentice optician, he was again in Leith living with his aunt, who had married Lewis Butti, an optician, born in "foreign parts". Butti and Nolli are both Italian names so the family allegiance to Hibernian was not Irish-but Italian-Catholic. John Nolli and thus William were early Italian-Scots, many of whom would arrive in the Central Belt, not as purveyors of coffee, ice-creams and fish-suppers but as statue-makers, carvers and guilders, looking to make a living from the growing population of Irish origin. As such William was the forerunner of Lou Macari and many others, who integrated into the nation and the national game, even, like Johnny Moscardini, taking and helping to implant it to and in their former homeland. 

Thus it seems that Italian-Scot William Nolli had been one of Hibernians early first-team players. He may have them moved south to look for work but whether that would have been with furniture but one of the then small number of Scots players after J.J. Lang to take their chance as shamateurs in England is unclear. Certainly he would go on to captain the team he essentially founded and is the gentleman in the photo above holding the cup. 

And there were firsts. Sunderland would wear their red and white stripes for the first time in defeating St. Augustine's 1-0 in 1887. With Darlington, known to this day as The Quakers, finishing only fifth in the inaugural 1889-90 season of the Northern League St. Augustine's would take that first title, playing in front of crowds of 4,000 plus. Furthermore the World's first ever penalty was scored against and at St. Augustine's, by Rotherham Town on 5th December 1891.

But the club would also not be without controversy.  In 1890 the team had included what were euphemistically called "Saints new men". There were five changes from the eleven of the previous season, with complaints inevitably following not least because they were said to be Scots, apparently mainly from Edinburgh clubs, in England able to turn openly professional. Indeed one, Auld Reekie's Tommy Cleghorn, seems to have been there for some time already, arriving in 1888, aged just eighteen, staying two seasons before moving on to Blackburn, Liverpool and others. And like the Hunters at Aston Villa William would even be joined in Darlington and in his football team by his brother, Jack. John Nolli Jnr was six years younger than William and if the latter had been active with Hibs in 1880 perhaps it was the former, who had made the 1884 appearance before he too came South, although there is a problem. Jack married in 1882 but already in Darlington. His wife was Margaret Brennan, later known locally at Molli Nolli. Thus the football spotlight might be thought to fall on a third brother, Louis. But he was only seventeen at the time so perhaps the explanation is that one of the elder brothers had simply made a wee trip north and got roped in for a one-off. 

And, William, once South, had also followed the typical path of many Scots shamateur footballers north of the border and some professionals once in England in becoming a publican. He ran The Old Dun Cow until his death in 1912. Moreover, the pub is still there in Darlington in Post House Wynd, with him doing well out of it.  He died a fairly wealthy man, leaving his widow, Emily, whom he married in the town in 1892, and others £10,634. Additionally contact from Jack Nolli's great-grandson, Keith Allen, confirms that on William's death Jack, who has worked alongside his brother, took over the business. And John would outlive his sibling by twenty-seven years, dying, still in the town, in 1939, a retired widower.

As to Darlington St. Augustine's, the club, shortly after Willie Nolli's death, with him thought to be buried in its source's churchyard, it was no more. Having topped the Northern League in that first year it finished its second in last place and withdrew. It then yo-yo-ed in and out for a decade, finishing as runner-up in 1901 but in 1914-15 it was now not last but second from bottom, never to recover. By the time The Great War came to an end it had been disbanded.