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:
Golden Era
It was in 1879 that new terminology to describe the tactical, footballing ideas that had emerged from Scotland and were emerging from Wales seems to have begun to be used. England played its international against Scotland that year with two designated centre-forwards, outside- and inside-lefts and rights. By 1883 Wales, with its football association founded in 1876, was using the same titles, if not the same positions, as were newcomers from 1880, Ireland, and even Scotland.
2:3:5 was gaining ground, even being tried by Queen’s Park. In 1880 in a friendly with a new recruit at its fulcrum it played at half-back a flat three.
The new recruit that day was
Andrew Watson. A year later, as a full-back alongside Thomas Vallance in a 2:2:6, he would be part of Scotland’s perhaps greatest early victory, 1:6 at London’s Oval. He would also become that same day Scotland and the World’s first Black international footballer and Scotland’s first, its only Black captain. Born in Demerara in what is now Guyana, of a Scots father from Ross-shire and a probably half-Scots, half-African mother he would by choosing to return to study at Glasgow University and live in Scotland become the first Diasporan to play for his country for almost a decade; and the penultimate for the best part of a century.
However, that day in 1880 Watson, recently joining Queen's Park from nearby Parkgrove, would be tried at proto-centre-half behind a single centre-forward and two wing-pairings. In the first half of an early round and in the final of the Glasgow Charity Cup again that year the same formation would be re-used with two-footed Watson, Charles Campbell and Davison as half-backs. It was a bold idea but one not continued. Queen’s Park would revert to 2:2:6 and Scotland would be the last national side to change from it and even then with a twist. The Western Scottish version that would emerge would be attacking, an evolution of the style Watson had been a part of and absolutely not of defensive versions that would merge from Wales and the Edinburgh area.
The great advantage in general of 2:3:5 over 2:2:6 was not in defence. There a solid configuration was present in both. Nor was it in attack either, with one fewer forward, but seems to have been thought to be in the transition between the two. In attack in 2.2.6 the forwards could advance with the defenders remaining back, a gap, a disconnect opening between the two almost separated units. Alternatively forwards and defenders could move up en-bloc with the gap now developing either between the defenders and the goalkeeper, if he stayed back, or between the goal and the ‘keeper, if he too moved up in the knowledge he was able very much at that time still to handle the ball to the half-way line. In either case it created unguarded space.And with 2.3.5 and the introduction of the centre-half the dynamic certainly changed. The team could, as with 2.2.6, move up en block or it could also become a cantilever, with the centre-half at its crux, compressing in defence in front of goal as before but able to expand in attack with the 'keeper deciding, whether to stay put or move up and thus determining its base.
Nevertheless, in spite of the apparent gain its acceptance was far from instant. In England at least, the move at club level to 2:3:5 probably only took place in earnest in 1883. In 1882 the shamateur Blackburn Rovers had played an amateur Old Etonians eleven that still included Arthur,
Lord Kinnaird. Both teams took the field as 2:2:6s but different versions. The public school team perhaps surprisingly played Scottish-style, The Anvil, with two narrow half-backs and two wide full-backs. Working-man’s Blackburn Rovers were the reverse with in addition the forwards uniquely not so much in vertical pairs but lateral triples, a high line and a hint of full-backs stepping up deliberately with professional intent to trigger off-side. The following year in the Staffordshire Challenge Cup Final Stoke played West Bromwich. The Potteries team played 2:2:6 but West Bromwich had adopted the Pyramid, the Spinning Top, the 2:3:5. Two years later in 1885 Cheltenham took on Gloucester. Gloucester stayed like Stoke with 2:2:6. Cheltenham played The Top and in the meantime England too had used it for the first time.
It was in March 1884 against Scotland. The English took the field not only with just five forwards, for the first time, arranged more or less in what would come to be known as the “W” formation, but also a designated “centre-half”. However, bizarrely he was not born in England or an Englishman but another Diasporan Scot, a West Highland Scot, a clan chieftain no less, by the name of
Stuart MacRae. Buried in the MacRae of Conchra clan cemetery on the shore of Loch Duich beside his Nairn-born father and Harris-born mother, his family still own that icon of Scottishness, Eilean Donan Castle. However, he was unable to play for his country not just because he lived and worked in England, turning out for Newark and Notts County, now also because he was born in India. In 1883 it seems the Scotland eligibility rules had been adjusted, to require birth as well as residency. They were rules that might even, with a hint of prejudice, perhaps racial prejudice, have been introduced specifically to exclude Andrew Watson and many others to follow but actually not MacRae. He was caught by the other rule that deemed all Britons born in the Empire to be British. Nor was MacRae a forward as Edwin Cross, the first centre-half, at Wrexham had been six years earlier, a forward moving back, but a converted half-back. England’s, between wide half-backs, was defensive and with him for the first time a schism in approaches to 2.3.5 showed itself, one that would continue until in the second half of the 1920s when the role of the centre-half, both defensive and attacking, was adjusted becoming with the change in the off-side rules almost a “centre-back”.