See the word "Thistle" in the name of the football club and immediately the Scottish bell is rung. But in this case there was confusion caused by it being preceded by "Merthyr". That has been cleared up by two Aussie soccer historians, Peter Eedy and Alan Fouche. Merthyr is a suburban part of Brisbane, Queensland as is Grange as in the name the club would adopt.

And whilst Grange Thistle, now playing in Queensland Premier League II, is no longer a Scots club, there are no doubts where its origin lie. The badges tell the story. But it is a little earlier that I will begin. Brisbane's first Thistle club was formed in 1887. It was said by a player of the time, the Glasgow-born Sam Ross, to have been a breakaway from Rangers, originally, the Scottish Football Association, one, with Queen's Park and St. Andrews, of the three Brisbane Scottish teams of the time.  They were to fade from view around 1900 and it was then that Merthyr was then to emerge. In 1915 it won the city's junior competition before stepping up to senior and one of its players was a Bob Waddell, probably Robert Love Waddell, born in 1893 in Wishaw, raised in The Well, who arrived in Queensland in 1910 aged 16 so fully Scottish football-formed.

And Bob was, if not on the pitch, still there, after the hiatus of the war, when in 1920 changes took place including the emergence of Grange as one of six clubs to make up the Queensland British Football Association. Its John Peebles was on the Executive Committee. Its first game was played on 20th March, a 5-2 victory with goals by W. Nicholls and a brace each for Jock Cumberford and the at lest half-Scots, Bob Craig. In fact just how Scots the club as a whole was as can be seen from its officers - Chairman, J. Lang, Honorary Treasurer, J. Scott, Honorary Secretary, Bob Waddell - and the team from the opening day of the 1920 season. It was May, Billy McBride and Mackay, Ross, John Peebles and Lambert, Jock Cumberford, McMillan, Bob Craig, Thomson and on the left-wing, said Nicholls.     

Having finished second in the league Grange now attracted more players, notably Dave Cumberford and Jimmy Love, from Queen's Park and perhaps related to Waddell. And whilst he was not in the first eleven he was clearly seen as one of the co-founders. And it seems the new players were to carry the team and to an extent Australia through the 1920s. The Cumberfords, Love, Peebles, Angus Marshall, born Motherwell, Jimmy Robertson and John Steel would all go on from the club into the national team.

However, very much like soccer in the United States in 1929 Brisbane had its own organisational cum clearly financial dispute and then The Depression of the 1930s was also to hit it and more generally Australian soccer hard. The dispute was over a decision by Queensland's capital clubs deciding to break away from the state FA and form a company to run the local game. Thistle was the only dissenter, deciding instead to Ipswich and West Moreton Association, they being two towns to the south-west of the city. It did not help. Having finished last in its new league in 1932 the decision was taken to cease playing, the original club effectively became defunct and, although a decade later there would be a revival that continues they are really different iterations.

As to the Waddells, Bob would turn to the solace of bowls, but their involvement after a pause would continue. In 1915 Bob had married Glasgow-born Isabella Bullock. He would die in 1963, she in 1959, both in Queensland but they were to have at least one child, a son Bill. And he was in the 1960s briefly to be President of the new Thistle before becoming Vice-Chair and later Chairman of the very Queensland Football Association that his father's Scots club had remained loyal to thirty years or so earlier.