This is a story that here on Scots Football Worldwide has been touched on  before but one that has nagged away ever since, see Penarol and Short and to Foot. In the Scottish Cup Final in 1888 that changed Scottish and subsequently the English and global game there were three pairs of brothers on the field-of-play. One pair, the McCalls, were in the winning Renton side, the other two, the Goulays and the Buchanans were playing for losing, in fact gubbed Cambuslang. And it is the Buchanans, John and James, moreover, not John, the future international, but James, who here is the focus of attention.

Cambuslang FC was founded as Excelsior in 1874 but changing title soon after. In 1876 Andrew Jackson of the remarkable Scottish-Australian Jackson sporting-family, considered the "Father" of the club and a player for fifteen years, joined it, aged twenty, and essentially around him a series of teams was assembled. William Semple, also a future international, would join in 1890. In 1879-80 the club first took part in the Scottish Cup, remarkably reaching the 5th Round until defeat by Pollokshields Athletic. And that momentum was maintained culminating in Quarter Finals in 1884-4 and 1885-6 with a Semi-Final in between. Moreover, by then both John and James Buchanan, sons of Joseph, a miner who became a colliery manager, and Margaret nee Buchan, were already involved. In 1881 they were both officer-bearers for the Second Eleven (and presumably players therein), the former born in 1866 so aged just fourteen,  and still at school, his elder brother born in 1862, so aged nineteen and working at the time as a Steelworks Weighing Clerk. 

When exactly either James or John stepped up to the First Team is unknown just now but by 1886 they were there, with probably John only just having done so. Versus Rutherglen in 1885 the Cambuslang half-back line was Scottish two-strong, a Gourlay and a Buchanan. In early 1886 in the Scottish Cup Quarter Final lost in Edinburgh to Hibernian by the odd goal in five it there had been a two-fold change. It was now an imported three, James Buchanan, now twenty-three, at centre-half in a 2-3-5, the Pyramid formation originally pioneered in Wales, McKay to his right and brother John at eighteen on his left.  

In 1886-7 Cambuslang would reach the 5th round of the Scottish Cup, losing finally to Queen's Park and then only after a replay. But it was clearly a team on the up. By January 1888 it had reached and won the Glasgow Cup Final. In beating Rangers 3-1 it again used 2-3-5 but with yet another change of personnel. McKay had taken over as "Welsh" centre-half with John Gourlay to his right and Andrew Jackson left. He had been able to step up from full-back. But the two Buchanans were not gone. They had simply moved forward, John to right-wing and James just inside him at inside-right. However, despite the win there were more adjustments to come, whether forced or not is unclear. For the Scottish Cup Final in February the two Buchanans were still up front, James at inside-right, a 2-3-5 was retained but the half-back line was McKay on the right, James Gourlay at "Welsh" centre-half with Jackson again on the left. It clearly did not work. In the game, that pivotal game, the gubbing, 6-1,  James McCall, Neilly McCallum and Jack McNee all scored braces, which indicates, with the Scottish convention of full-backs on wingers and half-backs  on inside-forwards. problems at right-half and at both full-backs, i.e. Mckay, Smith and and Willie Semple, who, as a complete aside, would a decade or so later become John Buchanan's brother-in-law. In 1908  the widowed John Buchanan married Willie's younger sister, Catherine.

The gubbing led to a further revamp for the Glasgow Charity Cup final in May 1888 again as a 2-3-5, against Renton once more, with Russell replacing McKay, now John Gourlay in the middle, Jackson still in place, McFarlane instead of Semple with the Buchanans still as the right forward pairing . It made little difference. Renton won 4-0 with an own-goal from new-boy McFarlane and a hat-trick from James McCall so now with Russell struggling. And the Renton-induced pain would continue. In the third round of the 1888-9 Scottish Cup just six months later it was 4-1.

It clearly resulted in more changes. By August 1889 the defence was replaced. The goalkeeper became Chalmers, the full-backs, Ramsay and Smith. The half-backs and forwards were also juggled and there were no Buchanans at all. Then in November there was only one, at half-half. And so it continued. Cambuslang was knocked out of the 1889-90 Scottish Cup in the Fourth Round by Dundee East End,. In August 1890 there was still only one Buchanan, again at half-back. In February, an away draw, and May, a home win, after an 1890 dismissal from the Cup now in the Third Round and to St. Mirren it was the same, except he was named specifically as John Buchanan and now at inside-right. Only in September 1891 did it change and only briefly. For a 3-3 home draw to Hearts there were two Buchanans back in the Cambuslang team, both confusingly listed as John, one as before at right-half, the other in at inside-right, James Buchanan's old position, but by December in defeat away he was gone. In fact, coincidently or not, Cambuslang as a whole team would begin to struggle and badly. Having been in 1890 a founder-member of the Scottish League at the end of the 1891-92 season, as the division was trimmed from twelve to ten, the club finished second bottom and was not re-elected, would never play in the top-flight again and in 1897 was dissolved.

So to the Buchanans. We know that the younger one, John, from school would become a pupil-teacher, a teacher and eventually a highly successful school principal. He would work and live his whole life in Scotland, had two boys, Joseph, named for his father, and James, after his elder brother, and he died in 1942 still in his home-town. By contrast of James we knew little or nothing. He is on the census in 1881 but by 1891 he was gone forever it seemed, except there were suggestions as to events.

In September 1891 in Buenos Aires in Argentina the play-off for the first Argentine Football Championship took place. On the right wing of the team, St. Andrews, that was eventually to be winners was a James Buchanan. It was based around the Scottish school and the kirk in the city, the former now St. Andrews University, but the equally prestigious Argentine one, and the latter still thriving, so its players were drawn from the general Scots Diaspora, often based around the various railway companies. 

A South American source even has him arriving in Buenos Aires in December 1888, the Argentine Summer, and as an engineer, a mechanic, aged twenty-six, so born in 1862, the same year as the Cambuslang James. He is also reported to have been playing for St. Andrews again in the Argentine Championship in 1894, and might even, on possible picture evidence, have been in the Lomas team a season. That is before perhaps simply moving from 1895 across the River Plate to Montevideo and CURCC, the future Penarol, either directly or via a break back in Scotland, with in Uruguay he is definitively identified firstly as a machinist and secondly a Scot.

There he would be captain, renown for his passing, and star player until 1900, when, if we have the right man, at the age now of about thirty-eight his club would take the first Uruguayan Championship, he being top-scorer.  However at this point matters become clouded. It is known that in early 1901 he was still in Uruguay. He was at centre-forward in the CURRC team that beat Nacional on 12th May 4-1, scoring one of the goals. And in 1908 a James Buchanan would play, now at right full-back, back across the water in Buenos Airies, so in Argentina, for Ferro Carril Oeste., "Ferro", the Western Railway, a team that exists to this day. Having been in the First Division but now a Second Division club, just as it was in 1908, Ferro was founded in 1904. In 1905 it opened its home-ground then and now, Estadio Arquitecto Ricardo Etcheverry, built on land donated by the railway company itself  with the tracks even running past.

However, the real significance of Buchanan's 1908 Ferro appearances, four in all, is that he began in May in the second team and stepped up to the first team with another Scot in front of him at centre-half, a certain John Harley. Indeed both played in the match against guests from Uruguay, none other than CURCC, and legend has it that Buchanan, a man clearly with some footballing kudos, recommended Harley to the team from Montevideo, it listened and he was signed, thus changing not just the local but the World game.

So turning directly to that kudos, it was tempting to think that, given the timing, the James Buchanan from 1891 to 1894 in Buenos Aires, (1), was the same as the one in Uruguay from 1895 to 1901 (2) and back in Argentina in 1908 (3). Indeed, there is circumstantial evidence that at least (2) and (3) are one man. And going a stage further it was also tempting to make the leap from South American James to Cambuslang, albeit that in 1908 he would have been aged forty-six. We fell for it to a degree but have made an effort to check. And now we have the results. In 1886 a James Buchanan married Mary Young. The wedding was in Lesmahagow, he recorded as the son of Joseph, colliery manager, and Margaret nee Buchan. Moreover, the couple, James recorded as a clerk, is in early 1891 living back in Cambuslang. Furthermore, they are still there in early 1901, he now a Sanitary Inspector, and again in 1911 and 1921, working for Lanarkshire Council. In fact he was to die in 1937 still in Cambuslang. It makes it not completely impossible but unlikely that he ever went to South America.

So if not of Cambuslang ,who might be the James Buchanan of St. Andrews, CURCC and Ferro Carril? And here there is, albeit in part, perhaps one other candidate. In 1895 a James Buchanan, a single man, aged twenty-one so born in 1874 but only seventeen in 1891 can be seen in the Argentine census. He is recorded as English not Scots, but that a frequent mistake in Latin America. It happens again in 1917, when a forty-three year-old James Edin Buchanan, so also born in 1874, becomes a freemason in the Argentine capital but can be traced to his birth in 1874 in Colinton in Midlothian and residence in 1881 and 1891 in Glasgow, latterly as an Apprentice Iron Moulder. Might at least (2) and (3) be him with (1) the earlier engineer?