On 5th October 1909 a football game took place at Kabete in Kenya. No-one claims that it was the first match in the country but then it might have been and as such the first step on a road that has seen Kenyan players play in Europe, including the two successful seasons one, Victor Wanyama, spent in Scotland at Celtic Park. The game meant a seven mile journey of the opposition from Thogoto and matched on the field the boy's team from its Church of Scotland mission station against one from the Church Missionary Society. And off the field two names stand out. Accompanying the Thogoto team was John William Arthur and travelling specially the fifteen miles from Nairobi  to referee was the then Director of Public Works for the East Africa Protectorate, William MacGregor Ross.

But in spite of the name and a father born in Kincardine by Invergordon Macgregor Ross is not the figure of most interest. He himself had been born and would die in England, in Southport in Lancashire and the Lake District respectively, and who knows now where his international footballing loyalties lay. It is, however, clear that he was confident enough of his footballing knowledge to take the whistle for the day. In fact John Arthur, John Arthur Junior, is the person of note.   

He was twenty-eight years old, born in 1881 and in Glasgow. And as a new graduate of Glasgow University with Christian convictions he, as a doctor, in 1906 was appointed to be medical missionary to Kenya, arriving on 1st January 1907, and specifically to the Kikuyu tribal lands to the west of the country's capital.  There is it clear that he wasted little time in either introducing football to the local people or continuing it. But than he himself had some footballing form, if of a different code. In 1871 John (J.W.) Arthur of Glasgow Academicals had taken the field in the World's first rugby international. The game was played at Raeburn Place in Edinburgh, the opposition was England, and it was won by Scotland. It can even be seen as the fixture that prompted football's reaction a year later with its own first international. But, of course, the John Arthur in question, who was also in the Scotland rugby team a year later, was not ours in Kenya. It was his father and perhaps is as good an indication as any of the way that Scotland's main footballing attention had in the meantime to a significant extent switched across the social classes from the oval- to the round-ball version.

Whilst it is clear that John Arthur Jnr was himself an association footballer of any note, although it seems likely, it is clear that he had sporting prowess. As a medical student at Glasgow he held the University record for the 440 yards and captained its rugby team. Whilst studying tropical medicine in London subsequently he even had trials for Scotland. Then in East Africa he made eight attempts, presumably all unsuccessful, to climb Mount Kenya, became president of the Mountain Club of East Africa, and on taking over as head of the Church of Scotland Mission was for those who passed through what he oversaw, one of whom was a certain Jomo Kenyatta, known then as Johnstone Kamau, a strong advocate of sports in general, if to a point that today we perhaps find hard to accept but should be seen in some context. He would write of the Thogoto game,

".......... it is our hope in these our games to stiffen the backbone of these our boys by teaching them manliness, good temper, and unselfishness – qualities amongst many others which have done so much to make many a Britisher, and which we hope to instil into our boys in such a way as to make them strong men indeed. Our belief is that our games may be, when properly controlled, a mighty channel through which God can work to the uplifting of this race. They need to be strengthened in the realm of their physical nature, where Satan so strongly reigns, and how better than by the substitution of their own evil dances by such a game as football, inherent in which are magnificent uplifting qualities."

But he would also write that,

 “It was the first time they had ever seen a game of football”

with "they" certainly applying to the Kikuyu people and perhaps to the Kenyan people in their entirety. Indeed, if, as in many other countries a "father-of-football" is sought, that single sentence might well be enough to take him as ostensible organiser and once again a Scot right to the very top of any Kenyan list of candidates, with all that means for the East African game past and present.   

John Arthur Jnr., who in 1915 was ordained as Church of Scotland minister and in 1921 was married back in Scotland in Pencaitland to Evelyn Coullie, the daughter of the town's minister, had in 1911 taken on on the lead of the Kikuyu Mission and continue in position until 1937.  As such he was a powerful advocate against effectively the enslavement through deliberate neglect not just of those under his charge but Kenyans, indeed British Africans in general, and for education for the same constituency right through to tertiary level. In that he was highly successful before his African retirement at the age of fifty-five and his return to Scotland. There he became a minister in rural Fife and on full retirement lived in Edinburgh until his death there in 1952.