When the writing of this piece was first contemplated it was to be called the "The Pillage of the Vale". In fact the spreadsheet that contains the analysis that backs the story still bears that title. But the fact is that the vale, the valley in question, Scotland's Vale of Leven, referred to here as Leven Vale to distinguish it from the football-club that was an integral club of the same story, was not pillaged.  First of all it was not things that were taken but people who left and secondly those who did not do so were not kicking and screaming. They went, kicking certainly, because football was precisely what they offered and for which they had been hired, but there seems to have been not a hint of a scream because for them individually there was potential for financial improvement, not of today's order but better than working in the mill, the mine or the yard or on the land.

Then the title was to be "The Vacuuming of the Vale", which is cutely alliterative but again is a case of over-egging. There was again no cleansing involved. The clubs, which hired the players in question were doing so for hoped advantage with the accusation only that they expected too much and therefore went too far. But then it was their money. So finally the strap-line above emerged as accurate and justifiable with figures, the bases of which are as follows. In 1882-3 there were 19 Scots footballers thought to be plying their trade in England, of whom one was from the Leven Vale, so 5%. In 1884-5 it was give or take seventy-four and six, 8%, in 1886-7 sixty-nine and six once more so no change but in the first year of the Football League ninety-three and twelve and an almost doubling to 13% or one in eight. And the pattern continues. In 1890-1, whilst the total number of players was touching one hundred and sixty, the count of Leven players had reached thirty-one, or one in five, in 1892-3 two hundred and fourteen and a maximum of forty-three, still 20%. Only then does the ratio start to fall. By the turn of the century it was 6% and a decade later still just 1%. 

So what was that had caused this growth and subsequent collapse? First an explanation of Leven Vale and its football might be in order. Three clubs were involved. Initially there was Vale of Leven FC from the wee town of Alexandria, followed by Dumbarton from the big town and finally Renton, a village team but ultimately the most important in terms of Scottish, English, indeed World football history. Three areas are also involved, roughly three parishes. There is Dumbarton, The Rock, on the eastern bank where the Leven meets sea, fifteen hundred years earlier had been the fortress and ancient capital of the kingdom of Strathclyde and where Welsh would have been spoken on the streets as much as in Harlech or Aberystwyth. Then from where the river flows from Loch Lomond at Balloch to about half-way to the Firth of Clyde there is Bonhill, including Bonhill itself and Jamestown, both on the eastern bank, and on the western one newcomer, Alexandria, which from the beginning of the 18th Century had developed around a shop on the road north to the Highlands. And finally there is Cardross. It includes the western bank of the mouth of the Leven, West Bridgend, the village of Cardross itself to the edge of Helensburgh and north importantly to include Renton. It may be that these parochial boundaries in part explain why Renton as a place, although geographically closer to both Bonhill and Alexandria, in football terms developed such a distinctive team that drew not just from the village and its immediate surrounds but also south to Bridgend and the estuary.

All three Leven Vale clubs were formed in 1873 within weeks as a result of the same event, the demonstration match that Queen's Park played at the end of 1872 at the old Parkneuk, with its then shinty cum cricket field on the bank of the river itself in Alexandria but looking directly across at Bonhill across the water. Renton is a mile to the south, Dumbarton six. There might even have been spectators from further afield. Rhu, Row and its associations with the formation at much the same time of Glasgow Rangers is but ten miles away. However, back in the vale adoption of the new game was rapid and, although Renton seemed the team to first catch the eye, reaching and the Scottish Cup Final on its second-only playing in 1875, a 3-0 defeat by Queen's Park itself, it would prove for a decade something of a one-off. In fact it was Alexandria's Vale of Leven FC, which was quietly making the greatest progress in spite of considerable pressures from the first, and on this occasion malign, accusations of professionalism in the game. It would in 1877 win the same Cup defeating none other than Rangers, win it again in 1878, once more in 1879 yet notably from the seventeen players from the three teams only one, Andrew McLintock, would go to England for money and then not for half a decade.   

But McLintock would not be the first from the Leven Vale to go south. Fully seven years younger twenty-three year old, diminutive forward cum centre-half Dan Friel had already in 1883 made the move, probably on his own account, to Accrington in Lancashire for a game or two to be then signed to near-by Burnley. He must have impressed. Not only would he stay for six seasons but Burnley would also be the club to return to the Alexandria club finally for McLintock and three others, of whom just the one from the first team would remain for long and from whom there appears to have been frankly little effect on Burnley's team performance, beyond local bragging-rights.

Friel, however, had not been the first to make a seemingly speculative, i.e. neither signed nor invited, move south. In 1879 Third Lanark's Archie Hunter had arrived in Birmingham and the rest is history. In 1880 it had been James McDade from Neilston to Preston, where he both played and trained/coached and Jack McGill to the city of Liverpool to join and captain Everton. And there had been others since until in 1884 perhaps the first from the Leven Vale to follow took the same route. He was Tam Veitch, came in reality from the reserves at Dumbarton and took himself once more to the Mersey. There he was taken on by Everton's then rival, Bootle, eventually captaining, would be joined by his brother, Willie, with Willie and then Andrew Watson his partner at full-back. And when Bootle failed to be elected to the Football League and declined to wind-up Veitch would move across to make a few appearances for Everton itself. 

But by that time it was 1888 and there were changes taking place both north and south of the border and on and off the field. The former in both cases was a coming of age, as witnessed by a rush of success in the Scottish Cup, the Glasgow Charity Cup and in becoming the unofficial "Champion" team of the World against both West Bromwich Albion and Preston North End, of  Renton's literally pivotal, tactical innovation, The Cross. The latter, again in both cases, was Aston Villa's William McGregor's first suggestion and then rapid organisation of what would become known as the Football League. It would revolutionise football's indeed sport's finances just as Renton's sweeping of all before it would attract first attention and then imitation, though, as usual, the easiest route, for the imitators at least, would be appropriation. From no departures from Renton or either of the two other clubs in 1887-88, the following season there were ten, three from Vale of Leven and seven from Renton, with eight of the total going south, the exceptions being James Kelly and Neil McCallum. They, of course, joined the club, Celtic, which because of its own recency would never know any other way to play than the new one. Furthermore the numbers increased still more in 1889-90. That season fourteen left Vale clubs, five more from Renton, so a team in two seasons, five too from Vale of Leven and two from Dumbarton. And in 1890-91, the overall number was higher still. increased still further. In all sixteen were on their way, astoundingly eleven more from little Renton, as the reserve team plus went too, and from Vale of Leven five more, so in addition already a team and half .

At that point it might have thought that with forty already drawn off the well of players from what were and remain three, perhaps with Jamestown,, four villages and a town but not a very big one. might be drained. Yet it proved not at all so, at least not quite yet. In 1891-2 six more recruits were found, remarkably one more from Renton,  plus Tom Towie, who had turned out both for Renton and Dumbarton, and three from Vale of Leven. Then in 1892-3 there were twelve, four more from Vale of Leven, completing that second team, four also from Dumbarton and four remarkably still four more from the origin of this whole feeding-frenzy. Moreover, in 1893-4 a further five were on their way, two each from Renton and Dumbarton and one from Vale of Leven. But interestingly only one, James McNaught of Dumbarton, would at Newton Heath, today's Manchester United, and Spurs go on to have a career of any note. 

It meant that in six seasons sixty players had left this small patch of Scotland to play the beautiful game elsewhere, twenty-four, so two teams from Renton, or on the basis of the male population of the Cardross parish recorded as aged between fifteen and twenty-five in 1891, 5%, eleven, a team, from Dumbarton, 0.7%, and twenty-seven, two teams and a half from Vale of Leven , the Bonhill parish, or 2%. Is it any surprise that all three clubs began to struggle? Each time a new team was drawn together from young men, lads who in the main lived and worked cheek by jowl, and achieved some success it was pulled apart. There was literally no player continuity at either Vale of Leven and Dumbarton and at Renton, significantly as he was captain, only one name was ever-present, Archie McCall. At the Scottish Cup Final in 1885 he had been there at left-back aged twenty-three, born 1861 and not 1867 as maintained elsewhere, and perhaps explaining why he never went south, was already twenty-six in the one in 1888 and again at left-back and in 1895 was there still in that of 1895, aged thirty-three and coming to the end of a career, where he had been at the heart of or perhaps even the instigator of a footballing revolution.

Yet even then "the pillage" was not quite over. 1896-7 five more of what might be called of the next generation were tempted away and and a further three in 1898-9. But now they were not only heading south but also to rival, Scottish teams, Rangers, Hibernian, Dundee and St. Mirren. It tells us two things, of an inherent desire for Scots players to remain in Scotland where they could, this was also a period when a number of them, who had taken the English shilling, moved back, and that Scottish clubs could and therefore were willing in some cases to match the earnings available within the by then wage-capped Football League. It meant, however, that now by the last decade of 19th Century, with Scots playing outwith Scotland only in 1896 selectable for the national team, fully eighty-five products of the Leven Vale clubs had been or were plying their trade outwith the valley, so give or take seven teams, of which just twenty eight gaining caps. Moreover, despite Renton's last flourish in reaching that 1895 Scottish Cup Final, losing to St. Bernard's, and few of its runner-up team being tempted away, it and Vale of Leven were never again a force. Indeed, whilst Dumbarton, the town club, continued the village teams did not. By 1930 both were defunct. The pool, the River Leven itself,  had been effectively emptied of most of even the smallest of the fish and though talent would still emerge, most notably Alex Jackson in the 1920s, possibly the greatest Scottish player of all time and born in Renton, Ian McColl in the 1950s, from Alexandria, perhaps Scotland's unluckiest manager and the grandson of William McColl, one of the very players to have played in the the 1895 Cup Final, gone south but returned, and John O'Hare in the following two decades, also Renton-born, there was never again then and now the same flow.