When Liverpool F.C. club was formed in  1892 it did so from September with first teams that were labelled "The Team of All the Macs" because they were largely sourced from Scotland. Yet, whilst that group had been thrown together in extremis  on Everton leaving the Anfield Stadium empty and its owners income-less, it was in fact not alone nor had it been the first. For a game on 23rd April earlier that year Sunderland had crossed the country to Darwen. In fact that day the Lancashire team itself fielded two Scots, both born in Kilmarnock, James Haddow and Michael McAvoy, although the former's would move back and forth between Ayrshire and Lancashire, finally marrying and settling in England, and the latter would become a St. Mirren stalwart. But at the other end of field something special had happened with the Club Secretary, Tom Watson, at the core of it all.

Tom Watson was wonderful, footballing organiser. He had shown it in his home-town of Newcastle at West-End. He had then at East End added to it a seemingly miraculous knowledge of Scottish talent, bringing seven in from North of the Border to its eleven. And now at Sunderland he took it apparently almost to the max. The team that took the field that day in included in its forward-line John Scott from Glasgow, Jimmy Millar of Annbank, Edinburgh and Renton's Johnny Campbell, Davy Hannah born in Northern Ireland but also raised in Renton, they lived a street apart, and Jimmy Hannah, again from Glasgow. Then at half-back were Will Gibson, born in Ayrshire, raised in Wishaw and bought from Cambuslang, John Auld from Lugar and Hughie Wilson of Mauchline.

By now you might have become convinced of a pattern, one that is only added to by Ned Doig in goal and from Arbroath and at left-back, John Murray from Strathblane in Stirlingshire. It meant only one position remaining, right-half and there came the problem. It was filled by Tom Porteous born in Newcastle. But wait a moment. Porteous, Thomas Stoddart Porteous, also spoke not Geordie but Scots and the "for-why" is the final twist. His father was from Dalkeith south of Edinburgh, his mother from Haddington east of the city and young Tom was living in the former at five and by seven in Kilmarnock. He too was a Killy-boy, one who had begun by turning out for hometown until taking the road South once more to birth-town and beyond, including in 1891 a single cap, for England.