Nicholson

There is always something in a name and Nicholson is no different. And being West Scots it immediately intrigued as Anglo-Gaelic for the "son of the daughter of Ole" and that intrigue was only heightened by this Nicholson's pivotal role in the early history of football, Austrian football. In fact he was from 1900 the first President of the Austrian Football Association, known as M.D. because, whilst he was familiarly called "Mark", his given names were Magnus Douglas.

However, finding that out piled question on question. I was faced with a major figure in the "beautiful game" in Central Europe with another Scandinavian first name and more Black-Gray/Green Gaelic in the middle one, yet available accounts of his life show him as having been in Shropshire, albeit it turned out in several places apparently at once. From that you might ascertain that I have dug deeper.

Wikipedia gives the football career of "Mark" Nicholson as a year aged nineteen at Shropshire's Oswestry Town, at which point, 1891, he was signed by West Bromwich. There he stayed three seasons, including in 1892 appearing in his regular position, full-back, in the FA Cup Final, a game which his team would win comprehensively, 3-0, defeating West Midland neighbours, Aston Villa. The Villa team at the time had just introduced James Cowan at Scottish, attacking centre-half and included three other Scots. And the West Brom team was unusual. As one of the clubs that has employed few Scots in both its early years and, indeed, history, just one hundred and twenty-one in almost one hundred and fifty years, it had three, Nicholson's full-back partner, Tommy McCulloch, via Partick Thistle and Rangers, at half-back  Scottish international, Willie Groves Snr, and Roddy McLeod, also via Thistle, in the forward-line.

It is unclear, whether Nicholson was fully professional at the then Baggies' ground, Stoney Lane. In 1891 he is recorded in visiting his elder sister lodging in Oswestry as an Elementary School Teacher and in 1894, when he moved to Luton Town, as it that year became a founder-member of the Southern League,  it was also to take up a teaching position in Bedford. However, his stay at Luton, indeed in Bedford, lasted perhaps a season, perhaps three. Sources say it was, in any case, temporary. And it also seems it was his opportunity to to change career. He is next recorded by some sources as in Cairo the following year, time in Marseille is also mentioned and it is probable that by that time he was working the Thomas Cook travel company. Certainly by 1897 he was working for the organisation and found himself posted as manager to its office in Vienna, where he joined the city's oldest team, First Vienna FC.  There, in city and club, and aged only twenty-six unsurprisingly he quickly proved himself not just the best player but also box-office. He also began to train the team and organise not just the club but the wider Austrian football. The following year, 1898, the Committee for the Organisation of Football Competition was formed. Links were formed back to Britain. In 1899 an Oxford University team visited. And, as Nicholson returned permanently to England in 1900, he had married in Bedford in early 1898, the Committee became the Austrian Football Union, from 1904 the country's football association. 

It is said that M. D. Nicholson continued to work for Thomas Cook, Egypt is once more mentioned, in Hamburg, where he refereed, and Paris, where one of his children, James Donald, was born in 1907 and he turned his talents to cricket. In that sport he even represented France against Belgium. But eventually he returned Britain , indeed seemingly to Oswestry, by 1910. In that year on becoming a freemason in the town he is shown as a bank manager. In 1939 he is a widowed director of a lime quarrying company and on his death in 1941, not 1943, as given elsewhere, probate is granted to Malcolm Douglas Nicholson.   

And again it is the names that intrigue. For English or even French folk they remain remarkably Scots. The questions are why and whether Magnus Nicholson, and therefore the style of football he espoused, rather than being English was in fact also Scots. And the answers are in part and possibly. If the Nicholson family-tree is to be believed then M.D. Nicholson's father was Alexander and was his father before him too, but born on the Wirral in Cheshire and Ulverston in Lancashire respectively.  Scots gold is only struck a generation later with Donald Nicholson, married in Ulverston in 1794, buried in Liverpool in 1842, a Revenue Officer to trade, but one born on Skye, in Snizort to be precise. The thread is thin but it is still there and clearly treasured in name at least for at least four generations. And as for the football. Perhaps M.D. just through playing with Scots recognised the superiority of their game, not only picking it up and passing it on but, although unknowingly, putting in the foundations for the arrival of Hugo Meissl within the decade, Jimmy Hogan in the following one and, after recovery from the Great War, the Austrian Wunderteam.