What's in a name or names? The answer is plenty and, moreover, it seems to have been habit-forming. As now, when the majority of the players in the England national team on any one day are or could be of immigrant origin, so it ever was. Even in the first five seasons of International football, from 1872 until 1876, six games in all, there were at least four, who, given today's qualification-rules, would all have been able, perhaps even proud, to pull on the jersey of one country. One even had changed affiliation; at least in part. And that jersey would, given the theme of this whole blog, have been blue, the blue of Scotland, not least because there was no other source of players to be "borrowed".  The Welsh FA would not be formed until 1876 and then with a large element of Scots, the Irish until later still and the game was several years before formal extension outwith the British Isles and Canada.

The first of the quartet was in the third ever official international encounter, the match of 1874. His name was Robert Ogilvie. The surname itself seemed to be the clue. But it is perhaps a false scent, or rather there was an easier one. Whilst Robert Andrew Muter McIndoe Ogilvie had been born in St. Pancras, London, the origins of his father, also Robert, Robert Annesley Ogilvie, whether in Scotland or perhaps Ireland are unclear. However, that was not the case with his mother, Robert Snr's second wife, Robina Muter. She, seemingly a daughter of the manse, had been born in Glasgow. Moreover, the couple had been married again in Glasgow in a United Presbyterian Church, perhaps with father-in-law even conducting the service. Thus Robert Ogilvie was at least half-Scots and possibly more.

The second of the quartet, however, proved more difficult to chase and is probably as good an example of  the vagaries of  Victorian society as is likely to be found. His name was Walter Buchanan, and to rub in salt, more precisely Walter Scott Buchanan. He died, probably of a heart attack, in the bath at the age of 71, having lived "a wasted life", at least according to his sister, Margaret, who identified him. It seems a little harsh given that in 1876 at the age of 20 he had won an England cap, was playing for well-regarded Clapham Rovers and would go on to the elite Wanderers F.C. and Barnes.  So what of that background? Proof is not positive but this is what seems to have been un-earthed. He was born in 1855, in London, probably in Hornsey, possibly in Islington, where his birth was registered. His father is recorded as James Buchanan, a warehouseman, his mother Mary McMahon, so of Irish background, the daughter of a solicitor. Moreover James's father is given as Jardine Buchanan and he is "in the army".

Additionally in 1851 and again in Islington a James and Mary Buchanan, he a warehouseman once more, are recorded with three children, the eldest of whom is Janet, and, notably three servant, so not poor.  Moreover, Mary is shown as Irish-born, specifically in Dublin, and he in Dumfries.  Furthermore, in 1871, when Walter Scott Buchanan is known to be at school in Cranleigh in Surrey, a James and Mary Buchanan are recorded twenty years older with once more three children, three more perhaps and still three servants all as before in Islington. James is  still born in Dumfries but now  a "merchant" and Mary again in Ireland. The family was clearly prosperous, well-off enough to send their boys away to school, and interesting the youngest of the three additional children was a daughter, Margaret.

So, on the basis of the above, Walter Scott Buchanan, England international, was probably Scots-Irish with perhaps a little reinforcement of that background from another source. Whilst Jardine Buchanan, father, seems untraceable, at least in terms of sons. although a Jardine Buchanan and a Jan(n)et Currie baptised two daughters in Dumfries, Jannet and Catherine in 1814 and 1816 respectively, just as James and Mary were establishing themselves in London a Jardine Buchanan, tinsmith, is recorded living and marrying, indeed dying, in Staffordshire. He is once more Dumfries-born, so a Scot, and his father also recorded as Jardine, thus perhaps can not unreasonably be assumed to have been a poorer brother to James and uncle to Walter?

And now we turn to William Lindsay. In the first of the five unofficial games played between England and Scotland from 1870 to 1872 he had featured in the forward-line, whilst playing his club football for the Civil Service and Old Wykehamists. And in the next four games he was there too, now turning out for Rochester and in the last dropping back to full-back. So the question is, how could he change shirt and the answer is India. William Lindsay had been born in Benares in Bengal, the son of Captain W. Lindsay, who, promoted to Major, was one of those massacred at Cawnpore in 1857, as was his mother, Lillias. Thus William Lindsay Jnr was at ten years of age an orphan. Now he might then have returned to his father's home-town of Dundee, where his paternal grandfather had been Provost, or to his mother's, Forfar, but the Army, as was the convention, stepped in to take on his upbringing. He was given a place at Winchester College and, since the regulation at the time and until 1887 was that Empire equalled England, when in 1877, he now with The Wanderers, England called he could and did change shirt. 

So to Bain, John Bain(e), of Winchester College once more and now also Oxford. He is the only one of the quartet actually to have been born in Scotland, in 1854 and in Bothwell, Lanarkshire, and, if being a Scot is only by birth, remains unique. However, his father, a lawyer, soon moved the family south, clearly prospered and by 1871 his son was already well-ensconced in the English public-school system, after Oxford and a Blue from 1877 would be called to the Bar and go on to be a schoolmaster at Marlborough College almost continuously until retirement in 1913. And it would also be in 1877 alongside Lindsay at full-back once more that Bain Jnr would make his one and only appearance, as one of the centre-forwards in a 1-3 home-defeat with incidentally Buchanan one of the reserves and Ogilvie the referee, at that time not an umpire on the field but the largely untroubled, final arbiter in the stand.