And when you are done looking at this site for the Scots input on football world-wide, here are two more.
For those who literally want to trace on the ground the local development of Scots and Scottish football in our own and other countries there is the newly available and ever-expanding site of:
The Scots Football Historians' Group
And on Scottish sports history in general but inevitably including fitba', see Andy Mitchell's inestimable:
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Peter the Great
- football's quiet revolutionary
Chapter Eight
However, Castle was be one of comparatively few lesser-known, perhaps under-sung names from Spurs teams of the McWilliam period, who would stay in the game for the long-term after retirement from playing. One who did was Cecil Poynton. After a ten year career at left-back from 1923 he became player-coach of the reserves in 1933 for a year before moving into coaching full-time. Then in 1945 he was appointed assistant trainer of the Tottenham first team, stepping up to trainer two years later. He would remain in position until 1972, more or less fifty years continuous service at the club, siged by McWilliam and undoubtedly a transmitter of McWilliam's training principles as McWilliam was himself of McPherson's. He would see and quietly be an important element in the post-War revival of the club, the successes of the early 1950s under Arthur Rowe and then the 1960s, only stepping down from direct training, aged 70, briefly to become the club physiotherapist. That step-down was 1972, only a couple of years before Bill Nicholson's leaving, Nicholson being a player, who had been signed by Spurs in 1938 so there during McWilliam's brief second period at the club brought to a premature end by World War II, had therefore received little direct coaching from the man himself but was inculcated with the principles from others. Indeed Nicholson's departure is said to have been because of disenchantment with the way football at home and in Europe was going, perhaps in essence away from the McWilliam way.
Another, interestingly as Sid Castle was at Heerenveen, was Tommy Clay. Once more a full-back he went on between 1937 and again the outbreak of the Second World War again to coach in Holland, perhaps passing on the McWilliam principles, but in his case at Den Haag. Still another was Harry Lowe. He had played at White Hart Lane from 1914 and 1926, had preceded Harry Skitt at centre-half and would go on to manage in Spain at San Sebastian's Real Sociedad from 1930 for five seasons with mixed results. His team was third in La Liga in 1931 and relegated in 1935. Additionally Frank Osborne, at Spurs from 1924 to 1931, would manage Fulham from 1948 to 1949 and 1953 to 1956 but then Craven Cottage had been his first league home.
But there also were several, who would become far more well-known. Arthur Rowe was one, Bill Nicholson, if marginally in terms of chronology, was another and then there was Jimmy Seed. James Marshall Seed had had senior his playing career saved by McWilliam. Consett-born, but of Scots origins (his footballing brother was called Angus) he had been nineteen, an inside-forward and just signed for Sunderland at the outbreak of the Great War. Called up, he was badly gassed during the hostilities and found himself released by the Wearside club on health grounds when football resumed. However, he was picked up by the non-league Welsh club, Mid Rhondda, recovered his health, did well, attracted the attention of McWilliam and joined Spurs for £250 in 1920, there winning five England caps, and only moving on as his manager left the club in 1927. Then four years later, after four seasons spent still as a player with some success at Sheffield Wednesday, in 1931 he was persuaded to become manager of Clapton Orient, from where, two years after that, in 1933, and despite no success north of the river he crossed the Thames to Charlton, remaining at The Valley until 1956, winning successive promotions from third to first divisions, finishing runners-up in the top-flight to Manchester City in 1937 and reaching two FA Cup Finals, winning in 1947. Seed's Charlton is said to have done it playing attractive football but there is no overt indication that in terms of style it was McWilliam's Spurs by proxy. However, he did it with in the team from 1935 and soon captain a Manchester-born son of a Scot, Don Welsh, who never himself played under the Invernesian master but was perhaps the best indication of underlying influences.
Left-sided Welsh was normally later in his career an inside-forward. It was in that position that he took the field for both the 1946 and 1947 Cup Finals, the first lost, the second won. However, he could and did play left-half, McWilliam left-half, equally effectively and also centre-half and Scottish-style, McWilliam-style, attacking centre-half. Indeed it was at left-half that in 1938 he won his first and second England caps, only switching to inside-left for his third and last the following year as war intervened. He was extremely versatile, arguably Jimmy Seed's personal Peter McWilliam, who on retirement after the Cup Final win in another decade at The Valley Seed neither managed fully to replace, even though he too had an eye for talent, having first discovered Stanley Matthews, or replicate through youth coaching.