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:
Peter McWilliam - football's quiet revolutionary
Chapter Four
It is the question of tactical change that has to be of immediate interest in the McWilliam story. It was not a new phenomenon. It had happened first in 1872, initiated by Robert Gardner, Scotland's then captain. It had happened again in 1878 in Wales with the invention of the 2.3.5 formation, in 1888 in Scotland with the first centre-half and in England with Willy Foulke and in England again in the late 1890s with kick-and-run. And it had already happened at Newcastle, under the old, goalkeeping regime, in the early 1900s with the “Toon” recognised as playing the Toon way, a way that McWilliam had bought into and into the development of which through his style of play, his footballing ability, he might even have had an input, minor perhaps but still an input.
Newcastle, for all that the city itself is in England, admittedly the very north-east of England, had throughout McWilliam's time with the club had a Scottish, or more accurately, a Scot's team. In fact, it had always been thus. In 1892-3 of the known squad of eleven, at least four had been from north of the border. The following year it was seven, rising to eleven of twenty-two in 1897, twelve of twenty-one the following year., thirteen of twenty-two the year after. As to an extent Newcastle were little different to others in the League,
Sunderland, Liverpool,
Arsenal, only more, or is less, so. Even in 1902, the year of the arrival of McWilliam at the club, it was fourteen of twenty-nine in addition to which the backgrounds of a number of the locally-born players could have been by their names Diasporan Scots. There was not only Colin Veitch with Scottish grandparents but Ted Birnie, Jack Carr, Teddy McIntyre, Ord Richardson and Billy Wilson, son, grandsons and great-grandsons of men, who with football already in their veins had been drawn south mostly to hew Northumbrian and Durham coal or build English ships.
As a result Newcastle had unsurprisingly adopted the Scottish, short-passing style of play, the ball travelling rarely more than half a dozen yards between players. They had also done well with it, or rather their adaption of it. Success had come particularly in the league with championships in 1905, 1907 and 1909. It was just one of several styles used by different clubs; others included “the open game”, “triangular movement”, also Scots in origin and which would become "push and run", “kick-and-rush” and “the individual” method. Elsewhere in England crowds were said to have preferred more direct styles of play but on the Tyne they were anathema.
“the good folks who frequent St. James' in such numbers love scientific football with a deep affection which is certainly un-English. The kick-and-rush is not considered the real thing in neighbourhood of Gallowgate.”
The Newcastle of “scientific” football style, perhaps better described as “integrated”, scientific being a term from the 1880s that more philosophy than practicality, had first emerged at the end of the 1902-03 season, Peter McWilliam's first, and had been forged in the face of almost relegation. Until that moment a committee of club directors overseen by Frank Watt had picked the team. Faced with a crisis, not least after a seven-goal loss to Aston Villa, James Telford, the club chairman and himself a Scot, asked three of the players to take over the role. He is reported to have said,
"We seem to be making a mess of things. Will you go into the boardroom, lock yourselves in, and choose what you consider to be our best team?"
Ivan Sharpe, the football journalist Ivan Sharpe, called it,
"the birth pains of one of the most brilliant teams in the history of the game".
The chosen three were Jack Carr, Andy Aitken and Colin Veitch. They were an odd combination, the older local, the full-back, Carr, the younger Aitken, at 24 already Scotland captain, a half-back, who would become team captain, and the youngest 20-year-old, middle-class reserve inside-forward cum half-back, Veitch, already a writer on football and other subjects. And they changed the way the team was chosen. Veitch described it thus,
“we introduced the footballers and eliminated pugnaciousness”.
Peter McWilliam must have been seen as one of the “footballers”, one of those who could actually play. He has been described as stylish, upright “snake-hipped” with a magic wand of a left foot, said even to have been in the mould of the Rangers, and whisper it quietly, Sunderland genius of the 1960s, 'Slim Jim' Baxter. He was famous on Tyneside for introducing the 'McWilliam Wiggle', a move by which he would shimmy past defenders with a simple sway of his body, simple that is to him.
Although still young his ability, perhaps uniqueness, was clearly recognised. McWilliam was gradually introduced to a team that approached the game in a novel fashion on several levels. The first concerned Andy Aitken. He played centre-half but one that was a little deeper than otherwise was the case under the standard, Scottish defensive convention of wide full-backs marking the wingers and the narrower half-backs the inside-forwards. This was in contrast to the English convention of narrow full-backs on the inside-forwards and wider half-backs taking the wingers. The second was that, although the Newcastle system in principal kept the Scottish marking convention, it did so with the backs forming a box-four, just as Scotland had done in the very first international thirty years earlier but with the right- and left-half-backs wider than had previously been the case. It meant there could be interchangeable marking cover at all times with Aitken until 1906, when he left the club, playing more as a third half-back than, as was previously the convention, a deep forward between but in front of the other two half-backs.
On Aitken's departure his place as captain was then taken by Colin Veitch. He had been playing as one of the links between Aitken's defence and attack, as a deeper inside forward on the right, and was by nature more offensive, not personally but in the tactical sense. Now he dropped back but not fully into Aitken's place. He still controlled the team but as a more advanced, more then-conventional centre-half and with a different dynamic, as much creative as defensive, which was translated into team play that was more attacking, if looser. He was at times almost a sixth or more accurately a fifth and a half forward with the other half link being Peter McWilliam, who had licence to advance from left-half with the full-back providing cover.
Veitch's alternative, more standard approach might be seen as stemming from its first recognised source in 1888 at Vale of Leven and then Celtic, James Kelly, but can more immediately be traced to two other Scots. The first played for the club for three years from 1902, and had taken an interest in developing the younger players and roomed with Veitch for away games. His name was Robert Smyth McColl, who also cannily used the money he earned from football in 1901 to found with his brother the chain of newsagents, RS McColl, a branch of which is to today still found in almost every major Scottish town.
McColl had been born in Glasgow in 1876. At eighteen he was playing for Queen's Park and it was there he won his first cap as an amateur in 1896. There too he first played, later also internationally, alongside one tactical innovator of the era, Elgin's
R.C. Hamilton, the original false No. 9 and, again as an international, he faced another,
Gilbert Smith. G.O. Smith was perhaps the last great amateur, the son of Scot but Croydon-born so could only play for England, a man who also played off the front, could pass the ball like few others and never headed the ball unless there was literally no alternative.
“Toffee Bob”, as McColl was known, turned professional in 1901 on joining Newcastle, stayed for three years, returned to Scotland to Rangers, once more alongside Hamilton, until 1907, regained his amateur status, rejoining Queen's Park and playing with them until 1912. He remains the only player to score hat-tricks against Ireland, Wales and England, the last in his surprisingly early final international appearance in 1900.
On the field he encouraged pass-and-move, "push-and-run" by any other name, changing fundamentally the way Newcastle played the game. McWilliam, himself, described McColl's game as
“a masterly exhibition of skill and brainwork……..He seemed to see several 'moves' in one in one, just as in a game of draughts.”
Colin Veitch wrote of his time rooming with McColl,
“I know what I learned in the half an hour talks before sleep. I absorbed more real football knowledge in those conversations than I could have gained in years of playing” “both in the theoretical and practical side of the game.”
McColl's influence was to lead to the development of what became known as the “sixth-forward game” with the wing-backs, the left- and right-halves not only feeding the inside forwards and the wingers but interchanging with and even overlapping them. It was a logical extension of the Scottish centre-half and is best illustrated by a later Veitch defence of McWilliam's game, thus,
“You (McWilliam) can sometimes be found wandering away across to the opposite wing on an attacking expedition but are generally safe even in these tactics in that your knowledge of when and where to part with the ball leaves you sufficient time in which to return for business commencing on your own side of the field. I have also heard it said that you risk much by these proceedings, and that your side will be the loser some fine day. Rubbish! Your side gains by these introductions......as long as you have men alongside you who realise the necessity of 'covering tactics', so that any one position is never filled by two men at any period of the game, your raids are beneficial. Your colleagues will understand the position, and if you don't, that is not your fault, but theirs, as it is quite time they did. The rule is quite elementary in football, but of the utmost importance.”
Thus half-back attacking tempo would be developed supplementing the forward rhythm resulting from already accepted, Scottish-sourced positional change by wingers and inside-forwards, or in the more accurate terminology of the day, inside- and outside-forwards. But at Newcastle even that was taken a stage further firstly with, particularly on the right side, further interchange by not only the inside- and outside forward but also an advancing the half-back, in today's terms an overlapping half-back even wing-back, with it never certain which might be the most advanced at any time. Then, secondly, there was not the swapping of wing-backs, but the appearance of McWilliam on the right at times with the other half-backs adjusting, the centre-half understanding he had to go to left-half and being comfortable there, and equally right-half to centre-half and both back accordingly.
In defence too there were rules. Jock Rutherford, notionally the Newcastle right-wing, the grandfather of Greg Rutherford, the athlete, would write,
“forwards must be prepared to fall back and help their halves in tight corners, for the attacking party who requires waiting on throughout will find no permanent place in present day football.”
Once more in today's terms there was tracking back. Clearly the team had purpose and was organised yet there was something else. Again Ivan Sharpe has remarked that,
"They had a rhythmic beauty."
And furthermore a journalist of the time wrote that in it,
Moreover, it might even be said that whilst it was certainly not yet Total Football perhaps a germ of what today is seen as the future epitome of Dutch footballing philosophy was already there."Each man was an artist,.."
Yet none of this might not have been possible but for the arrival of James Q. McPherson. He was not a player, nor a manager. He was a trainer. He had come south from Kilmarnock via Germany, arriving at St. James Park just as McColl was leaving and he had a completely different approach to his predecessor, Tommy Dodds. Dodds had not believed in ball work. His regime was exercise and more exercise but not running. McPherson changed that. His training used the ball and also varied according to the players' abilities, weaknesses and strengths. The teams fitness actually improved and no doubt the skill levels as well to match the team's developing, on-field, attacking approach with Peter McWilliam's contribution enhanced too.
However, Newcastle's new style like all others had its weaknesses. If a team was able effectively to close mark Newcastle or smother them, what today we would call “pressing”, to out-muscle them with aggressiveness and hard tacking, the system could and did break down. That is exactly what had happened for example in 1905 Cup Final. Newcastle had arrived as favourites and left 2-0 losers to another style that opponents, Aston Villa, used that day and was developed due to other influences, not least financial. A report on the game reads,
“On the one hand we had the Newcastle method, the exclusively short inside style which could not rise above a pass of half -a-dozen yards, and the open wing-to-wing work, with the crashing forward concentration of the Villa trio.”
That the “Villa trio” was all English was not surprising. The style they employed was an English as opposed to a Scottish style. It had been developed over the previous decade and a half notably by another West Midlands team, West Bromwich, which without the financial resources of other teams had to sign local talent and play it in a manner that it understood, that it was brought up to understand, rather than bring in more expensive Scots players to play the Scottish way. And it had served West Bromwich reasonably well after professional football had been legitimised in 1885. The team had reached FA Cup Finals in 1886, 1887 and 1895, won the Cup in 1888 and 1892 and more recently achieved promotion in 1902. As a result other teams had copied it. Some, indeed, had converted, not least Villa. The team was still managed by Glasgow-born
George Ramsay, the man credited with bringing the passing Scottish game to Birmingham three decades earlier, who had imported Scots players from the mid-1880. It was his teams that had won the Cup in 1895 and 1897 and the League in 1894, 1896, 1897, 1899 and 1900 based on just such imported talent, teams built around Leven Vale's Jimmy Cowan. However, in the three years since Cowan's retirement times seemed to have changed not just in terms of personnel but also stylistically.
In fact the Bromwich and Villa approach was to prove to be Newcastle's Achilles Heel on more than one occasion. They seemed at times to freeze when faced with it. In 1907 in the first round of the FA Cup they were defeated by then Southern League Crystal Palace. It was a team of which included several former Newcastle reserves, who both understood the system from the inside and its weaknesses and played what was described as a “crash” game. A similar approach would also be adopted in the 1908 Cup Final. Again the result was defeat, this time by Second Division Wolves, and although Newcastle persisted in 1909 they only reached the semi-final, there beaten by Manchester United, who went on the take the trophy. The accusation was that they passed too much and scored too little. It has echoes in modern teams being accused of wanting to pass the ball into the goal and finally in 1910 a reaction was provoked.
In part it resulted from the retirement of Alex Gardner, the right-half to Peter McWilliam's left. It meant that Colin Veitch could now move across into Gardner's position and allow Wilf Low, newly arrived from Aberdeen, to slot into his specialist position at centre-half. Low played more Aitken-style but with, if anything, more emphasis on dealing with the centre-forward. He was perhaps a fifth and a quarter forward about whom Aitken himself said,
“he doesn't get down the field with his forwards, but hangs back to keep the opposite side's forwards within reach”,
adding and no doubt seeing a lot of his own reflection,
“he really is a great defender.”
Newcastle had on the face of it created a more attacking, Scottish style but reverted. Actually it was not reversion but the last of a series of still attack-orientated adjustments. The standard Scottish way of playing had been with one attacking half-back, the centre-half, and two defensive ones, right and left, a triangle. With Aitken but under the influence of McColl there had still been two defensive and one attacking half-backs but now the latter was not the centre-half but McWilliam, more a J. Then with Veitch at centre-half the Toon was now playing just one defensive half-back, Gardner, and now two attacking ones, McWilliam and Veitch himself, a J once more but inverted. And even with Low the two attacking and one defensive half-backs were retained, except that they were McWilliam and Veitch and no longer in the centre and on the left but on the left and now on the right, an inverted triangle. However, there was an additional twist and McWilliam pinpointed it. He and Veitch, by the time of Low's arrival, now integrated wing-to-wing. In other words they learned to mix short passing with long.
But it was not before they had a further close call. The 1910 FA Cup Final was against another Second Division team, Barnsley, which reinforced its defence, played long ball, was supremely fit and prepared to battle and batter, Newcastle started with the short-passing game. Barnsley scored not long before half-time and Newcastle continued with the short game until half-way through the second half. That is when a decision was taken. Tactics were changed. The Toon began to smash and batter too and seven minutes before the end also scored. The game finished a draw. It went to a replay and this time the Toon from the off neither short-passed nor battered. They combined the two or rather used whatever was appropriate appropriately. Even then it took a little time to work but in the second half they scored twice to no reply, once from the first penalty ever awarded in a Cup Final.
A salutary lesson, that technique and athleticism was not enough, had been learned, not least by McWilliam, who could not have known how little playing time he would have left. Newcastle would reach the 1911 Cup Final, draw the first game and lose the second. McWilliam was not part of either. The first was just two weeks after his career-ending international injury, the second four days later still. Local boy, David Willis, recruited from Sunderland, had taken his place on both occasions but not replace him. The following season Newcastle would lose in the first round, to Derby County. The final would be won by Barnsley defeating West Bromwich, English teams personified. It would be the last under the old goalkeeping rules. With complaints mounting and, as always, fears officially about the game as a spectacle but unofficially about crowds being turned off by tactics, the footballing authorities, not without some justification, decided to act. The previous two Cup Finals had both gone to replays and been won by a single goal. Attacking football seemed to be at a premium and the solution was deemed to be after forty-five years that the roving goalkeeper be done away with, confined to the penalty area. At a stroke the game was changed, perhaps the greatest change football had and would undergo to this day, for what would be coincidentally but also portentously the first season McWilliam turned his attention to winning games not with his feet and the outside of his head but with what was inside it.