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 the Great- football's quiet revolutionary
Chapter Nine
For McWilliam himself in a footballing sense the years from 1927 to 1934 that he spent at Middlesbrough were disappointing when on the face of it they should not have been. Right through its core the club already had the Scots and Newcastle-style, the very one, of which McWilliam had been a part, there to be built upon. On the dismissal of Alex Mackie in 1906 almost his last playing recruit, Andy Aitken, was persuaded to step up to player-manager. It was same Andy Aitken, who from Ayr had joined the Toon in 1895, had been its captain until moving to Tee-side and also Peter McWilliam's team-mate at St. James Park and for Scotland, right-half and left-half respectively. And when he left for Leicester after a brief interval his managerial boots had been filled by the successful Airdrie manager, Andy Walker. Moreover after Walker there had been the the half-Scots, Thomas H. McIntosh to and through the Great War until James Howie had arrived. He came from management at Queen's Park Rangers in London but two playing clubs earlier had also been on Tyneside. In fact he also had been there at almost exactly the same time and again at inside-right a team-mate of McWilliam.
However, Aitken had only lasted two seasons before, clearly disenchanted with management, he returned to playing-only at Leicester and back in Scotland at Dundee and then Kilmarnock until 1913. Only then did he come back to Tyneside and, with a dabble upstairs at Gateshead, go into the pub-trade. Andy Walker lasted only two as well until, like Mackie before, scandal engulfed him, when perhaps the blame lay at Board level. And Howie gain after two years decided the tobacco trade in London was preferable to football of any sort, at which point for three years an ex-referee. Herbert Bramlett, was brought in as front-man, whilst, and for a fourth year too, the Board made the decisions that led to relegation to the Second Division in 1923-24 and promotion in the season before McWilliam's appointment.
So it was at a club well-known for the directors choosing the team, almost always a disaster waiting to happen, the new man is said to have taken the job on the basis that he alone selected the First team and still more interestingly that he would do the same for the Second team too. It was not Northfleet, but it was neo-Ajax with a passing possibility that Sid Castle's innovations there had previously at White Hart Lane been a discussed but discarded alternative to the nursery. However, it was not without its immediate problems either. McWilliam inherited from 1926 a squad of just nineteen players, with the team drawn mainly from just thirteen including five Scots. In the first season that Second Division group proved not strong enough in the First, especially in goal-scoring, even though local boy, George Camsell, continued to lead the line well and half-back, John Peacock, was promoted into that First team. The Wearsiders finished bottom. They were relegated and the manager started to reorganise and reinforce as he had every right to do.
Thus Bobbie Bruce was bought at inside-left from Aberdeen and in 1933 would win his one and only cap, Fred Kennedy, another forward, came from Everton and Sidney Jarvis, at full-back, was also promoted from within and Middlesbrough did not stay down long. In 1929 the squad with just a nett one addition, three out, four in, none of them household names, came straight back up. Again the team was chosen mainly from again just thirteen players, Camsell now an England international and Peacock, Bruce, Kennedy and Jarvis all making valuable contributions. It points firstly to McWilliam's ability quickly to spot a player already at the club, to know players elsewhere and also to coach a team simply to play better.
The following season too, perhaps with finally a board-room acceptance of the need to invest even to stay up, the squad was enlarged to twenty-six. Four were transferred out, perhaps surprisingly Kennedy amongst them. Eight came in including Cameron, from nearby Darlington, MacFarlane from Celtic and Forrest, all three Scots and confirming McWilliam's continuing connections north of the border. In addition Emmerson was promoted from within, Jennings arrived from Cardiff and Muttitt, a local boy, received a first contract. Moreover, McWilliam had also gone back to Tottenham and recruited Albert “Jack” Elkes. Originally an inside-left McWilliam had in 1923 signed him to the "Lane" from Southampton and converted him to centre-half, an attacking centre-half. He then, in the six seasons, four under McWilliam, had played one hundred and ninety times for the London club and would eventually have his position filled there from 1931 by a certain Arthur Rowe. Yet, although already thirty-five on his arrival in the North-East, in the further four years between 1929 and 1933, all under McWilliam, he would for his new club then make a further 105 appearances.
Middlesbrough finished the 1929-30 season in sixteenth place, well clear of relegation but admittedly hardly tearing up trees. There was, however, beyond simple bedding-in an explanation. All three of the team's specialist full-backs were injured for three-quarters of the games. Half-backs were having to play out of position and it showed not least because, fullbacks fit again, in the year after Elkes joined, 1930-1, there was noticeable improvement, whilst still clearly being a tight, financial ship. Middlesbrough ended the season in seventh place as Arsenal took the first of its several Championships in the 1930s. And the North-East club had, firstly, done it using mainly just fourteen players, six Scots, two local, of a squad of twenty-three with just three additions, nett minus three so with six out. Moreover, it had also done it by heavily using all but one of previous year's recruits plus newly-arrived Fred Warren, another from Cardiff, pointing once more not just to the manager's knowledge of players this time in Wales but actually everywhere and his ability to blend what he had with what he sought out.
That last season of the 1920s, however, proved, to be a high-point. For the next three seasons the club was in sixteenth or seventeenth place in a league of twenty-two, always safe but nothing more. A few players came in, mostly recruited from outside, again from Scotland, Wales and the North of England, but also including Joey Williams from Arsenal. There is talk of director interference raising its head once more. The number of Scots in the squad fell, but the team was always kept afloat by the phenomenal efforts of George Camsell. For Middlesbrough between 1925 and 1939 he hit the target 325 times in 418 appearances. Between 1929 and 1936 he also won nine England caps, scoring at an average of two goals per international, eighteen in all. He scored in every England game, in which he featured and in nine of those in a row. Yet he was never England's first choice, that was Dixie Dean, and was usually only brought in against non-British opposition. He played only once against Wales, Ireland and Scotland, scored in every one and didn't lose any of them. In fact, he was only one losing side, against Austria in 1936 in Vienna and even then he found the net.
However, if the years from 1927 to 1934 were good for Camsell and reasonable for Middlesbrough and McWilliam, at Tottenham they were, initially at least, little short of disastrous. As Middlesbrough was relegated in 1928 so was Spurs, still winning at home but taking only eleven points away. Then the following two seasons the club in the Second Division only finished in tenth and twelfth place. Throughout it had been managed by Peter McWilliam's replacement, Billy Minter, who himself had been a Spurs player, a successful forward under McWilliam until retirement as a player in 1920, when he had joined the club's staff, training the team, becoming his assistant and replacing him when he moved to Middlesbrough. There can therefore be little doubt that Minter would have continued what was basically the McWilliam approach,. He might have tweaked it a little but it was after all in essence all he had known as player and coach. Yet he struggled and did so with essentially the same players as McWilliam had had, which must seen, if more proof were needed, again as a measure of the Scot's ability to extract the best from an otherwise averagely talented group.
In fact, it was only in the 1930-31 season that there was a resurgence, after Minter had stepped up to become assistant club secretary and had been replaced by a manager brought in from outside, Percy Smith. In what was his first season and still in the Second Division the team finished third. There was then a slight blip and once more a recovery that took the team into second place and promotion back into the top flight in 1933. There the following season, 1933-34, the improvement continued to such an extent that the Spurs were beaten to the title only by an Arsenal rebuilt by Herbert Chapman and Huddersfield Town. Of the fifteen most involved in the squad two had played locally to the club, one more had come through the juniors, four were South Welsh, where they clearly had and continued to have a good scout, and five more had played at Northfleet, including Arthur Rowe.
But it too did not last. Remarkably the following season, 1934-5, progress came to a complete halt. In fact it went into reverse. Only ten games were won all season, away form was disastrous and home form a shadow of what it had been. From third Spurs slipped to bottom of the division by a margin and was relegated. Middlesbrough were not much better, three points in fact and only just escaped the drop itself. However, the difference was that Smith was sacked as a result, to be replaced temporarily by Walter Hardinge, first team coach, who as a player had been a reserve to Peter McWilliam at Newcastle. Smith was deemed to be directly responsible, whereas McWilliam's responsibility could only be indirect. Just as had happened at Spurs seven years earlier the Teesiders' subsequent loss of form was due not to what he was doing but what he was not, for at the beginning of the season he had not just left Ayresome Park but done it to join Tottenham's fiercest foe, North London rival, Arsenal.