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 Seven
Sid Castle, meanwhile, having spent his season at Chelsea and suffered relegation, had in 1924, now aged thirty-two, dropped out of the League. He next reappeared at Guildford United, perhaps because it was the nearest, reasonably-accessible Southern League team to his home-town of Basingstoke. He would be born there in 1892 and in 1978 die there too. Or perhaps it was because he had previously played there before joining Tottenham.
At the end of the 1924-25 season Guildford had finished in last place, however was re-elected and recovered somewhat. In 1926 it was in twelfth place of eighteen, in 1927 second to last and in 1928 twelfth once more, with newcomers, or rather re-joiners, Northfleet United, still Spurs-affiliated Northfleet, despite McWilliam's departure, in third place. A measure of the Kent club's continuing strength at the time was that it finished behind the first teams of Kettering Town and Peterborough United but immediately ahead of the reserve teams of League-clubs Brighton, Norwich and Southampton.
Sid Castle had in the meantime move on, to Holland. In 1927 he was appointed manager of Ajax, Amsterdam, by then an important club in The Netherlands, however, not the most important and still amateur. He had replaced another ex-English professional player, Harold Rose, who himself two years earlier had replaced yet another, a certain John (Jack) Reynolds.
It is said Jack Reynolds or Reynold, who has been accredited with the foundation of the Ajax system of bringing children from as young as six or seven through to the first team, playing the same style of football at all stages. He had joined the club in 1915 after a moderately successful nine-year playing career begun at Manchester City and ending in 1911 after three seasons and one hundred and eight games on the wing at New Brompton, now known as Gillingham. From there he had travelled to Switzerland, coaching at St. Gallen, for two seasons from 1912 but here there is a slight problem or rather two problems. The first is that St. Gallen is vague about Reynolds. The first professional “trainer” at the club was, by its own account, not appointed until 1922. The club itself was to win the Swiss Championship in 1915 but there is no mention of input from the Englishman. However, it remains possible, having coached the club in 1913 and 1914 and the team finishing second in the East Division in both years that he did lay the foundations for topping it the following year and winning the national play-off. It is equally possible that Reynolds was officially paid, as was often the pattern in Continental Europe at the time, for doing some other, non-football work in St. Gallen. He was not then registered as a “professional” trainer, whilst devoting himself full-time not to managing the club but coaching its players. And the second problem is that he was not actually English. Like his contemporary as a player and Continental coach,
Jimmy Hogan, he was Irish by background. Both his parents had been born in Co. Tyrone as in the 1891 census John, his elder brother William and sister Sarah are also recorded as being, although by 1901, whilst William and Sarah are still Irish, John, a Merchant's Clerk, is now Prestwich, Lancashire-born.
However, he seems certainly and quickly to have attracted attention in the German-speaking, football World. In 1914 he was appointed coach to the German National team, the first ever such appointment. The next would not be until 1926. He presumably would have started or been scheduled to start work at the beginning of the 1914-15 season but the declaration of the Great War on 28th July that year intervened and, unlike several other British ex. players coaching elsewhere in Germany, he was able to avoid being interned and to cross into Holland and out of danger, The Netherlands remaining neutral.
Ajax was in 1914 and had been an amateur club, but one with ambitious chairmen. In 1910 one Hans Dade on taking the position recruited as trainer/manager, Jack Kirwan. Kirwan had been a top player with first Everton and then for six seasons at Tottenham, three with Chelsea, seventeen caps for Ireland and retirement in 1909. At Everton he is said to have been brought in to replace Scottish international,
John Cameron, and at Tottenham under the same John Cameron, actually alongside him, and playing the Cameron-way he had won Spur's first FA Cup in 1901. Whilst with Ireland in 1903 he had been part of his country's first team to share the Home Championship and to defeat Scotland.
At Ajax Kirwan, as its first named coach, would be able to tinker with the organisation of the club enough for it at the end of his first season in 1911 to achieve promotion to the First Division West. However, the reorganisation was not in itself radical but an addition to changes made a year earlier. At its foundation in 1900 Ajax had just one team. The following year a second team was added plus the use of a few casual players or trialists and for the next seven years the club oscillated between the two systems. It changed in 1909 in the second year of club chairman, Holst. No outside players were used but a third and a fourth teams were introduced. With the arrival of Kirwan, an arrival that coincided with Holst being succeeded for a year by Han Dade that structure was modified but only slightly. The fourth team was dropped but outside players were once again used. They also continued to be used with the return of Holst the following season, 1911-12, when Kirwan added not a fourth team but a fifth, suggesting younger players and with the new organisation just kept Ajax up. He was then said to have done the same in 1913 but that year with Holst, now vice-President and replaced as President by the previous treasurer, Willem Egeman, perhaps with a greater eye on the guilder, the fifth team was dropped.
However, in 1914 even further reorganisation including the reintroduction of a fourth team was not enough to avoid re-relegation and thus more change. The club was reduced to just two teams, the second and fourth being cut. Kirwan is said to have left, failure and cutbacks no doubt playing a part as might perhaps a better working relationship with Chairman Holst than Dade or Egeman, with the first instinct of the last two to cut rather than expand player and now other personnel investment. And then there was the outbreak of war, which makes it understandable that Kirwan was not replaced, at least not immediately. With Egeman becoming Chairman of the Third Division North-West B and perhaps stepping away the club was run for the next season by the Board only with just the First team squad, 'A' and Third teams and trialists, at which point, in 1915, Jack Reynolds fortuitously appeared and stayed.
Except there is a caveat, a possible other version. It is said that from 1911 to 1913 Ajax was actually managed not by Jack Kirwan but another professionally-footballing Irishman. In other words Kirwan in person had stayed only one season. Moreover this second Irishman is said to have begun his career as a forward at Manchester City in 1901, therefore was alongside Jack Reynolds for a year, had turned out for a club a year for the next six and hung up his boots finally in 1912, but not in Britain or even Ireland. It was in Switzerland at St. Gallen just as Jack Reynolds arrived there. But it was not coincidence because the player in question was Billy Reynolds, William Reynolds, Jack Reynolds' elder brother. In other words there is a strong possibility that Jack Reynolds had gone to St. Gallen because his brother was already there or they had gone together and that far from Jack's arrival at Ajax being serendipitous he was already known through his brother. Moreover, there is even a case for concluding that at Ajax between 1910 and 1914 Kirwan as manager and Holst as Chairman had meant investment in youth, Kirwan and other chairmen had not so he had twice stepped back, in 1911 and 1914, just as other managers and other chairmen also had not invested but with Billy Reynolds accepting of that and willing to fill the gap.
Whatever the case it would take two years for a newly-arrived Jack Reynolds to restore the club by winning a first trophy, the Cup in 1917, whilst still in the second grade, and then promotion once more. By then Dade had definitively replaced Egeman as club chairman and the new chairman and Reynolds clearly quickly formed a partnership. Indeed Reynolds would step down for a first time in 1925 just when Dade did and it is this moment that is fundamental to the McWilliam story.
In Reynolds' first season the second team but no more had been reinstated. Ajax ran just three teams and continued to used outside players. It did so again the following year with a slight change. The third team became the fourth. Then in 1917 the club, perhaps finally due to the Great War that raged around Holland, was reduced to what it had been at its inception, one single team. Yet Reynolds and Ajax still continued to achieve the remarkable. In 1918 the team in its first season back in the top flight would take not just the First Division West A, one of five smaller, regional leagues but also the inter-regional play-off, becoming national champions, and do it again in 1919.
Meanwhile, a second team had been restored and then was removed once more. There were clearly problems, probably but not necessarily financial, at the club off the field and problems on the pitch also began. Reynold's Ajax would stutter. In 1920 again with just one team it would win its division but only finish third in the play-offs. Then the following year now with two it would not even get that far, nor for the next four, with no more than two teams in three of them, falling to sixth of ten, and, as Dade perhaps fell on his sword, replaced by Frans Schoevaart, in 1925 Reynolds would seemingly also based on results be on his way out of the Ajax door. But it would not be without hints of desperation. With a first team that was running out of legs, the average age was over 27, in 1924 he had turned to signings from other clubs and trialists, ten in all and too late. That season he had reintroduced not just a third team but also for the first time a youth team and it is on this single, latter act and little more that in part at least his subsequent reputation seems to have been built.
However, on leaving Ajax Reynolds did not go far. He had made a life in Amsterdam and went just across the city to another club, Blauw-Wit, but never with the same success finishing third twice, fifth once and in 1927 eighth before a limited recovery in 1928. In the meantime in August 1925 Ajax had turned to Harold Rose, previously a journeyman centre-half at Reading and Bristol Rovers. He cut the third but retained the youth team. He retained the two signings and three of the promoted players from the year before, signed three new players, and promoted one. He essentially rebuilt Reynolds' team but did no better than him, was perhaps too rapidly judged but after a single season and a bit was on the last day of 1926 also on his way, to be replaced on 11th January 1927 by someone not of the status of Jack Kirwan but certainly a far better player than Rose and Reynolds had ever been, Sidney Castle.
And whatever, Castle did for Ajax it on the field seemed to work. In 1927 the club would win its division, well ahead of Blauw-Wit. And he did it again in 1928, just failing to win the play-offs, at which point after two seemingly successful seasons Castle moved on, away from Amsterdam but still in Holland. He went firstly to two clubs in Zwolle, ZAC and PEC, to Meppel, and to Heerenveen twice, in 1932 and from 1936 to 1938, again not without success. ZAC he would take to second place in its division. With Heerenveen he would oversee promotion to the First Division in 1938, where it is today, then leave as War loomed. And it would be Castle, clearly able to spot a player, who would bring through not one but two of The Netherlands great forwards of the period. At ZAC he would bring on Beb Bakhuys, who at 19 became Holland's top-scorer and between 1928 and 1937 played twenty-three times for his country. And at Heerenveen he would first play the fifteen year-old forward, Abe Lenstra, who between 1940 and 1959 would go on to play five hundred games for the club, win forty-seven caps for Holland, scoring thirty-three international goals, would essentially take Bakhuys place and fill the void left by Castle as player/manager, when Dutch football restarted after the Second World War and remains so well thought-of that the Heerenveen Stadium still bears his name.
How Castle did it is also unclear. At Ajax with in 1927 just four additions to the team of the previous year the improvement must have come from him getting more from the players he had inherited. Then in 1928 there were a few more additions from outside and two promotions from within, who he must have both identified and integrated well. All three skills must have been learnt during his playing career, which had been non-League Basingstoke, non-League and Southern League Guildford, Tottenham, Charlton or relegated Chelsea. Given the status and the league performances of the clubs the chances are it had been at Tottenham or Charlton. However, there may be clues. Off the field he also made two significant adjustments. Firstly the Youth team introduced by Reynolds was retained but having been Youth C became Youth B and, secondly, a third team was reintroduced. Both strengthened the club's playing structure, integrating and improving continuity for a smoother flow of players through it, from Youth to III to II, to 'A' and into the First team squad. However, whilst it perhaps explains the how, it does not explain the why.
Now Sid Castle must have been well aware of what Peter McWilliam was doing at Spurs. He had seen it at first hand. He had been part of it. He had also seen experienced it second-hand at Charlton, there being coached by ex.-Tottenham and therefore also McWilliam talent. He had also been mature enough at both clubs to look and learn. It is not inconceivable that as he entered management in Holland he carried with him the same McWilliam principles, which he adapted to the circumstances he found. There was no question of finding a feeder club. Ajax simply were not big or important enough. But you can invent the alternative; still decide on a first team system, still have the younger players using that same system but do it all in-house.
With the departure from Ajax of Castle, for reasons that with the club successful are unlikely to have been purely football-related, Reynolds returned. It was the simple option but almost a disaster. In his first season back the club dropped from top of its division to eighth, just two places above relegation. Only then did it begin an upward path. In 1930 it won its division, in 1931 and 1932 the division and play-offs and in the next eight seasons two more division wins and three more play-offs. It poses the question why it and Reynolds were after failure so successful and there are two possibilities.
The first is that having decided just prior to his initial departure from Ajax to introduce a Youth element to the club system Reynolds had not had enough time to see the benefit until his return. He would later say that the introduction was done to give his amateur players system and structure throughout their time at the club from junior to senior. That is perfectly reasonable and equally possible as Dutch football only turned professional in 1954, seven years after Reynold's retirement and just a decade before the emergence of Cruyff except for three facts. One is that in the two years after the Second War when Reynolds returned to coach the club he had a Third team but no Youth set-up. That might be explained by post-War financial constraints but they did not apply in the four years after Reynolds replaced Castle, when not only the Youth team but also the Third team were cut leaving only First and 'A'. Two is that Reynolds promoted to the First team only one former Youth player in the six years after his reinstatement. The player, Gerrit Keizer, had joined the club at fourteen in 1924. The next in 1934 was Gerrit Fischer and he was eighteen at the time so unlikely to have been a member of Reynolds' first and only 1924-25 Youth team. Three is that the Ajax Youth system was actually introduced and certainly given a more pyramid-like structure not by Reynolds at all but Sid Castle, that it was an idea he adapted from Tottenham and Peter McWilliam and one which he might well have been repeating at Heerenveen in also bringing that club through until war intervened. Ledsta would have been just such a product.
The second, given that Reynolds on his return to Ajax in 1928 at first dismantled the Castle structure, reducing Ajax in 1931-32 to just a First team squad and an 'A' team, is that he then had a realisation of what Castle had in fact left behind and that it was a working framework that had worked and should especially with amateur players continue to be used. Certainly in 1932-33 Reynolds reversed his previous policy, reintroducing at first not just one but two Youth teams, 'B' and 'C', which after two seasons was reduced to just one, remaining just one until the disruption of football by the Second World War.
It was in that period, from 1932 to 1939, Reynolds is also said to have developed a specific, club playing style, with wingers crucial, the half-backs supplying them, and a centre-forward. It seems only natural, Reynolds having himself been a winger. However, this too is open to doubt. It must be remembered that Castle was a winger as well, indeed Kirwan had also been one. Castle could have drawn similar conclusions to those later expounded by Reynolds and again from McWilliam's Tottenham. The style was not Ajax's renowned 4.3.3. That would developed in the second half of the twentieth Century. However, it was distinctive, Castle could have brought it with him to Amsterdam, suggesting that all the teams at the club in his time there, from Youth to First, employ it and Reynolds may not only have in 1928 and from Castle found a framework but also a style, a second example not of Tottenham's Scot being directly involved but with McWilliam's integrated thinking transferring by proxy. Reynolds then might again have had the good sense to accept it as a gift and to improve upon it, that improvement being legitimately his with the realisation understandably that his amateur players were indeed not just limited in technique but good amateur players were also limited numerically, needing to be able to cover, both during and from game to game, to play a number of positions. Reynolds might have called it “flexibility”. We call it today Total Football, one of Holland's two great gifts to the World game, the other being Johan Cruyff. But remember too the way Newcastle used to play when McWilliam was in the team and the roving role from half-back to forward and from left to right he assumed. Total Football it had not been but there is an argument that it was semi-Total, a concept Spurs carried forward into the Fifties and the Sixties, that would be re-exported to Ajax in that same period and that Castle might also have absorbed, brought with him across the North Sea in the mid-1920s and there quietly in embryo implanted.