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 Thirteen
When Arthur Rowe stepped down as Spurs' manager his place was taken by Jimmy Anderson. He had joined the club staff in 1908. He had been there throughout the two McWilliam eras and, although he had never been a player, he fully understood the ethos.
It is said Anderson was a holding appointment. If that were so he lasted some time, from 1955 till 1958, during which time the club finished eighteenth in 1956, as Anderson continued the replacement of an ageing team begun by Rowe and perhaps a factor in wearing the latter down. And the new team, a blend of players developed by the club and buy-ins, recovered well to second and third places in subsequent years. Some now say that it was the effect of the coaching that was in the background increasingly from Bill Nicholson. That seems to underestimate the Anderson contribution. Indeed, Nicholson was to take over from Anderson as manager in October 1958 and the effect was not the desired one. Anderson's Spurs had already been sixth from bottom and now under Nicholson slipped further still, finishing the season eighteenth, just three places above relegation.
Perhaps the fall can be put down to managerial inexperience on the part of Nicholson. It is on the face of it unlikely to have had much to do with the players. Of the main fifteen used, only two were new. One was Eddie Clayton, a youngster, who had come up from the club's youth team. Spurs in 1948 under Joe Hulme had entered in the Eastern Counties League an 'A' team, in practice replacing Northfleet. The other was John Hollowbread, the goalkeeper, who had come through via the same route. Both should have known what they were doing. Both had joined the club under Rowe.
However, there can be no denying that the majority of the players used were a year older and at the end of Nicholson's first season there was something of a clear-out. Both Hollowbread and Clayton were then used only in reserve and four more, three of them Anderson's signing and one Rowe's, left the club entirely. To fill the vacancies Nicholson turned in part to north of the border. He brought in not just Bill Brown as goalkeeper from Dundeed but also John White from Falkirk and Dave Mackay from Hearts. He brought back Tony Marchi, a Hulme youth product, with whom Nicholson had himself played and who was now playing in Italy. Ron Henry had come through from the youth team and Les Allen was acquired from Chelsea. The effect was instantaneous. In 1960 Spurs finished third and he had the basis for the team that would the following year do the Double of League and Cup. In doing so he let go only one of his senior players and signed just one. It was 1961. In 1962 Spurs would finish third in the League but retain the Cup. In 1963 the club would be League runner-up but be the first English club to win a European trophy, the Cup Winners Cup.
In completing the Double, the first since Aston Villa in 1897, and winning the subsequent domestic and European trophies Bill Nicholson employed a footballing style that was derived from Arthur Rowe but was not the same. In fact it was more like a generation earlier, the McWilliam periods at Middlesbrough and Arsenal with a combative centre-forward less involved in interchange. At Middlesbrough it had been George Camsell, at Arsenal Ted Drake. At Spurs it was Bobby Smith. He had arrived under Anderson but for Nicholson for six years provided the brawn, complemented from 1959 by the subtlety of John White, the “Ghost” and from 1961 with trickery of Jimmy Greaves. It was a style that was somewhat moderated by the replacement in 1964 of Smith with the more subtle skills of Alan Gilzean before in 1968 Nicholson reverted with Martin Chivers.
And it was perhaps 1964 that saw, fifteen years after his death, the influence of Peter McWilliam on running a British club begin to fade to little or nothing. Although the Scot's influence on playing-style would continue until Nicholson's retirement in 1974, the disciple replaced by an outsider, the Arsenal player, Terry Neil, the since 1912, almost unbroken line of promotion by the club of youth talent came to an end. Four players, Smith amongst them left the squad and the club, and six came in but all the new arrivals, Gilzean included, were bought in. Not one had been 'nursed' through the ranks. It did not mean, however, that McWilliam 'nursing' had ceased. By chance it was elsewhere, was cherished, be it in Britain only briefly and, if unbeknown and outwith this country, continued and continues to be.