It was in 1890 against East Stirlingshire in the third round of the Scottish Cup, a competition that his team would go on to win that very season, that Jimmy Adams, then of Hearts, used his hand to prevent a certain goal. It was at the very least ungentlemanly, indeed a great deal more ungentlemanly, despite the accusations of the same, than the proposal that had been made earlier in the year by the Irishman, William McCrum, for a penalty-kick and -line. The penalty spot would come later. It needed an area first.     

In the Sccottish Cup game itself a standard free-kick was presumably given and seen off. Certainly Hearts would win 1-3. and play-on through the rounds as the furore died down, whilst outwith the pitch in the corridors of power the McCrum idea remained somewhat derided. That was until a similar thing happened the following February, so three months later, in the quarterfinal of the FA Cup, at which point the derided became the decided remarkedly quickly. By June the concept of the 12-yard penalty-kick was introduced and just five days later the first penalty had been scored, again in Scotland as Airdrieonians played Royal Albert. 

So what became of Jimmy Adams beyond his part in the ultimately anti-football concept of playing for penalties and cop-out of the penalty shoot-out. (Have it before the kick-off and give both teams something to play for. And then, if there is still no result, forget extra-time and hold another penalty shoot-out to a conclusion, now perhaps with only the now myriad subs allowed to  take part.) There was for the miscreant, of course, no punishment beyond perhaps a free-kick. There could be no question of a sending-off. For that quasi-manslaughter was required. So instead he spent another three seasons at Tynecastle, five campaigns and seventy-five appearances in all, in addition to the Cup medal won two Scotland caps, at thirty took himself off Down South to Everton for two more good seasons, returned to Edinburgh for two more, retired at thirty four to his previous trade of stonemason, married and started a family.

But that would not be the end of it. He would pass away in 1943 at the age of seventy-eight but in the United States. In 1901 he, the wife and four bairns had emigrated to New Jersey, to be precise Kearny aka "Scotstoun", the most Scottish town in the Union, where a fifth wean would be born. And there he would first work to trade then be the janitor, and possibly much else, of local Kearny High, for it was a school which, like the town itself, had remained true to soccer, to real football. And as such it would also be the school to produce in the Italian-, Scots and Uruguayan-Americans. Tony Meola, John Harkes and Rab Tamos, the spine of the 1990 and 1994 World Cup teams; teams that can be seen as after a sixty year gap marking the return of the USA to the ultimate stage of the only really global game.