It is perhaps forty years since I last spent time in rather than on a train passing through Newcastle. And what a city it has become. Always a architectural gem it is impeccably clean and cleaned and, of course, St James's Park towers up there on hill in a way that, for me, only San Mames in Bilbao comes close to. And from the club-shop in the Gallowgate Stand I was sent down away to another the treasure - The Back Page shop in, aptly, St. Andrew's St. - there to its trove of books, pictures, other memorabilia and straight-up helpfulness in response to my questions not about The Toon itself but its city's proto-game. And this piece with help from two of those books - Paul Brown's All with Smiling Faces and Paul Joannou and Alan Candlish's Pioneers of the North is a result with the caveat that I looked for and emphasise the Scots in them in the same way that I already have for London or Milwaukee or Brisbane to name just a few. And in Tyneside's case the Diasporan presence is just as pivotal.

Association football on Tyneside began in March 1877 with the formation of a team based on the Elswick Rugby Club that founders imaginatively called Tyne. It was a posh-club. Its back-bone was public-school, notably Charterhouse plus Oxbridge and for a year it did a Queen's Park. It essentially played itself, that is until 1879. In November 1878 the Newcastle Scottish Association held a meeting to form a football club. It never happened although and from similar sources a year later one did emerged, one called Rangers. Its captain was F. Balfour, its vice-captain, W. Simms, and Honorary Secretary and Treasurer -pro tem, R. Stewart Bain. Of Balfour there is no record and, as he played only a few games, perhaps he moved away but he may well have been Scots, Simms was probably from North Shields and Stewart Bain, Robert Stewart Bain was definitely one of us, an Accountant's Clerk from Old Cumnock, who married a Scots girl on Wearside in 1885, became a Chartered Accountant and moved on, living and dying in London.

It would be Simms who briefly took over the club captaincy on Balfour's departure. However, he too was soon replaced by one of several new arrivals, John Lochhead, a man with footballing pedigree. He is said to have played the game at half-back in his native land, Scotland , of course, at Shaftsbury and with Andrew Hair Holm at his back. Founded in 1876 the Glasgow club had been dissolved in 1878, at which point Holm stepped up eventually to Queen's Park and Scottish national team. Meantime Lochhead, probably John Alexander Lochhead, then aged about twenty, a stockbroker's clerk, born in Blythswood, had headed south with every indication that his travels would take him even further so. The death of a John Alexander Lochhead that fits the parameters is recorded in 1906 in Sydney, Australia. He is buried there in Gore Hill Cemetery.

Meantime, on footballing pastures new on Tyneside young John would be joined by local boy, James Phillips,  the Crawford brothers, Thomas Hoban, William Muir and eighteen-year-old Alex White, Alexander Hendry Whyte. White or Whyte was, like his father a Scots dairy-man cum but one who would become a school-teacher. He is said to have been born in Airlie or Glamis in Angus in 1859/60 but with no record. It suggests that with his elder sister born in Dundee the slightly complicated family had headed south very soon after his birth. His parents had been married in St. Andrews in Fife, his father then a carter, his mother a widow a few years older than her spouse. And Alex seems to have had a younger brother John, ten years his junior, whose birth, again in Scotland is recorded as illegitimate and who was at best a cousin.

But back to the football. Tyne and Rangers would face each other for the first time in November 1879. Tyne would win with one thing of note. It played the standard English 1-2-7 formation, whereas Rangers with 2-2-6 went Scots and it was this latter one that was soon already to become standard amongst other new clubs setting up along the banks of the river. And that rivalry continued giving the impression that they could continue for the foreseeable future as the Newcastle's premier teams. However it was not to be. From seemingly healthy in May 1884 by August 1885 Rangers had been would up, the explanation being that its originally very young players were growing up and moving on in life. And the change of the ethos of the game from amateur to professional after 1885 was also see from November 1886 Tyne closing partially and then fully.     

However, all was not lost. There were new shoots specifically in the form of Stanley F.C.. Founded by a group of teenagers, lads, in 1881 and emerging from a cricket club of humble origins, it played its first game in November that year. Captain was a local assistant teacher, William Armstrong Coulson and at halfback equally local John Armstrong, perhaps related. At full-back was John Hobson, in goal Thomas Phalp and amongst the forwards John Cook, John Dixon, George McKenzie and two Scots brothers William and Robert Findlay. And it would be William who would take on the role of Club Secretary and presumably still be in it as in October 1882 the club changed its name to East End.

The Findlays had arrived in Newcastle at some point between 1872 and 1876, so aged between six and twelve. They had been born in Aberdeen, their father from Forfar. And within months of the creation of the new club the elder brother would take over over as captain, as Coulson, a student teacher moved on. He would eventually become a head-teacher in Alnwick. Indeed both brothers would continue to be first-team regulars until 1884, when Robert would die aged just eighteen. And whilst William would remain on Tyneside, working as a Brewer's Agent, eventually opening and running an off-licence, and probably dying there too in 1917, he too seems to have faded from the footballing scene, John Armstrong first taking the club's arm-band but at a time when there were ready replacements. By 1884-5 Teddy Hiscock and Tommy Hoban had already moved across from Rangers. They would be joined by Alex White, in time becoming captain himself as he drove the the club forward from Scottish attacking centre-half until retirement in 1889. By then he had married in 1885, to local girl, Jessie Chantler. They were to have five children. She would die young but he would live to eighty, passing in 1940 and still on Tyneside.

In 1887 East End entered the FA Cup for the first time and despite two goals from William Muir, another Scot, was narrowly knocked out in the first round. And it was at that point, 1888, that Tom Watson arrived. Newcastle-born, twenty-nine year old Watson had been Secretary at cross-city competition, West End with its ground at St. James's Park. His influence on and also off the field was immediate. He added personnel. The reinforced team completed the local treble, the Northumberland Challenge Cup, the Northumberland Charity Shield and the Durham Inter-County Cup but more then anything, despite being poached away by Sunderland after just a season, he imbued momentum. In 1889 East End became a founding member of the Northern League. It also turned officially professional. James Miller, one of Watson's recruits, a full-back brought in from Riccarton, Kilmarnock replaced White as captain, with Glasgow's James Collins also in team. In 1890 it became a limited company. Former players, Armstrong, Dixon and the inimitable White bought shares. More recruitment took place - Bobby Creilly from Glasgow, Peter Watson also Scots, Matt Scott from Airdrie, William Wilson, Joe McKane anther Scot, John Barker, Tom Crate also via Kilmarnock, Willie Thompson, Jock Sorley from Muirkirk, Ayrshire,  Joe Wallace from Hurlford by Kilmarnock and Harry Jeffery. And this as West End also went limited but began to struggle to such an extent that in May 1892 it was disbanded, the lease for St James's Park came up, East End took it on and in December that same year Newcastle United, The Toon, came into being.