Samuel Izatt Ross would from before The Great War to the Second World War be simply pivotal to the embedding and growth of football in Brisbane certainly, in Queensland by extension and arguably for the game nationally, then and now. He had arrived in Australia probably by 1887 and in his late teens, in Queensland's capital initially joining the St. Andrew's Club. What position he played is unknown but he clearly had in addition to his on-field skills a penchant for administration. In 1890 he helped organise the state's team for its first ever tour, it to New South Wales. Then a year later not only did he change clubs to Alloways, now Corinthians, there captaining, but also become the Secretary of the Queensland British Football Association (QBFA).

Indeed, he would stay in position until 1894 before employment would take him up the coast to Maryborough, where he would be involved in the formation of Union F.C. and the Wide Bay and Burnett British Football Association before becoming its Secretary. However, it would be again work that in 1898 was to take him back to Brisbane, where he would now approaching thirty finish his playing career. But the boots would not be hung up. He immediately took up the whistle and over the next decade was also a Brisbane selector and instigator of a local schools' competition. And involvement would intensify. In 1911 he became the first president of the Queensland Referee's Union, a post he would hold for most of the next thirty years, in 1913 vice-president of the newly formed Commonwealth Football Referee’s Association as Australia made its first tentative towards national footballing bodies, in 1915 he returned to serving as QBFA Secretary, whilst all the time even at the age of forty-five trying to enlist to be part of the war-effort.

And even there he was to succeed. In 1917 the rules were change, he joined up and was posted to France, returning only in 1919. But he did so to take up the refereeing reins once more, over the next two decades be involved in women's football, manage both the Queensland and national teams, in 1936 become secretary of the Brisbane and District Football Association and in 1938 treasurer of the Queensland Soccer Council and, in 1940, its successor the Queensland Soccer Association. In fact his involvement would only cease in the early 1940s, he in his seventies and only a few years before his death in 1949, aged seventy-nine.

So who was and from where did this footballing force-of-nature come? The answers are that he was a boiler-maker to trade, had in 1899 in Queensland married English-born Mary Morse, would with her have six Australian children, she dying in 1928, and be buried with her in Brisbane's Toowong Cemetery. But he had been born in 1870 the son of plumber-father from Glasgow, a mother from Fife and be brought up in Whiteinch by Partick. In fact it would be within yards of the Inchview Ground, home in the 1870s to the original Partick F.C. club, and for the decade from 1885 of Partick Thistle. It seems the football contagion, the Scottish footballing contagion had been caught early and deep.  a