Sometimes it is  not what is obviously seen to be done but that which is quietly constructed and left behind for others to find and as foundation or framework build upon.  And this is an example, or rather an example twice over, where in both cases the inheritors, Matt Busby and Alf Ramsey, were knighted as the instigator, the same one in both cases, Scott Duncan, looked on from Scottish retirement with perhaps the slightly shy and wry smile of his photographs playing on his lips.

Scott Duncan was born Adam Scott Mathieson Duncan in 1888 and in Dumbarton into a family of many children.  His father was a butcher, a flesher, from a family of  fleshers and grocers.  His mother was a Partick-born McLaren. He was a bright laddie, who would start his working life as a trainee law clerk. But he was also a footballer, a versatile forward who mostly played on the right-wing, who in 1906  aged seventeen first turned out for the town club. In fact in two season he would feature thirty times before Newcastle United, the most successful team and most Scottish team in England came a-calling. In 1908 aged just nineteen he was signed for £200, moved south, over the next five season played seventy-three League games, presumably mainly as back-up for the great Jock Rutherford, scoring ten times, before in 1913 returning for  £750 to Scotland and Rangers and the war years in the Royal Field Artillery.

In fact the return north and those war years were to see his prime and perhaps his true playing potential wasted. Jock Rutherford would also leave Newcastle in 1913 amidst acrimony. Duncan might have then had two seasons in his place. And in 1918 Duncan turned thirty, returned to Dumbarton for two seasons as the top-flight relaunched, two more at Cowdenbeath that saw it finish in second spot in the re-formed Second Division and a final one back in his home-town before at the age of thirty-five hanging up his boots. But his involvement in the game did not end there. He was immediately appointed Secretary at Hamilton, in the First Division but in April 1923 having finished just one place above relegation.

He would stay two years at Hamilton, lifting them to mid-table safety and then move on but, perhaps surprisingly, sideways. Cowdenbeath achieved promotion to the First Division for the first time and with Duncan newly at the helm they were to finish in 7th spot, two points and one place below Rangers, five above Hamilton. In fact the seven seasons Duncan was at the helm in the wee, west Fife town only once would it finish out of the top half of the top flight. 

And clearly his successes had not gone unnoticed. Down in England in 1932 Manchester United was undergoing change. After a hiatus a James Gibson had in 1931 become chairman. He inherited a club in the doldrums. He had in Walter Crickmer a very good administrative secretary.  Crickmer would remain that until his death in Munich air disaster. But on the field the club had been relegated in 1931 and languished in mid-table the following season.

How Duncan was approached is unclear but, offered the post across the border, he accepted and on arrival began to make major changes. The first was the introduction of an 'A' team, a third tier below the first eleven and the rest of the squad, amateur and playing in the local league. He would justify it as follows,

"By running a team in the Manchester League, we shall be able to give all likely juniors a chance of showing their paces, and United hope to discover from their number more than average finds."

In other words it was the first step in the creation of the youth system, for which Manchester United under Matt Busby would become renown.

The second was eight new recruits in, six of them Scots, the third was five of whom went straight into the first team with four reserves promoted, and the fourth was all the previous year's first team bar two demoted or amongst the thirteen players that left the club. United, still in the Second Division would finish sixth.  

And then in 1933-34 Duncan would seem to do it all again with a very different results, in fact near disaster. Manchester United would avoid relegation in the last game and by a single point. Moreover, in getting into trouble and just out again they used thirty-eight players, seven of them Scots, three of them new, only three of the previous year's first eleven used regularly in the first eleven with four new faces and four reserves brought through. It seemed that just too many changes were the problem but Duncan saw it as something else and he was proved right. 

Thus it was in the closed season that two new trainers were recruited, one, Tom Curry, who would again die at Munich, and Bill Inglis, who would serve the club until retirement at the age of sixty-seven in 1961. Curry was a half-back, who came from two years coaching at Carlisle, precisely when  Bill Shankly was a player there. Before that as a player he had spent the decade from 1919 at none other than Newcastle. He had not crossed with Duncan himself but both had been under the tutelage in the same Scots, Toon-way of the redoubtable James MacPherson Senior. Inglis was a right-back, who had at the age of twenty-nine moved south for good year at Sheffield Wednesday, five years as a reserve at Old Trafford before Duncan's arrival and two more at Northampton. Prior to that he had learned his trade at home-town Kirkcaldy United and the finishing school that was Raith Rovers. There he had played under Peter Hodge and James Logan and behind Johnny and Tommy Duncan, no relation, Alex James and others. His apprenticeship in Scots and Scottish football had been exemplary. 

A fitter and better drilled Manchester United recovered. True, it was to be temporary. In 1934-5 it shot up the table to finish fifth, a place above Newcastle. And it did so with a another new recruit, this time a player, another half-back, Bert Whalley. A local boy, twenty, when he signed, he would remain on the United playing staff for a dozen years, bridging WWII and on the back-room staff for another dozen until he too was killed on that terrible night in Southern Germany.  Then in the 1935-36 season it went further still, winning the division and promoted with Charlton. Mission it seems was accomplished but whereas in 1936-37 runner-up Charlton would surge up the table this time to be runner-up to cross-town rival, City, United never got going, finishing two points above bottom-placed Sheffield Wednesday and straight back down again.

The reasons at first seem hard to fathom.  True four of the promoted team did not featured as much the following year. But three were still at the club and available. Only one had left but he was the goalkeeper, Jack Hall, and it is clear that United struggled in that position the following year. They brought in Roy John, a Welsh international 'keeper, who from August to November played fifteen games, yet was moved on at the end of the season having been replaced by a 21-year-old, Irishman, Tommy Breen, who then played twenty-six times. However, a closer look at the table shows that the team could not finish off a game, especially away.  There were only two away-wins and three draws,  so five points in old money, and only four home defeats but nine draws of twenty-one. The team scored goals but let in almost one for every one scored at home and two for every one away. Yet Breen was retained so it was not considered his fault. That clearly lay with the defence, where only one player came and went, a certain Walter Winterbottom.

And there is a further curiosity. On relegation it seems on the face of it Duncan's time at Old Trafford was at an end. He left the club but it was immediate. In fact it was not until November so four months into the season and with another job already lined up. It suggests planning on his part and something else on the other, possibly some player unhappiness and probably interference from above, in other words Gibson. At that is only reinforced by the club being run by committee, i.e. Gibson, until the the war and, with evidence of early pressure from his own autobiography, the insistence by the next manager to come in of complete control. That manager was, of course, Matt Busby.

But back to Scott Duncan. Where he went in November 1937 might seem surprising but there was in his history already a Scottish example, Cowdenbeath, for which could now be read Ipswich Town. It like the Fife town was non-League. It was in the Southern League. In fact it had just won the Southern League title for the first time and at the first time of asking. The previous year it had played in the Eastern Counties Football League and until 1934 in the Southern Amateur League. It was clearly a club on the climb, not least because it has the financial support of the wealthy, local brewing family, the Cobbolds., specifically the half-Scots club chairman, John Murray Cobbold.  

Ipswich, after a second season in the Southern league, finishing third under Duncan, were in 1938 elected to the Third Division (South) of the Football League. They replaced Gillingham and just before the outbreak of war finished in a creditable seventh place. And Duncan was retained. In fact he would be retained for eighteen years.

As was the case with all league football the Third Division returned in 1946-47. By then Duncan had put together a squad of twenty-five. Four were Scots, Bell, Brown, Lang and McKay, two had been with him at Manchester United, Baird and Lang once more and two, Bell again and  goalkeeper, Mick Burns, had come from Newcastle. They finished a creditable 6th. Then the following season they were fourth with four new players in but nine out. And the season after that 7th with now seven Scots in a squad of twenty-three.   

Then it was all change. Whilst the core players stayed twelve came in and six left, three of them Scots, and it seemed not to work. The Suffolk team tumbled to 17th with, as thirteen years earlier in at Manchester United an inability to eek out away points. Of twenty-one games away from Portman Road thirteen were lost and just three won. But Duncan had been rebuilding. With six in and six out the refreshed team climbed to eighth and looked as if it might go further.

But it was again not to be, at least not yet. 1951-52 would see six out and five in but the legs clearly going of a couple of the core, just one of the squad of twenty-three a Scot and a tumble down the table to seventeenth. And the response was significant; five, five out but three of the new arrivals from north of the border, all forwards. The club steadied. By April 1953 it had climbed a position to 16th, at which point four more recruits arrived, two of them Scots, two more forwards. The result now with five Scots in the team was eighty-two goals the following season in front of defence that conceded just fifty-one, finally the divisional title and promotion to the Second Division.  

And that total of five Scots became seven the following season.  It should have meant at least stability but instead the events of  eighteen years earlier and two hundred miles north-west were repeated at least in part. On the field the home-form was mid-table, whilst the away-form again fell away to almost nothing, a single win and just three draws all season. Duncan's resignation might have been expected to follow, especially as he was by then almost sixty-seven years of age. But he did not, nor was he made to and, instead, there was, by luck or judgement, not one but two strokes of genius, by person or persons unknown.

The first was to offer Alf Ramsey the possibility of moving directly from White Hart Lane to Portman Road as player manager.  The second was, when he may well have been on the point of rejection on the basis that he book no interference in on-field matters, to construct a compromise.  It was Duncan would step aside from team-management but remain club-secretary. He would continue to administer, allowing Ramsey to concentrate on team-matters and coaching.

Ramsey would accept. Duncan would in the end stay three more seasons , during which time the younger man could calmly learn the trade and assume full control poco a poco. In fact not only would Ramsey keep most of the Duncan's training staff, over the the next three years he show every sign of not just having access to Duncan's experience but accepting advice, not least with regard to recruitment. In their first season in tandem four players left, two of them Scots, five came in, one a Scot. Ipswich bounced back, finishing third, just two points off promotion. Moreover, the next year with four more in, notably Edinburgh's Jimmy Leadbetter via Chelsea and Brighton, and just two out that promotion to the Second Division was not just achieved, albeit in second place, but then also consolidated. The summer of 1958 would see Ipswich in a solid 8th place, as Duncan, at not quite seventy, after more than fifty years in the senior game and having planted the Scots game at not just one but two major English clubs, finally took himself off to a well-deserved Scottish retirement.  He would die in Helensburgh in 1976 just a month shy of his eighty-eight birthday.