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:
Shamrock on Blue
There are, of course, four footballing Home Nations, five if Eire is also included. Four of them have over the century and half of the game's life exported its people, many to England, some to Scotland but there was, after the horrors of the Famine years, a period, a generation from the 1870s, when that flow would be reversed, to Northern Ireland at least. And it would be that era when the first development of football on the Emerald Isle can be seen, initially with roots in the Ulster Protestant community with its Scottish connections.
The man generally regarded as the father of Irish football is John McAlery. He was born in 1849 in Co. Down, moving to Belfast where, like so many of those involved in early football, not least at Queen's Park across the waters in Glasgow and William McGregor in Birmingham, as manager of the Irish Tweed House, a gentleman's outfitters, he had connections with haberdashery, drapery and tailoring trades. In 1878 McAlery in his late twenties married. The couple took their honeymoon in Scotland, where, whilst in Edinburgh, he is said both to have seen his first football match, to have had the idea to take the game to Ireland and also where the story becomes a little vague. From seeing that first game he somehow invited two Glasgow teams, Queen's Park and Caledonians, to Belfast, they accepted and a mid-week game was arranged between the pair at the Ulster Cricket Ground on 24th October that same year. Notionally Queen's Park won 3-1 in front of about 1,000 spectators but the match was more for demonstration than anything else. The teams were actually mixed. Now demonstration games were something, at which Queen's Park were already past-masters. That alone might have been enough to persuade them to cross the Irish Sea for a few days, despite having home fixtures on the Saturdays before and after. Caledonians' motive on the other hand is harder to establish. It is a team, about which very little is known. The best guess is that is was an offshoot of the Caledonian Cricket Club. It had entered the Scottish Cup for the first time in 1875-6 losing to Western in the first round, had in 1876-7 lost 0-6 to Queen's Park in the second round and in 1877-8 received a bye in the First Round and just defeated Rosslyn in the Second. It would then lose 3-0 away to Partick in the third round on 10th November and perhaps in between simply had time on its hands. And the the Third Round was a good as it got. It would enter the Scottish Cup until 1882-3 before simply fading away.
Meanwhile back in Belfast, already a cricketer with Cliftonville Cricket Club McAlery was instrumental in the formation in 1879 of Cliftonville Football and Athletic Club. He followed it up the next year with the foundation of the Irish Football Association, of which he was the Honorary Secretary, and in 1881 of the Irish Cup. Indeed Cliftonville would reach but lose both that first Irish Cup Final and also the second, where, as a point of interest, the club's goalkeeper had been changed and to none other than Bob Parlane, previously Vale of Leven's and in 1878-9 three times with three victories Scotland's. Then in February 1882 McAlery was captain and right-back of the first Irish XI to take the field, whose first outing, in spite of that Ireland international team being Protestant-dominated and the strong links between Belfast and Glasgow, would not be against the nearest neighbour across the water but England. It took place in Belfast and the visitors would win by thirteen goals without reply, six of them down the left and presumably straight past McAlery. Nor would Ireland's second international be against the Scots. McAlery, still as captain, would the following week cross to Wales and in Wrexham let in seven but at least score one in consolation.
The Welsh game would be McAlery's last cap but he would still remain very much involved. He would continue as Secretary of the Irish FA until 1888 and also turn to officiating. For the England games in 1883, 1885 and 1887 he was an umpire as he continued to play. In 1883 Cliftonville finally won the Irish Cup and with him in the team. He also might well have been an umpire for Scotland games too, although referees but not umpires are recorded. The first such match was in 1884, a 0:5 defeat in Belfast, after which Ireland would be heavily beaten annually by all the other Home Nations for several years more. Against Wales it would win for the first time in 1887, against Scotland in 1903, against England in 1913 and only take its first British Home Championship the following year. And during those thirty or so years it would field a number of players resident in Ireland but born elsewhere. Initially it would England, and India. In that first ever game alongside McAlery and also in the next against Wales John Davison, in fact Cliftonville's Dr. John Davison, born in Leeds, was the Irish centre-forward. He was joined in 1885 by William Eames, a student at Dublin University but born in India. He was not only one of the two first player from Dublin to be included but also the cause of the change in 1887 by the IFAB, the International Football Association Board, of the international eligibility rule that previously had assumed all Empire-babies were English. Then in 1889 came Allan Elleman, born in Stoke but qualified for Ireland after seven years residence, and the following season there was Jack Reynolds.
Reynolds was an interesting case. He was brought up in Ireland, the son of an English soldier serving there but as a young man went to live in Blackburn in Lancashire, where he played for the Rovers reserves before joining the army himself and being posted, back to Ulster. There he came to the notice of the Distillery club, then in west Belfast, and was in 1890 selected by Ireland, playing five times, before crossing the water once more and joining West Bromwich. At that point it was established where he had actually been born. It had been back in Blackburn and should have been ineligible for Ireland but was eligible for England, for where he would until 1897 then play eight times. In the meantime, however, no doubt due to the strength of Scottish football, Ireland had also begun to use players born across the North Channel. The first was 20 year-old Billy Leslie in 1887. Born in Dundonald in Ayrshire he would play once, although a centre-half, at inside-left in a 7-0 defeat by England and would never be selected again. It seems a little harsh as that day the weaknesses seemed to have been on the right-side of the defence and nowhere near him. He seems to have then moved on to settle in the United States. The next would be Bob Morrison in 1891. He was born in Greenock and for an entirely different reason would also play only twice, at left-back again against Wales and then a month later England. Then that same summer, aged just 21, he died, of pneumonia and is buried in Belfast City Cemetery. By contrast his brother, Tom, a right-winger, would also play for the Irish national side seven times between 1895 and 1902, and also turn out for Burnley, Celtic and Manchester United but then he was actually Irish-born.
And after Morrison there came something of a flurry. Against England in 1894 there were two Scots, in a 2:2 draw, the first non-defeat against the English ever. At inside-left was the seventeen year-old William Gibson for his first cap of thirteen over the next eight years and a goal in the penultimate minute. He had been born in Glasgow, in Govanhill, moving as a child to Belfast, indeed, would win his second cap against the land of his birth, play briefly in England and in 1907 become the Irish FA's Vice-Chairman. He too is buried in Belfast's City Cemetery. And at centre-half, Scottish-style centre-half, was Robert Milne. Five feet nine inches tall and twelve stone, stocky but athletic he would be Ulster's half-mile champion twice, was, after just a five-year residency qualification, to play for his adopted country until 1906, a dozen years and 28 times in all and was another who had arrived in Belfast as a soldier. Born in Inverarity in Angus in 1870 he had, after what appears to have been a difficult childhood, joined the Gordon Highlanders and had been posted to Ulster. For his regiment he had played in the Irish Cup in 1889-90 and then, aged just twenty, been headhunted by the Linfield club. It would buy him out of his army contract and, despite developing into perhaps the second-best player in his position in his era, he would stay with the club until retirement in 1910, rejecting all approaches to play English league -football from Birmingham, Accrington, Sheffield United, Nottingham Forest amongst others and remain in his adopted land until his death in Belfast in 1953.
But Milne was the exception that proved the rule. After early games in Irish XIs that were weak, in the latter half of Milne's career he would in a strengthening Irish side with him at its centre be joined by an increasing number of players born in Ireland but brought up elsewhere. The change would be made possible by an adjustment of the Irish qualification rule in 1899 from residency to birth and/or residency. It would come too late for Celtic's
Willie Maley. He would in 1893 play for Scotland twice, then be stopped, effectively finding himself in a footballing sense stateless. It was because, although raised in Scotland, with a Canadian-born mother herself with Scottish-born parents, his father was an Irish-born soldier and Willie, unlike brothers Tom, born in England, and Alex in Scotland, had come into the World in Armagh. However, it would allow Scots-raised
Archie Goodall, born in barracks in Belfast to Scottish parents, eventually to go on to play for the country of his birth ten times. This, whilst his equally Kilmarnock-raised brother, John, between 1888 and 1898 would play fourteen times and score twelve goals again not for Scotland but England, because that was where his soldier father had been posted at the time he came into the World. And Milne, Gibson and Goodall were joined by a player perhaps best described as an Irish Diasporan. Jack Ponsonby had been born in Dumbarton, another product of the Leven Vale but with Irish parents. He had returned to Ireland as a youth, presumably with a Scottish footballing education at least partly in place, and in 1895 he won his first cap at full-back against Wales, one of eight before he would cross the Irish Sea briefly to Stoke but after a single season return in 1898 and win a further cap in 1899.
Milne stepped back from international football in 1906, the year three of the Home Nations' four centre-halves, he, Scotland's
Raisbeck
and England's
Colin Campbell McKechnie Veitch, had Scots roots. However, the Scots presence, whilst it diminished simply because of Milne's standing in the game, did not disappear. The following year George McClure would join the team at left-half against Wales and then the country of his birth, Scotland. It would the first two of four caps over three years before he retired to become a solicitor, this as his team became not more professional, for the Irish League already paid its players, but drew increasingly on the growing number of Irish-born player in the British leagues.
In 1901 against England two from the Football League had donned the green, or rather as it was then the blue with a shamrock crest for this was still a game controlled from Ulster. In 1903 it was three, including Tottenham's Jack Kirwan, in 1905 six, for the first time a majority, and in 1907 four, with one, Charles O'Hagan, winning his fifth cap and having previously played at Spurs and Middlesbrough now turning out in the Scottish league for Aberdeen. The flow across the North Channel appeared to be reversing, if with a twist. Then in 1909 there were again six, including O'Hagan once more plus Young from Airdrieonians, whilst in 1911 it went one further, with, although came from Scottish clubs, three of the seven from Everton. Indeed it might even have been nine, if Chelsea's English McConnell and Rangers' Sandy Craig had not had to withdraw at the last moment.
The twist had been in last Irish match of the 1905-6 international season against Scotland, in Glasgow. On the left-wing was John “Jap” Walker of Bury, called in as a replacement for Frank Thompson. Walker had learned his trade at Belfast Celtic and it had been assumed he was Irish-born. To check, as was routine, his birth certificate was called for and from which it turned out that, firstly, his given name, it seems, although there too there is doubt, was Thomas and not John and, secondly, he had been born in Aberdeen, having only moved to Belfast as an infant. As a result his international career came to an abrupt end after that one game, a 2:0 loss. However, it was seemingly not so much because of his birth, he had had residence after all, but interestingly because he was considered by the Irish footballing authorities to have been deliberately deceitful. It was, with more than a hint of irony, indeed double-standard, a charge that had not been levelled a decade earlier by the SFA at Willie Maley, who in not dissimilar circumstances in contrast went on to become a long-serving manager of Celtic and a considerable presence in the Scottish game, but then the Irish might still have memories of the Reynolds affair. However, Walker's dimissal was not without far more pleasant sporting legacy. He was a maternal great-grandfather of the Irish rugby legend, Mike Gibson, who began his sporting career with the round ball, in the steps of his grandfather, 'Jap' Walker's son, Harry, who himself had been a stalwart of Northern Irish game in the 1940s notably at Belfast Celtic alongside Charlie Tully and still in the province went on to be manager of Glentoran.
'Jap' Walker was to be the last Scots-born Irishman for half a century, that is until the late 1960s Danny Hegan's father's birth was enough for his son to be awarded seven caps in four years. But by then there had been a major change in the structure of Irish football. With the partition of the Ireland the six counties had become Northern Ireland and the twenty-six, first the Irish Free State and from 1948 Eire. And rom 1921 Belfast's Irish Football Association (IFA) had a Dublin rival, the Football Association of Ireland (FAI), which joined FIFA in 1923, selecting its own teams for its own internationals, which started the following year. Players began to have a choice not least
Patsy Gallacher, the Mighty Atom, said at the time to have been the greatest to have kicked a ball and the epitome of the Scottish, attacking game who, despite a childhood, indeed a life from the age of three, was another who could not play for Scotland, only for Ireland, the country of his Donegal birth and did so, eleven times for the IFA and once for the FAI.