Football came to Wales in the mid-1870s and not without Scots influence, Dr. Daniel Gray and the Thomson brothers. But to South Wales, where rugby was and is king, it was a late-comer. Cardiff City was not formed until 1899, Swansea Town now City only in 1912 and Newport that same year. And the final of the Welsh Cup, first played for in 1877, was not held outside the north, Mid-Wales or, indeed, England, once again until just that couple of years before The Great War. And even then it was with four curiosities. The first is that in both 1912 and 1913, whilst Cardiff and Swansea were involved in one each their opponents and the losing side in both cases was a fourth team also from the south. The second is that that team has no major presence today. The third is it was a team that had bought its way in. It was the Welsh Chelsea. And the fourth is the possible content of its teams and those of its opponents.

So let us begin to peel away what layers there were.  The 1912 Welsh Cup was won by Swansea Town, 1-0, in a replay at Tonypandy. It was after an initial match a week earlier, which had taken place at Ninian Park, Cardiff and had finished goalless. According to the normally eminent source, Wikipedia, it did so with a squad of twenty-one, which included one solitary player from Wales and twenty Englishmen. Except that the information is immediately and obviously incorrect. At centre-half in both games was one "J. Hamilton", a certain Jock Hamilton. He was not the one, who had in 1907 had been the first British professional to coach in Brazil, whilst also a trainer with Fulham, his last club as a player, again at centre-half. He had been born in Ayr in 1869. This was another Jock, born a decade later but still very much in Scotland, in Bonnyton by Auchterhouse in Angus. Nor, if names are any clue was Hamilton the only Scot in winning team or, indeed, on the field that day. There were perhaps seven more. For Swansea the investment seems heaviest. At left full-back was an A. Sutherland and the three central forwards were Anderson, Weir and Grierson, so five in all. And the opposition team that day, Pontypridd Town, the fourth team, included a Dalton, a Murray and a Walker. However, none but Hamilton is, as far as I can trace, anything but a passing name on a passing team-sheet with identification as to definitive origin elusive at least thus far.

Nor was the situation vis-a-vis passing names confined to 1912. A year earlier the Welsh Cup final had also gone to a replay this time still in the south but at Aberdare. It had followed another goalless draw once more at Ninian Park and included Pontypridd, again in defeat, this time to Cardiff, 3-0. The winning eleven from had for the second game included no obvious or potential Scots. The same could not be said of Pontypridd. In addition to Dalton, Murray and Walker there was McDonald, McKinley, Christie and McCall. In fact the whole forward-line could that day of the replay have been from north of the border with four of the five also having featured in the first meeting. Moreover, for that first encounter in the Cardiff team there are also similar stand-outs. Right full-back was Douglas and centre-half Lawrie, with this last name particularly significant, indeed indicative. 1911 was a census year and in it there is a Lawrie to be found as living in the Welsh capital. He is Robert, born Glasgow in 1887 so twenty-four years of age, is lodging with twenty-eight year-old David McDougall, born in Irvine, and both are recorded as Footballers by profession.       

Now much of the above might have been coincidental but  I suggest not. Cardiff City, formed in 1899 as Riverside and having played in the South Wales League from 1908, in 1910 moved into Ninian Park on election to the Southern League.  Swansea would follow immediately into the same League on formation two later, the same year as its first Welsh Cup win. Pontypridd would do the same that same year. In fact in that 1911/12 season eight of the Southern League 2nd Division were South Walian including Cwm Albion, albeit that it lasted but one season, Mardy, Aberdare, Ton Pentre and Treharris. The division and promotion was even won by Merthyr. And in some cases with either a dearth of local players of sufficient standard or a perhaps mistaken belief that players from elsewhere were better and businessmen, for that was what they were, from the towns in question prepared to invest it made sense to buy in talent from where it was best and quite possibly also cheaper. That was Scotland. And all the signs are that it largely failed. Throwing money at situation simply did not work. In the two seasons before The Great War the Welsh Cup returned north to Wrexham. And whilst Cardiff and to a lesser extent, Swansea, continued to prosper, both joining the Football League in 1920, fellow Welsh Southern League teams plus other joiners relying on local talent, Llanelli, Mid Rhondda, Barry, Abertillery, Caerphilly, Ebbw Vale and even Pontypridd did not make the jump. Instead they together formed a Southern League Welsh section. It lasted three seasons before being integrated into a Welsh-English Western Division. Yet even that was not enough for the two-time Welsh Cup finalists of little more than a dozen years earlier and again in 1921. Pontypridd withdrew from league football at the end of the 1925-26 season and later that same year was dissolved due to financial problems. A case of overreach, perhaps with, in the end, the club from the junction of the Rhondda and the Taff not a Liverpool, which too had gone down the Scots road even before Stamford Bridge and both with success that continues but a Halliwell or a Glossop, which in the English game had tried the same only to fail and flounder.