Forgive me if I seem somewhat obsessional. It is because I am. It is as if I keep driving round the same imagined block that has seen better days in same metaphorical part of somewhat flashy town in the expectation that, if I do it often enough, there will be the reappearance of something that is long gone. The town is football history. The block is Scotland’s part in it and the lack is Scottish predominance both philosophically, i.e. tactically, intellectually, if you will, and practically, i.e. on the field of play. I even think I know when I last saw it or at least when it was last seen. That was in the 1930s and although I know there was then a war, when it was over it seems not unreasonable to assume a return like that after The Great War, that resulted in a decade of triumphs.

Yet it never happened despite signs of pre-second war revival in play and post- second war revival in philosophy. In the case of the latter Shankly and Busby did not come from nowhere. Nor did the push-and-run of Spurs or The Celtic of 1967. But they shone at club level. Apart from the flourish crushed by cruel fate that was Ian McColl’s tenure as national team manager in the mid-1960s there has been nothing but unfulfilled dreams since war had swallowed up what, admittedly in 20:20 retrospect, looks not a McColl-like team of a front line but no reserves but more than that, an entire group of players, two elevens in one, that had the potential to rival perhaps not those the decade and half of the Golden Age at almost the very beginning of game’s history but possibly that of the 1920s and its symbolic culmination, the Wembley Wizards.

Most footballers are generally recognised to be at the height of their playing powers in their middle to late 20s, from aged perhaps from 24 to 29. Before that experience has not matched talent, except where sheer talent outweighs even naivety, and after that injuries begin to take their toll. That would make for a cohort of players, whose careers were interrupted in full or in part that were born between 1913 and 1919 with one position, the goalkeeper, the exception to the rule. They seem to mature at about the same initial age but, barring injury once more, to have double-time,  a decade, at the top, which given the situation in Scottish national team in 1939 makes between the sticks a good place to start.

The senior incumbent was Rangers' Jerry Dawson with thirteen caps. The junior alternative was seemingly Clyde's John Brown of the Troon Brown, football and rugby, with a single cap. And thus it might have remained with the position well-covered. Dawson was thirty and played on for a decade, Brown twenty-four. 

Then there were the full-backs. Third Lanark's James Carabine had been incumbent on the right and also captain of the national team but he was already twenty-eight as hostilities broke. He might not have lasted much longer at the very top level but there was in Celtic's Bobby Hogg, three years his younger, and, although he might not have been expected to have played through all what would be all the war-years he did not leave Paradise until 1948.  But if right-back has been something of a perennial Scottish Achilles Heel just as today there was not the same problem on the left-side. In place was  Aston Villa's George Cummings but there was also Andy Beattie, both born in 1913, but coming through was Liverpool's Jim Harley, four years younger, a natural left-back but able to play on either side so cover for both.

And so to the half-backs. At right-half and also born in 1913 was a certain William Shankly. who might be said in part to have replaced the four-year older, Matthew Busby, and had as back-up Frank Dunlop of Aberdeen. Then at right-back was one of the players whose international career may have been most affected by the six years that passed between his first cap in 1938 in the last international match before war was declared and his second and last in the first in 1946 in the first game post-war.  It was George Patterson of Celtic, who as he reached thirty, had as a ready replacement the young but already tried and tested talent of Hearts and then Millwall's Tommy Brown, like Bill Shankly a product of the remarkable and now non-more, Ayrshire mining community of Glenbuck. Which leaves what particularly in the Scottish style of play had been the key position, that of centre-half and it is a moot point as to whether the choice would have been old- or new-style.

Post-war it seems the choice had been made. In the man who had by 1948 made the position more or less his own, George Young, they had a defender, who also played at right-back, definitely one of the then relatively new breed of centre-backs.  But in the War-Years there was still the possibility of  the alternative, the traditional, Scottish attacking centre-half, and even an amalgam of old and new, alternation between robust defence and creativity.  Indeed in 1939 the incumbent, Middlesbrough's Bobby Baxter, had been just such an amalgam. Recruited to the club by Peter McWilliam, who knew a player when he saw one, Baxter was a central defender renown for his tackling but one who also had played at inside-forward, at 5ft 8ins was unlikely to have been aerially dominant and had been born in 1911, was therefore already twenty-seven and unlikely to  have continued in position for the the next six years. However, there were alternatives. Jimmy Dykes at Hearts was fully five younger, was six feet one in height so in Scottish terms built to be in the centre of a last line of defence and had already played for the national team in 1938 against The Netherlands and Northern Ireland. Then there was the player to have been Scotland's number five when games resumed, Jacky Husband, born in 1918 so aged just twenty-one in 1939 and twenty-eight in 1946. He was a one-club man. The club was Partick. The stand at Firhill opposite the main one still bears his name. And he is described as "an old-style wing-half", in other words also more traditional than new. There was also Bob Thyne, born in 1920, briefly at the end of the war of Darlington and then Kilmarnock for the decade from 1946, where he is described as "A classic stopper, big and strong, little got past him." And finally in the background there was throughout Malky MacDonald, the Dancing Master. In 1939 he was twenty-five, at Celtic and having been that club's last traditional centre-half, replaced by "stopper" Willie Lyon, had simply officially converted to inside-forward but still with the creative role and would have been perfectly capable of reverting to his former role.

Indeed Malky MacDonald could have played for the national team equally well as a half-back or a forward. In fact during the war he took the field three times for Scotland teams as the latter, in spite of what can only be seen as almost a surfeit of attacking talent. As war had broken out right-winger, Partick's Alex McSpadyen, had in April just received the second of two caps. His timing was unlucky as he would receive no more although continuing to turn out for his club until 1948 but, born in 1914, being by then thirty-four years old. In fact his alternative and the man he had replaced, Jimmy Delaney, born too in 1914, had also had his measure of misfortune, that same month breaking his arm in a club game for Celtic but would rise again in new form. Post-War he would switch to international centre-forward and claim a last cap in 1948 aged thirty-three back for final flourish on the wing.

Then pre-war inside them both was Tommy Walker, the potentially great Tommy Walker, perhaps the Scottish, indeed the British player, who lost most in the War Years. By 1939 Walker, recognised equally for his ball-control, dribbling and passing, already had twenty-one caps, essentially as Scotland's playmaker, and had not yet seen his twenty-fourth birthday. Born in May 1915 he had made his first national team as a nineteen year-old, would only be a shave over thirty when fighting at least in Europe came to an end and, play two more seasons and, were the ten wartime international appearances he had made counted in the total, by some counts with Alan Morton by then have been Scotland's joint most capped player ever or by others the most capped player on his own.

 If Tommy Walker has to be considered more or less a fixture at inside-right in "the team that never was" he would probably have been complimented by a choice of four at inside-left and perhaps two, three or four at centre-forward.  In the former Walker's teammate at Hearts, Andy Black, had aged just twenty been brought into the national team in 1937, continued in 1938 but had been replaced in 1939 by Rangers' Alex Venters four years his senior. Meanwhile in the background there was also Preston's Jimmy Douglas, and ex-Celt, Willie Buchan, who in 1937 had been transferred to Blackpool for a record fee for a Scottish player. But Black still had the years on his side. Unlike the others he in 1945 would have been just twenty-eight and would continue to play at a high level until 1950.  Meanwhile in the latter there were two already mentioned, Jimmy Douglas and, of course, Jimmy Delaney, and two who specialised, born five years apart and from contrasting backgrounds.

The first was Ephraim (Jock) Dodds, born Grangemouth in 1915, who  after the death of his father and his mother's remarriage would be brought up in England. At seventeen he joined Huddersfield Town. At nineteen and for the next five seasons he enjoyed his best period at Sheffield United with two goals every three games and after the war had two good seasons at Everton. But he won no caps, perhaps at thirty in 1945 considered too old, curiously when Jimmy Delaney was not. His Scottish appearances were all war-time including a hat-trick in the 5-4 win over England at Hampden in 1942 with 91,000 there to see him do it and a certain Bill Shankly netting the decisive score.

The second was Dougie Wallace, born 1919 on the South African High Veld in  Krugersdorp, the suburb of Johannesburg next to Soweto, the son of a gold-miner, Joseph Wallace, and Catherine Munro, with the names enough of hint of origins, and who returned to Scotland at part of a touring party and stayed.  He would marry a Scot. he would speak with a Scottish accent. His son, Gordon, would be born in Lanark and go on to play for Shankly at Liverpool. Yet Dougie too was to win no official caps but for perhaps quite different reasons. After all, having led Clyde to victory in the Scottish Cup in 1939, he would have been in his prime aged just twenty-six in 1945. But there was a problem. He had effectively been banned from further international involvement by the SFA after, having been roughed-up by Stan Cullis in the third of Wallace's wartime appearances, he had grabbed the England captain by the balls and no doubt applied a sharp and no doubt deserved twist.  It was considered inappropriate no matter how justified and that was it. But Dougie Wallace would have something of the last, if not laugh, then chuckle. From 1949 to 1954 he turned out for Llanelli in Wales, as a player and then as a player-manager. And in 1950 he signed a certain Jock Stein from the relative obscurity of Division B Albion Rovers and it was from Llanelli that a year later he went to Celtic.    

But back to the team that never was, where only Scotland's imagined left-wing remains to be identified. There were two, three and four candidates. Middlesbrough's Jackie Milne was the incumbent but he in 1939 was already twenty-eight. But there was Everton's Torry Gillick, also accomplished at inside-forward, in the immediate background, already an international and four years younger and also his replacement at Rangers, David Kinnear, again already with one cap and two years younger still. And by the end of the fighting there would also be Liverpool's Billy Liddell, just sixteen in 1939, with eight wartime appearances and a Scotland career that would continue until 1955.