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:
The Death -
of the English Game!
For six years I have puzzled, not every minute, of course, but at more than just intervals. Once there was a Scottish game that at first distinguished itself by its short-passing combinations initially from English "kick and run" and later with the addition of distinctive positioning and tactics from the "long-passing" alternative of some English clubs, notably from The Midlands. Yet sometime either side of the Second World War that Scots style seemed to have disappeared, superseded on both sides of the border, notably as Arsenal was painted as the most successful team of the 1930s.
Of course it wasn't and I was being blind. With regard to the former the facts speak for themselves. Arsenal would take the league title five times and the FA Cup twice, total seven, but in Scotland our league was won seven times by Bill Struth's Rangers and our cup five times by the same, total 12. It was not even marginal. And then there was blindness, firstly to numbers. To see the Scotland-England game at Hampden in 1937 the crowd had been 149,547 and in 1939 it was but 300 fewer. At Wembley in 1936 and and 1938 is was 93,000. In part it was capacity but then is not capacity based on enthusiasm, even passion. And then there was the reality, frankly at Highbury even hype, that lay and lies behind the facade there and at several other clubs since.
Arsenal had entered the decade with Herbert Chapman its manager and finished it effectively without one. George Allison was notionally in the position but he was the man on the Board and in footballing terms he was little more than a figurehead. The team and its performance on the field were in the dual hands of first team trainer, Tom Whittaker, and reserve team coach, Joe Shaw. But it had until a short time before. On Herbert Chapman's sudden death in January 1934 a third person had been persuaded to leave his job as a manager of Middlesbrough, had turned done the managerial position at Arsenal but agreed to become the club's chief scout. Effectively, whilst Whittaker looked after physical fitness and Shaw continued the Chapman tactics this third person found and hired the players.
That third person was Peter McWilliam and it is fact that during his four years to 1938 at the club it won precisely the same number of the same trophies as Chapman had, two leagues and a Cup. He even left, returning to manage Spurs, where he had had fifteen successful years, with the second league title just tucked away but more than that there is a very strong case that he had been the one, who had ensured prolongation of the Chapman playing-philosophy. You see, whilst Herbert Chapman was a Yorkshireman by birth with regard to matters of football he was a Scot, just as McWilliam was.
Let me explain. Herbert Chapman had been a journeyman as a player, that is until he found his niche. He was by then twenty-seven years It was in 1905 and he had been signed by another Scot, John Cameron, player-manager just down the road at Spurs. Cameron had done it in the knowledge that his playing days were coming to an end. He was six years older than Chapman, in whom he saw something specific he needed. It was a replacement for him as the inside-forward, who also fetched, carried and distributed for the team. He did not have to have pace, which Chapman did not, but he had to be able to pass a ball.
It is my belief that John Cameron and Peter McWilliam were two of the most important thinkers and innovators that football has ever seen and, whilst both won trophies in their own rights, that is largely because throughout Herbert Chapman's time at his four clubs his tactics were based on what he had learned from the former and it was into the hands of the latter that his footballing legacy was placed. Simply put Chapman's managerial success, initially at Northampton and at Huddersfield, interspersed with a brief stay in Leeds, and at Arsenal were based on variants of the Scottish short-passing game just as McWilliam's successes at White Hart Lane had been and would be at North London's other stadium. It was a style that had developed considerably from the "combination" play of the 1870's, the "scientific" on the 1880s and through the early years of The Cross but still contained its basic elements, passing, wide full-backs marking the opposition wingers, the wing-halves on inside-forwards. Nevertheless there had been changes. Chapman had played the Scottish-style, attacking centre-half until 1928-29, albeit slightly withdrawn. It was only with change in the off-side rules and the suggestion of Charlie Buchan three years earlier that the search for a centre-back had begun and had taken time. And Chapman seems to have preferred a big, aerial centre-forward to the small, tough nuisance that had been the Scottish preference. But he still wanted a fetcher and carrier and in 1929 he was found at Preston via Bellshill and Raith in the diminutive, Scottish form of Alex James.
But elsewhere too there were developments. The half-Scots Jimmy Seed having shortly after McWilliam's departure been squeezed out of Spurs and instead take his forward's skills to Sheffield Wednesday and two league title had returned to London to Charlton and gathering success and in the Cup. Simultaneously two grafting half-backs, Busby and Shankly, would find the careers brought to somewhat premature ends by the outbreak of the Second World War. Football, like much a life, found itself in a form of suspended animation. It still went on but as non-competitive entertainment