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:
There is a street, in fact a junction, in Renton, still today little more than a village in the Leven Vale, lying as it was then largely along a main through-road. To the north is Alexandria, to the south Dumbarton. The street in question is small, little more than a hundred yards in length. Appropriately it is called Thimble. The junction is, as they would say in America, Thimble and Burns. And it is there a memorial should be erected to record the birth of modern, World football. The year was 1888. The father was probably Archie McColl. The mother was certainly the village's football club, of which McColl was captain. And the gestation period was three, perhaps four years, maybe five years.
The story begins probably in 1884 but let us do so in 1883. That year Renton Football Club was knocked out of Scottish Cup in the third round, 4-1 away to near neighbours,
Vale of Leven. Yet it was not as bad as it seemed. Firstly it marked the return, perhaps even the resurrection of the club. In 1892 it had resigned from the Scottish Football Association and therefore the Cup only to re-join for the 1882-3 season. Secondly, Vale of Leven, "The Vale", would defeat Rangers in semi-final and then neither win of lose the 1884 final against Queen's Park. Instead it chose simply not to appear. There was illness in the team. A postponement had been requested, not granted and the club responded accordingly but in the great scheme of things it mattered little as in 1884-5 Vale of Leven progressed to the final once more.
To get there it would be drawn away to Jamestown, but win easily in the replay at home in the First Round. In the Second it was drawn at home to Campsie Central and scored fourteen with none in reply. Then in the Third Round Yonkers were faced at home and again dismissed with some ease. It is true Round Four proved more difficult. It required a visit to Arthurlie at Barrhead and was won by the odd goal in three but Round Five was as easy as it could be. The Vale had a walkover and was through to a home semi-final against talented Cambuslang. The game was played on 31st January 1885. It was tight. No goals were scored and it looked as if the advantage had been passed to the Lanarkshire opposition. In the event it had not. Vale of Leven would a week later win 1-3 away.
As it happened it would be precisely those same scores that would be repeated in the final and its replay, both at Hampden Park on February 21st and 28th. However, this time The Vale would be a the wrong end of the result. It had failed for a second year in succession to take the top trophy and this time the victor was much, much closer to hand. Having succeeded, just, in vanquishing its neighbour across the river to the north in the First Round the previous season now it lost to its neighbour to the immediate south, i.e. Renton, whose progress to the final had been easier, at least initially. For it a First Round home-win had first been followed by an easy away-tie, then an almost as easy home win before another, a tight-ish one over Paisley's St. Mirren in Round Four, a bye in Round Five and a tighter away victory at Hibernian in the semi-final.
However, the Renton performance of 1885 would not be repeated the following season, at least not quite. In 1886, having eliminated Vale of Leven in Round Five but needing a replay to do it, it again had defeated Hibernian in the semi-final only to lose at the last hurdle to a rejuvenated Queen's Park. And there was more to come. In 1887 there appeared to be something of a genuine dip in form. As Vale of Leven beat Campsie 7-4 Renton would be knocked out in Round Three by Third Lanark. Hibernian would finally take a semi and then the final too.
The dip, however, was to prove temporary. In retrospect it might even be seen more as a re-grouping. In 1888 Dumbarton Union, Dumbarton Athletic, Camelon, Lindertis of Kirriemuir were brushed aside before in Round Five St. Mirren was again faced. It proved to be the only real match of the campaign. The Paisley club at home scored two. Renton managed one more; that before Dundee Wanderers, Queen's Park and in the final Cambuslang were all disposed of with some ease and team went on to even greater triumphs. Within weeks it had for the championship, if unofficial Championship of the World, taken on and defeated the English FA Cup winners, West Bromwich, and then done the same to the runner-up and next season's Double winner, Preston North End. And it did it with a style of football then unique to it but one, which became
The Cross, Scotland's greatest footballing gift to the World and the foundation of the modern game.
The team that season was John Lindsay in goal, full backs
Andy Hannah
and captain,
Archie McCall, half-backs Bob Kelso and Donald McKechnie and the forwards, Neil McCallum and Harry Campbell on the right, James McCall, Archie's half-brother, and John McNee on the left and
James Kelly
and John Campbell ostensibly in the centre. It was a group of players that had naturally changed over time but had at its core, indeed had had since 1884, five constants, plus now a youngster, who had since 1884,when he had been just eighteen, been gradually introduced, first as a forward, then as one of the previously conventional half-back pairing and now as the team's fulcrum between the half-backs and the forwards, neither one nor the other but a blend of both.
Kelly was the young man in question, James Kelly, who would in the new position of what would become the distinctively Scottish centre-half go on to Celtic and whose descendants would off the field be at the heart of that club until 1971 and the death of Robert, his son. The five were Lindsay in goal and the four defenders in front of him. All would come from Renton itself. Indeed all would be born there. Three of the five plus one, the McCall brothers and Andrew Hannah, the man who would take the style to Liverpool, would live on Main St, as might be expected. All would play for Scotland. And three remarkably would live, be brought up on Thimble St. and also play for their country; John Lindsay at Number 1, Bob Kelso at Number 37 and James Kelly in between at 15, having moved just round the corner from his birthplace at 14, Burns.
But Lindsay, Kelso and Kelly would neither be the beginning, the whole or the end of the Thimble St. story. In the Renton team of 1873-74 in the season following its very formation one of its centre-forward pairing had the name of Glen and was probably Alex Glen, a twenty-year-old apprentice engine fitter living at No. 31. And two seasons later a Ritchie, probably Peter Ritchie, would emerge from No. 28. Moreover, even in the 1888 team there was a fourth "Thimble Streeter". John "Jack" McNee on the left-wing would from No. 39 also go on for more than a decade to ply his footballing trade in England at Bolton and Newcastle in the Football League and Watford, Southampton and Fulham in the Southern League before returning home. Then when he moved south he would be replaced by Joe Brady from No. 11, before he briefly seems to have tried his luck at Sheffield United. Then that same season, there was James Kelso, who tried much the same thing like his elder brother, Bob, in Liverpool but with much less success. He returned after a season, before the century was out was dead in the saddest of circumstances and with him the Thimble fountain finally seems to have dried.