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:
Tom Robertson
In Canada they play Canadian football. To those not in the know it looks much like its American cousin in terms of equipment and tactics but there are differences in the size of pitch and rules. It is a game that also like its American cousin came out of rugby and perhaps at the beginning of the 20th Century something of a cross-over continued in Canada in attitude to play between it and Association football, soccer. Certainly there was something of a developing problem. In 1905, the year after Olympic footballing victory for Canada in the form of Galt,, a touring team from the top English, amateur club The Pilgrims complained that Canadian teams they were meeting, Galt amongst them in a 3-3 draw, were not playing to Football Association rules. And there was truth to the complaint. Even by the then very rough standards of the game in Britain Canadian players were literally going over the top but not just in individual cases.. In the Toronto League what might be called "Canadian Rules" seemed to have taken over. There a new, hybrid game was literally emergent and might have taken over but for the efforts of one man.
His name was Tom Robertson. He had arrived in Canada in 1901, born in Govan just twenty years earlier. And across the water as part of the Diaspora he continued to indulge a footballing passion that had taken hold in Scotland as well as beginning a new life. He would marry Jessie Robb, raised in Canada but born in Peterhead, in Toronto in 1907 but it was at about that same time his football on the field would be brought to sudden halt. In a game where "Canadian rules", tripping, kicking, wrestling, tripping, kicking and wrestling, he was injured badly enough that he spent the best part of a year in hospital and for his left leg to have to be amputated. He, of course, protested about not just what had happened to him but how, moreover when his protestations fell on deaf ears he did not simply step away but reacted. In 1908 in opposition to the Toronto League Tom Robertson founded the Toronto and District FA. It played only to British rules and he became its Secretary. And his initiative was successful. He prevailed. The two leagues would combine and the the use of "Canadian Rules" was was brought to a rapid end.
However, if Tom Robertson's amateur playing career had been brought to sudden and unfortunate close his reaction to it meant that he had become a major figure in the game off-pitch. Whilst working as a draughtsman and therefore in his free time, he went on in 1910 to become Secretary-Treasurer of the Ontario Football Association. In 1912 he was the first Secretary of the Dominion of Canada FA, now the Canadian Football Association, one of the prime movers in its formation and its joining of FIFA six months later, remarkably only months after Wales, Ireland and Scotland, and described thus by Tom Watson, the association's second president:
“more than any other (he) was responsible for the establishment of the old country game in Canada and the success which at the present day is now identified with it”
Tom Robertson remained the DCFA's Secretary until 1914, shortly after which he left to work in the USA, but even then the Scottish influence continued. Craig Campbell was President from 1915 to 1918, followed until 1930 by Tom Guthrie, Dan McNeil, John Easton and John Russell. As for Robertson himself his association with the game in Canada continued, if less active and little of his later life is known. In 1925 he was made a life member of the DCFA. In 1933, he was a member of the DCFA commission that investigated the affairs hsi former charge the Ontario Football Association as football in Canada struggled through the depression.