It is probably recognised, or is that conceded, that the first formalised football in South America took place in or about 1891. Some might argue that it was in Argentina with the creation of the AFA in its first iteration, with as its secretary a certain Alex Lamont, a Scot but also something of a mystery with date and place of birth still to be established. For others it is the foundation in the Chilean port city of the Valparaiso Football Club jointly by David Scott,  born in 1862 in Earlston in Berwickshire. And it is certain that the first official international between South American teams took place in 1902 with Uruguay facing Argentina with in the latter's eleven a Leslie, two Buchanans, two Browns and an Anderson. However, whilst the game might have been first played in Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Valparaiso in the last decade of the 19th Century that does not mean that they were the first South Americans to have taken to the field at  either club level or for country. Indeed, like buses after a wait of almost two decades since the games inception first one turned up followed by a second almost at once with, at a national level at least, those next Uruguayans and Argentinians  then not arriving for fully two decades more.

That is not, however, to confuse South with Latin and certainly not with North America. The first "American" of any kind had taken to the football pitch in 1875. The match therefore was against Scotland.  He was a 20 year-old Mexican, or at least Mexican-born, so Central American, who went by name of Captain Richard Greaves, so a military man, featured at outside-left for England and under today's rules would also have qualified for Turkey, where his father had been born, and Malta, the birth-place of his mother. The match finished as a 2-2 draw. It was his only cap, not least because later that same year he sailed for Afghanistan and from there was invalided out of the Army.

But back to the "buses". The first set out on its route on 26th February 1881, with first stop the East Lancashire Cricket Ground in Blackburn. The second set off on 12th March, its first stop The Oval in London, and when two days later it moved on to its next it the two crossed, one travelling in one direction and the other the other. That second stop was the The Racecourse Ground in Wrexham, which perhaps gives a clue to the nationality, albeit temporary, of one of those involved but not, as it happens, of the other.  He was, of course, Andrew Watson, of whom I have written at length, much is currently being written and who rightly be lauded for his playing ability, for the fact that he was the World's first ever Black man to play international football, the first known Black football administrator and possibly the first Black football professional. Yet it should also be remembered that he was born in what was then British Guiana, now Guyana, which means, due to Guyana's unique position with one foot in the Antilles and other on the continental America, he was not just South American but also the first known West Indian player. 

Andrew Watson, of course, played for Scotland, the land of his father and possibly both his grandfathers. And for Scottish football it was a good day. Scotland not only won but, with Watson generally recognised as captain, by a score, 1-6, that had and has never been equalled.  Moreover, when the Scots team travelled on to take on Wales the result was an almost equally remarkable 1-5 but not without a scare. One of the Welsh centre-forwards, for once not the better-known John Price, said to be the reason for the development of the 2-3-5 its  formation, but Kynette Crosse opened with a goal in the 4th minute. Perhaps it shook the Scots out a travel-induced stupor but replies were not long in coming.  George Ker equalised three minutes later and Henry McNeil put them ahead just two minutes after that. 

And the two goals were placed past a goalkeeper winning a second cap and with an interesting pedigree. Two  weeks earlier it had been him between the sticks, when Wales had played England in Blackburn. Indeed , he had kept a clean sheet and Wales had won the game, only the second such encounter, admittedly by the narrowest of margins. The English apparently mounted attack after attack without success and Vaughan netted in the 54th Minute. Moreover he was the custodian for Shrewsbury Engineers FC, an English team, albeit only just English, and went by the very un-Welsh name of Robert McMillan but with still more. It is said that he was born in 1857 and in England. Indeed in 1881 there was not only a Robert McMillan living on his own in the St. Mary's district of  Shrewsbury but he was aged twenty-four, so probably born in 1857 and a Civil Engineer, so Shrewsbury Engineers could logically have been his team.  However, this Robert McMillan was born not English but, if country unspecified, then South American. Furthermore, a Robert John McMillan in July of that same year was married in St. Michaels, Shrewsbury to a Shropshire girl, Alice Collins, a marriage registered in Wellington also Shropshire. And six years later he, but not necessarily she, was on Tyneside and in four more years in 1891 a thirty-four year old gas engineer was recorded as married, a visitor, probably a boarder, in no less than Douglas, the Isle of Man and this time the place of birth was far more precise. Whilst it was still South America, it was now specifically Peru. 

Alice McMillan would die in 1899 aged 43 but neither in Shropshire or the Isle of Man. It would be in the Sculcoates suburb of Hessle by Hull in the East Riding of Yorkshire and that in 1901 was where a Robert McMillan was still recorded. He was managing a gas works, a widower, sharing a house with another widower and a fourteen year-old servant girl, Selina Barley. He is again recorded as born in Peru and to be found again in the summer of 1901 when he married for a second time, to Annie Elizabeth, a twenty-one local girl, also a domestic servant, and also a Barley. She was none other that young Selina's elder sister.

Quite what happened to Robert is then unclear. On the one hand he and Annie set about creating a family. By 1911 they had four children, three born in Hull but on the other all six of them were now living in Wales, where the fourth child's birth had been, in Gorseinon between Swansea and Llanelli. And Robert is now recorded not as anything to do with gas but as a "Waterman" for the local council born not just in Peru but now in Lima. And it would be in Wales that it seems Robert John McMillan would see out the rest of his days. He died in 1928, his death registered in Swansea in the country which fifty years earlier he had represented seemingly almost by twist of fate and with one last piece left to be entered in this particular sporting puzzle. For it we have to travel right back to 1861 and London. There at 14, Vernon Street, Fulham, actually Hammersmith, a Macmillan family or rather Harriet, the mother, and three children under five were then living, if perhaps only in transit. She is described as born in Hertford, aged twenty-six and the wife of a gas-fitter. Her eldest son is Robert, aged four, and the birth-place of him and his two sisters is also supplied. It is Lima.   

Where the father was is unknown. Perhaps he was still in Peru, coming to his time there.  But we know who he was, John McMillan or MacMillan, and that he and Harriet, Harriet Jerroms, had married in 1855 in Finsbury still in London and must have boarded ship soon after. The journey to Callao was at that time two  months, contracts were four years, he would probably have gone out first and she followed. That was how it had been for my grandparents in Brazil. And once back we know he continued to move around for work and she with him. Later children were born in Ireland, others in  Stoke-on-Trent. He himself had been born in 1832 in Birkenhead across the water from Liverpool, where his father, also John McMillan, had been born. And John McMillan would die in 1884 in Staffordshire, perhaps in Stafford itself but with the odds on Stoke. After all it would be in Stoke that Harriet would die in 1901. Which leaves one question. Where did the McMillan name come? Wales seems unlikely, Peru equally so but not impossible. Didn't George Forsyth,  son of Harold, grandson of Willie Alex, great-grandson of Leith-born Alex Ross Forsyth,  a decade ago also pull on the gloves seven times for the land of the Incas before turning to politics. Rumour even has it that he will challenge for the Peruvian presidency in 2021. Which means in the case of Bob McMillan the name choice is between Ireland or perhaps Scotland. You make up your own mind.