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 first of the medical men was Walter Thomson, the second Henry Pirie. Both were Canadian-born, both in Ontario, Thomson in 1867 and Pirie three years earlier in 1864. Both would die there too. Both attended university in Canada, in Toronto and Kingston respectively and both would play football. Of Watt Thomson it would be said,
"As a player, he was nothing less than a miracle of speed, accuracy and artfulness; as a centre forward, he was a model of unselfishness and a phenomenal shot of goal; as a captain, he was an inspiration and an ideal to his men”
There is no equivalent description of Harry Pirie but he must have been a player of a similar standard from right- or left-half. Watty were selected in 1885 for the international game against the USA, won away by Canada, 0-1, on the Clark Field and refereed by William Clark at Kearny in New Jersey. Harry was selected in 1866 for the next game, again at Newark and this time narrowly lost by the odd goal in five. Then both. Watty as captain, were selected for the squad to travel to Ireland and then Britain in 1888 for 23 games including a draw against a Rangers team, a loss to Queen's Park, a 4-0 loss to a Scotland XI, a win against Sunderland and defeats by Blackburn Rovers, Aston Villa and West Bromwich. Thomson and Pirie both played in the first game of the tour against Co. Antrim, and clearly both first choice, against Rangers, Scotland and the four main English teams. Scotland included John Forbes of Vale of Leven and about to join Blackburn, John Campbell and one of the McCalls from Renton. Blackburn Fergie Suter and Jimmy Douglas and Villa Archie Hunter. Thomson from Number 9 scored nine times and he and Pirie both scored against Villa in a 4-2 defeat.
It is clear from the above Canada was far from outclassed. Playing 2.3.5 throughout, having like football in much of Britain switched since 1884 from 2.2.6, they fared well against the lesser teams winning nine and drawing five with the best of their victories against Antrim and their worse loss unsurprisingly against Scotland. Three years later it was to be harder when, still with Walter Thomson as captain, a combined Canadian and American team returned for a fifty-eight game schedule, of which thirteen were won and thirteen drawn. The only notable scalp was perhaps Stoke, otherwise wins were against non-league teams. Defeats included 5-1 to a strong Scotland XI that included Walter Arnott, Matthew McQueen, Willie Maley and John Bell, an equally strong Sunderland team and a Blackburn Rovers with Jimmy Ross up front. Again Thomson did well scoring sixteen goals in twenty-two appearances and attracting offers from professional clubs. But he nevertheless returned home, went into general medical practice and only later into football administration. In 1901 he was a founder member of the Ontario Soccer Association and a member of its match committee before the next year being elected the organisation's second president.
Meanwhile Harry Pirie, Dr. Henry Hampton Pirie had enter general practice but not for long at least in Canada. He came from a family not only with a penchant for football but also with an adventurous streak. In 1887 Harry's elder brother, Alex, had set out to travel to Chile to practice there. He never made it. Arriving in
Costa Rica he decided to explore and stayed a while, returned to Canada to marry before in 1892 returned to Central America, where again in Costa Rica in Cartago he began to practice. And Harry would marry in Canada in 1896 then he and his new wife, Isabella, join his brother. He stayed until 1901 when Isabella died, after which he returned to Canada, where she was buried. In the meantime football had arrived. Whether it was with Alex or Harry is unclear but in July 1899 newspapers for the first time reported a number of youths, English-speakers amongst them, practising, perhaps playing, football on La Sabana, even today a park in San Jose, the nearby Costa Rican capital. Then on 15th September that same year, to celebrate Independence Day, two teams had met, a team called Costa Rican against another called Foreigners, the latter made up mainly of "English" workers. We know the teams. We even know the referee. It was Dr.H. Pirie, Dr. Henry Hampton Pirie. So having been a pioneer of the game in his youth as a player in Canada, indeed with Thomson in the USA and Britain and Ireland he was now Costa Rican football's first official.
Oh, and there was one other important characteristic that both Watty Proudfoot Thomson and Harry Pirie shared, perhaps the fundamental reason for their enthusiasm for soccer. They were Scots or at least Scots by background, Diasporan Scots. All four of their parents were Scots-born, Thomson's in Angus, married in Dundee, and Pirie's from Aberdeen and Shetland.