bluearmyfaction

Almost certainly because of the rare chance to see Blues captain Fred Harris. Who was the uncle of Roy McDonough (11 red cards in the Football League).

Perthshire hospitality... (Perthshire Advertiser, 9 April 1921)

Fifeshire shenanigans... ( Edinburgh Evening News, Saturday 23 October 1920)

Not the club which has sadly folded recently, but the senior club which won the Qualifying Cup in the 30s. Does anyone have details of their club colours? The SFA has not (yet) put up the materials from the 1930s which might help, and I can't find any newspaper reports/photos which would give a clue. I did wonder if they were the same red and black as the more recent clubs but probably not - Denbeath Star are recorded as wearing red and black AGAINST them in 1925...

The goalie/forward thing happened in the 1875 FA Cup final as well - Charles Farmer of the Old Etonians switching forward after the Light Blues needed to change four players from the original game with the Royal Engineers. They were a bit more cavalier with positional exclusivity back then. Indeed goal was the standard place to put injured players to keep them out of the way. And the only goal the Etonians conceded on the way to the final was when Farmer had swapped out of goal with a team-mate temporarily in a first round replay against the Swifts. (On the Swifts, anyone remember Football Family Robinson from Roy of the Rovers/Tiger? About a team where everyone was from the Robinson family? The Swifts were a bit like that - they had anything up to five of the Bambridge brothers playing. When the Bambridges retired in the late 1880s, the team pretty much vanished. Despite being one of the strongest in the south.) There was another reason why Vale did not turn up in 1884 - bereavement. Right-back John Forbes lost his mother earlier that week and had a funeral to attend. Queen's Park instead played Third Lanark at Cathkin Park, which had already had temporary grandstands put up, and won 4–1. But there was some blame put on Queen's Park too... (Glasgow Evening Post, 22 Feb)

Comparing the league tables given in the Northern Chronicle for 27 April and 4 May, we can derive the following for 27 April... Caledonian 3–1 Thistle Celtic 1–1 Camerons Union 1–1 Citadel We also know Citadel beat someone 3–1, and Camerons lost to someone 3–1, over that week... There seems to be one other match that week, probably Clach 3–0 Thistle, but the Thistle GF/GA are borked.

And this is the upshot of the Montrose bribery case, from the Scotsman, 24 February 1932... ...it sums up how bad Edinburgh City were, in that as soon as they win a match, a) everyone thinks there was some shenanigans going on, and, b), they were right... Also that £40-50 for throwing a match was nearly a year's playing wages. At least at Montrose.

When having a mooch around and you see MONTROSE SENSATION, one surely has to investigate further. This was the origin story... (Aberdeen Press & Journal, 9 December 1931)

Scottish Cup has some goodies, leaving aside the 35-0 and 36-0... Queen of the South Wanderers 7–7 5th KRV (1883, h-t 5–5) Alpha (Motherwell) 6–8 Cambuslang Hibs (1885, h-t 3–5) Mid-Annandale 16–1 Rising Thistle (1890) Lochgelly Amateurs 3–13 Hearts (1931, slight cheat as Lochgelly switched the tie to Tynecastle) Johnstone 20–1 Greenock Abstainers (1891)

Fucked a lot more. Many leagues turning into processions, the only thing stopping a Man U/Arsenal duopoly in England was obscene money for Chelsea and Man C.

Only recently found out the ground was not named after a Prime Minister but Farmer Palmer...

A not very exciting puff piece about Linthouse from the Scottish Referee of 12 August 1898. Thought it worth putting up because they were a curious club. Formed in 1881, so after the first swathe of football clubs had already come and gone, but, given that Govan already had a big club in Rangers and a small club in Whitefield, it's a bit weird why someone thought another was necessary. They survived about 20 years, and never did anything at all of note in the Scottish Cup; but, after the Scottish League did to Scottish clubs what an asteroid did to non-avian dinosaurs, clubs scrambled around to find their own leagues. Most of which collapsed in short order, but some survived long enough to feed into an expanding Scottish League. And Linthouse not only joined one, the Scottish Alliance, but won it. Despite the media not rating what seems to have been a somewhat lumpen team that sort of gouged its way to an unlikely title. The thing is, they tried to leverage that into joining the Scottish League, but failed, and a couple of years later threw the whole thing up in a huff. But after a year of nothingness they applied once more and WERE accepted for 1895-96. It's a really odd choice. Even more so that literally every League club voted them in. They and Kilmarnock came in to replace Cowlairs and Dundee Wanderers; Wanderers got just 3 votes and Cowlairs did not even bother. But surely there were better candidate clubs around? The obvious one being Wishaw Thistle, who had just won the Alliance, and 1895–96 seems to prove that, given Thistle won the Alliance again, and Linthouse finished bottom of the League. But the League gave the Linties another chance, which they did not really take, continually circling the drain before the inevitable demise. But the decision did a) kill off Thistle, and b) save Motherwell, who were also in the re-election battle, which may have been a reason for not voting for Thistle. Maybe it was a Glasgow thing? One out, so one in? The main interest for me in this article is it conforms Linthouse's rivalry was with Partick Thistle - despite being next door to Rangers the two clubs were in different worlds. Back then the papers were not quite yet doing opinion pieces so I've no idea what the logic was even trying to run a professional club within earshot of Ibrox. Also am assuming it's not the Labour leader who's going to don the dark blue in 1898.

One Billy Robertson over-estimating the intellectual prowess of Perthshire amateur football... (Perthshire Advertiser, 21 October 1988)

Well, in 1984, they were spelling out 6 and above, but without brackets... ...by 1986 though you had to go to 7 to get the letters.

The SFA telling Middlesbrough to do one... ...but the era of professionalism could not be stemmed. The Scotsman, 16 September 1891.

The late Pat Roach was a Birmingham City fan.

The formation of football leagues is generally seen as a positive step, but that's because we are looking back with our own teams' existence in some way depending on them. They actually had a decimating effect, the vast majority of teams being driven out of business as a result. The Football League was the Eurosuperleague of its day - clubs had got themselves so many professionals that they needed a constant run of fixtures to generate the money to pay them, and the initial 12 were not chosen on ability, but as a town franchise to maximise gates. (Also to park tanks on rugby's lawn - Liverpool was a rugby town so recruiting Everton, whose record before 1888 was lamentable, was an aggressive move. The League would then do the same in Manchester, which is why neither has ever had a top rugby league club; contrast Leeds and Hull, where the League was too late.) It led to a few sliding doors moments. I don't know what happened in Paisley in 1892, but St Mirren went from behind to ahead of Abercorn, and that proved decisive; St Mirren having twice sought re-election back to the first division, both times successfully, but Abercorn lost the first time of asking. Abercorn never recovered. The Shire were bigger than Falkirk and got to the league first - but I suppose town loyalty to the name rather than county won out as soon as Falkirk made it into the league. And Wishaw Thistle were one vote away from the league in 1896. Had they beaten Linthouse on the re-vote - and Linthouse was a quixotic windmill-tilter; MASSIVELY optimistic that they could ever flourish when Rangers was next door - then, given Motherwell struggled throughout the decade, , it's possible that Wishaw would have nudged Motherwell into oblivion.

An example of the prizes "of trifling value" clubs were allowed to dish out to strict amateurs for competition wins. This was the third of four consecutive Forfarshire Cup final defeats for East End - they would finally win it for the first time in 1894, but had to merge with Our Boys in order to do so...

Which was really exciting for me as the Panini sticker was the first glimpse I had of the Dumbarton badge. Meanwhile, I found this quite interesting, from a sociologial perspective. Dumfries & Galloway Standard, 1 September 1897: The two MPs named were both Conservative, and Lord Herries was the Lord-Lieutenant of Kirkcudbrightshire at the time. I can see that the Tories would be smiling on plans to keep the plebs occupied of a Saturday, but such a set of aristocratic backing for an Irish-origin club is a bit surprising; maybe the Irish in Dumfries were Unionists? Or, given there was also a Gladstonians FC who had only recently tapped out, it was a cunning attempt to squish Liberalism? Maxwelltown Volunteers would soon start up as a replacement for the 5th KRV.

If anything, M' is more common than Mc in the Victorian papers, and Mac is not common at all.

A rugby XI playing football? No- a Rugby XI. From the era in which reserve sides were often given the name of the senior club ground, the Queen's Park Hampden XI being probably the most famous in period, and the explanation for why the Medda have such a curiously retro monicker. This is from the Scottish Junior Portfolio of 1897, an invaluable archive of a few dozen Junior clubs from the period.

It's a question of scale. For Scotland it's in the qualifying and group stages, for England it's being done on pens or by the odd goal or by iffy refereeing and so on. Every nation is going to feel that way because of the rarity of achievement. Also that it's better to blow hot and cold than to be lukewarm all the time. England tend to be very good in tournaments most of the time - when what you need is to be brilliant once, even if it means being rubbish once. I reckon Wales as well could have even more of a grievance as to the slings and arrows of international fortune - leave aside 1978, their past failures meant the Welsh golden generation was saddled with impossible draws, until finally they break through, when it's 4 years too late. And then there's the Dutch, who seem to have in their DNA the gene of self-destruction whenever they look like winning it all.

From the Ebenezer Scrooge department...the SFA puts East Fife back in their box for swankery: (Scotsman, 16 August 1938

Note that Simon Day has to take a quick snifter of beer to stop himself corpsing at the end...

I can do football, but not religion...Scottish religion baffles me, it seems that if I had a disagreement with a clergyman I'd have somehow started a new denomination. The Dumfries and Galloway Standard of 6 December 1879 reports that Moffat F.C. has been formed "chiefly through the efforts of (W. H.) Churchill of St Ninians"; I assumed that was a church, but it may be a school. He's described as a reverend though on his marriage the next year, officiated by the Rev. Hilliard - father of the bride - and the Rev. Frank Churchill, presumably W. H.'s brother. (All a bit Alabama, frankly.)