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.