Scottish Football Culture

Each major claim carries one of three labels. established means supported by primary records, official bodies or several independent reliable sources. shared means the core fact is sound but sources disagree on details, dates or interpretation. traditional means widely repeated but not traceable to a primary or independent source.

Scotland's football records are strong. The weak points are superlatives and style. The 1424 Act is often called the oldest football law in the world, but a London proclamation of 1314 is older. And the popular claim that Scotland invented the passing game is a matter of interpretation; even reports of the 1872 match describe mostly dribbling.

Banning football

established On 26 May 1424 the Parliament of Scotland under James I declared that "it is statut and the king forbiddis that na man play at the fut ball", with a fine of four pence each time. Like later bans on golf, it aimed to keep men practising archery for war. The Act stayed on the statute book until 1906.

established It is often called the oldest football legislation in the world, but London got there first: in 1314 Nicholas de Farndone, Mayor of London, banned football in the City on behalf of Edward II, on pain of imprisonment, because of the disorder it caused. The Scottish Act is among the earliest national laws on football.

The oldest football

established Guinness World Records recognises a grey leather ball from Stirling Castle as the oldest football in the world. It was made between 1540 and 1570, and was found during work at the castle in the mid-1970s behind oak panelling in a bedroom once used by Mary, Queen of Scots. It was rediscovered in the archives of the Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum in 1999 and is on display there.

The first football club

established In 1824 John Hope founded the Foot-Ball Club in Edinburgh. National Records of Scotland, which holds his papers, describes it as the world's first dedicated football organisation. His records include membership lists and receipts, among them a payment in 1826 for the use of Dalry Park to play football and practise archery. The club was active until 1841, decades before Sheffield FC, often called the oldest club, was founded in 1857.

shared The founder appears to be the same John Hope (1807–1893) who later became one of Victorian Scotland's leading anti-Catholic and temperance campaigners. His biographer, the Reverend David Jamie (1900), describes him as a keen footballer who was secretary and treasurer of a select club of young Edinburgh lawyers. The historian Gerry Finn, in a chapter of Scottish Sport in the Making of the Nation (1994), shows that in 1874 Hope's Protestant rifle corps, the 3rd Edinburgh Rifle Volunteers, formed Edinburgh's first association football club, with Hope kicking off its first game. The link between the two clubs is Hope himself, not any continuity of organisation.

The first international

established On 30 November 1872, St Andrew's Day, Scotland played England at Hamilton Crescent, the West of Scotland Cricket Club's ground in Partick. FIFA recognises it as the first official international match between national teams. About 4,000 people watched a 0–0 draw. All eleven Scotland players were members of Queen's Park, the Glasgow club founded in 1867. Scotland's first win over England came at the same ground in 1874.

shared Scotland is often credited with inventing the passing game. Contemporary reports of the 1872 match describe dribbling by both sides, though one newspaper said the Scots seemed "adepts at passing the ball". Scottish clubs, led by Queen's Park, did develop and spread a style built on combination play in the following decades, and Historic Environment Scotland credits Scottish teams with developing modern passing football.

The SFA and the Scottish Cup

established The Scottish Football Association was formed in March 1873 by Queen's Park and other clubs, making it the second-oldest national football association after England's. Its founders created the Scottish Cup, the second-oldest competition in association football. The first final, at the original Hampden Park on 21 March 1874, saw Queen's Park beat Clydesdale before about 2,500 spectators. The trophy, made by Glasgow silversmiths for £56 13s, has never been replaced and is recognised by Guinness World Records as the oldest trophy in the game.

established In 1887 the SFA ordered its clubs to withdraw from the English FA Cup and barred them from membership of any other national association. In the words of the historian Christopher Harvie, the professional game in Scotland was from then on organised "on national, not on British lines".

established England's Football Association, founded in 1863, wrote the first unified laws of association football. Scotland's claims are to its early clubs, matches and institutions, not to the rules.

Football and the idea of Scotland

shared Scholars have long argued about what football means to Scottish identity. The 1994 collection Scottish Sport in the Making of the Nation, edited by Grant Jarvie and Graham Walker, takes its subtitle from the SNP politician Jim Sillars, who complained after the 1992 general election that Scotland had too many "ninety minute patriots" whose nationalism showed only at sporting events. The editors reject the idea that sport is merely a substitute for politics, arguing that it reflects changing political moods.

shared In the same book the political scientist Alan Bairner, borrowing from the critic David Daiches, argues that Scots chose to beat the English at their own game rather than build a separate national sport around shinty, as the Irish did with Gaelic games, but dressed the game in tartan and songs of hills and glens. He calls the Tartan Army's Scotland "the mythical land of Brigadoon". Bairner also stresses the divisions football exposes rather than heals: Highlands and Lowlands, Glasgow and the rest, Rangers and Celtic, middle-class rugby and working-class football, and the low status of women's football. He records racist abuse of black players such as Mark Walters and Paul Elliott in the late 1980s.

established Football and politics touched in specific ways. Political commentators, including the political scientist James Kellas, linked Scotland's poor showing at the 1978 World Cup in Argentina to the failure of the 1979 devolution referendum, though Neil Blain and Raymond Boyle, in their chapter on sports journalism in the same book, note that the claim was rarely meant wholly seriously. The editors also note that Rangers' chairman David Murray and manager Walter Smith publicly backed the Union before the 1992 election.

Supporters, brake clubs and fanzines

established Scottish supporters organised early. The sociologist H. F. Moorhouse, in his chapter "From zines like these?" in the same book, describes the brake clubs that followed the big Glasgow teams from Victorian times, which by about 1900 issued badges, held annual socials and negotiated ticket discounts with clubs. The Rangers Supporters' Association, founded in 1946, had nearly 10,000 members in 117 branches by 1950 and published a magazine, the Rangers Review, from 1947. The Shamrock, produced by an Edinburgh Celtic supporters' club from 1961 to 1963, has since been described as the first Celtic fanzine.

established The modern fanzine boom reached Scotland in the late 1980s. Moorhouse notes that most of Scotland's 38 league clubs then had or had had a fanzine, including Not the View (Celtic, 1987), Follow, Follow (Rangers, 1988) and the general fanzine The Absolute Game. He found them narrow and often hostile to rivals, and argued that academics who praised fanzines as a voice of resistance overstated their influence. He reported that the two big Old Firm fanzines could rarely get more than about 400 readers to respond to a campaign.

• The 1424 football ban carried a fine of four pence.
• London banned football 110 years before Scotland did.
• The world's oldest football was hidden behind panelling at Stirling Castle.
• John Hope's Foot-Ball Club also practised archery.
• The first official international was played on St Andrew's Day 1872.
• Every Scotland player in that first match was from Queen's Park.
• The Scottish Cup trophy cost £56 13s.
• The Scottish Cup trophy is the oldest in football.

• Do not call the 1424 Act the oldest football law in the world; London's 1314 ban is older.
• Do not say Scotland invented football or its rules.
• Do not say the 1872 match proved Scotland played a passing game; reports mostly describe dribbling.
• Do not call Sheffield FC the first football club without noting John Hope's 1824 club.
• Do not state as fact that the 1978 World Cup caused the 1979 referendum result; it is a commentators' argument.