Scotland: the home of football
Forget Wembley, the beautiful game is said to have started in... Scotland
Football is indeed heading home this summer – but according to one historian, that home isn’t England.
No matter what the Three Lions lyrics say, Ged O’brien is adamant that football’s birthplace was in Scotland, another of the Euro 2020 co-hosts.
In fact, he says the sport’s most important historical site is a humble bowling club, jammed next to a scruffy railway and a main road.
An art historian from Southampton who later became the project director of Glasgow’s Scottish Football Museum, O’brien wasn’t looking to challenge football’s traditional narrative until he stumbled across a picture of Queen’s Park FC player Andrew Watson.
“I knew, as everyone did, that Arthur Wharton of Preston North End was the first black footballer,” says O’brien. “But when I saw that photo of Watson from the early-1880s, I thought I was nuts. What that taught me was football history is based on a whole load of unchallenged facts. If you state something confidently thousands of times a year for a century, everyone goes for it eventually.”
Much of his work since then has discredited what FIFA claims is the truth. Wikipedia states that football began in 19th century England, but O’brien thinks that wasn’t football as we now know it because different parts of the country played their own version of the game.
“Scotland was playing to a national set of rules, while England was still fighting it out,” he explains. O’brien’s research suggests the oldest rules in existence today were those of John Hope’s Foot-ball Club of Edinburgh, founded in 1824. He also knows of Blairgowrie Rules which predate that.
O’brien dates football back to 16th century Scotland, based on analysis of The Church of Scotland’s records. “The records keep trying to extinguish football because it’s one of the last pre-reformation things that people did to enjoy themselves,” he says.
“Be in no doubt, if you’re watching football, you’re watching the Scottish game. They’re playing what the Scots played from the Lowlands to the Highlands half a millennium ago.”
O’brien believes that the first-ever purpose-built football stadium was also constructed in Glasgow, in 1873. In England, grounds like Sheffield United’s Bramall Lane and Mansfield Town’s Field Mill were already around, but both were built for cricket. North of the border, Queen’s Park FC had a stadium constructed specifically for football – known as ‘The First Hampden’, it’s now the home of Hampden Bowling Club. Sadly, it only lasted until 1884, when the council decided to build a railway through it and Queen’s Park moved to nearby Cathkin Park, known as ‘The Second Hampden’. The third Hampden remains after opening in 1903, and is getting ready to host four matches at Euro 2020.
“It’s the site where world football was developed,” says O’brien. “Any other country in the world would have a giant museum. Tourists would be queuing to get their photo taken.”
Visit for the photo, stay for the bowls.
Chris Sweeney