March 13 – SFA OK
TODAY we’re pointing the OTFD time machine northwards and punching in the date 1873 as we look at the formation of the Scottish Football Association. It was way back then when the world’s second oldest football association was created by it’s eight founding members in the Dewar’s Hotel in Glasgow.
Football had existed in Scotland since the days when Mel Gibson look-a-likes ran around fields proclaiming freedom in the 14th century, but game was always under threat from ‘the man’ who saw it as a vehicle for social unrest. These early games would consist of violent kickabouts that would make the likes of Big Dunc and Graeme Souness look tame by comparison, leading to a gang of Scottish kings trying to ban ‘the fute-ball’ as it was known then through Parliament in the 15th century. It wasn’t until the emergence of organised clubs in the second half of the 19th century that the game began to take shape.
In 1867 Queen’s Park were the first Scottish side to be formed and it was the Spiders who were the driving force behind the SFA as they looked to create a local competition after spending their early years competing in the English FA Cup, reaching the final twice. They placed an advert in a local newspaper and were joined in the Dewar’s Hotel by Clydesdale, Vale of Leven, Dumbreck, Third Lanark, Eastern and Granville. Kilmarnock sent their apologies, but the eight clubs agreed to form the SFA and create the Scottish Cup for them to test their wits against each other in.
By this time Scotland had already played host to the world’s first official international football match when they hosted the English a year earlier. Despite some very attacking formations – England played 1-2-7, Scotland a veritable catenaccio-tastic 2-2-6 in comparison – the game finished 0-0, thanks in part to both sides clashing over what set of rules they were using.
After ten years the SFA had 133 member clubs, including one from Newfoundland, as the organisation was proving to be more progressive than their cousins south of the border and tried to spread the word to Canada, Australia and the US, thanks largely to the efforts of William Dick, the SFA’s first secretary. This missionary zeal came to an end with Dick’s death in 1880 and the association began to concentrate on matters closer to home, creating the first ever Scottish league in 1890, thanks largely to the efforts of Celtic who were the first side to be ran as a business.
Since these early days the SFA’s had it’s ups and downs. It wasn’t until 1954 that they employed a manager for the national side and even then the job was only part-time. Famously, the Scots have never gone past the first round in an international tournament and they haven’t even qualified for one since the 1998 World Cup.
Things look to be on the up though, after their heroic effort in a group featuring France and Italy during qualifying for this years European Championship and according to some boffins they have the fourth best team in Europe per capita if you go by population versus FIFA coefficient, behind those other juggernauts Liechtenstein, the Faroe Islands and Cyprus.
We’re feeling generous to all you Scots reading, so instead of showing you 1977′s finest swinging from the Wembley goal-posts we’ll leave you with one of the finest goals in the SFA’s 135-year history, when Mark Renton’s favourite, Archie Gemmill took on the Dutch defence in the 1978 World Cup. Enjoy it and head over here for the tale of another Scotsman tomorrow.
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March 13 - Diouf Goes Spitting Mad | On This Football Day on March 13th, 2009
[...] See El-Hadji upto some of his usual tricks below and if you were wondering what happened in Scotland today in 1873 then it’s time to get very excited and click here. [...]