Robert "Bob" Campbell

There is no-one in Scottish, indeed British football, who did more to forge not just his local game but the wider, modern, arguably global one for so little recognition presently than Robert "Bob" Campbell.

He was a Perthshire man throughout his life, born in 1872 in Killen in Breadalbane. His mother was local from Drumcharry above Kenmore, his father then a policeman originally from Duthill in Inverness-shire, who moved within the county with the job, eventually being posted to Perth itself, there leaving the force to become an Insurance Agent and then a hotelier. 

Thus it was that Campbell grew up in Perth, on leaving school became an Apprentice Law Clerk and joined recently-formed, local St. Johnstone, turning out for the first team as a defender. The club at the time was amateur, playing at a level no higher than The Perthshire Cup, with a first Scottish Cup appearance in 18886, and continued to do so as Bob briefly moved to Edinburgh to complete qualification as a solicitor. However, he returned in 1901, went into practice and at not quite thirty turned his hand to football administration, from which point his achievements both for club and country can simply be listed below with particular emphasis on 1924 to 1933, when through largely his efforts a rift between Scottish junior and British, senior football, the "Intermediate Dispute", was resolved, as were the American Soccer Wars, Scottish international football was instigated, he himself going to Canada, British, as English club's sought to control it, and perhaps World international football preserved, and St. Johnstone became a top-flight club with a ground to match.  

Soon after returning to Perth in 1901 Bob Campbell would in 1903 marry. His bride was local girl, Henrietta Hampton, with whom he would have seven children, two boys and five girls. And the family would settle into a house, named for the village, in which his mother had been born, that would remain home for a quarter of a century, indeed until his passing in 1938 at the age of just sixty-five, with an argument to be made that he had in part worked himself for sport, club and country to an early grave. He would be buried in Perth's Wellshills Cemetery, there to joined by Henrietta in 1965 and several of his children.

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