In previous pieces on the SFHG web-site we have looked in greater depths at the history and, as it seems to turn out, the myths of not the foundations of modern football, because, contrary to some versions, it did not happen all in a one, but was "created" over thirty to a hundred years, depending on stand-point. Those looks, with huge thanks to the top-quality research done by our colleagues in that city, have included the great role Sheffield played not just through the formulation of its own version of the game but also that in the encouragement of the Association one at its London birth in 1863 and in its early, very rocky first half-dozen years. Also there have been the challenges to Sheffield's role after and even to the idea that Association football began as a game of the Public Schools and upper-classes. In the former case, as the Association game began to prosper, not least with the arrival of it in Scotland, the Yorkshire city's game first imploded, probably due to local politics and mismanagement, and over the best part of two decades struggled as it gradually merged it own take on kicking a specifically round ball into that of the London-based one. In the latter the facts seem to show that the Football Association in London was begun by well-to-do members of the upper middle-class, most of whom having not been anywhere near Eton etc. and was then infiltrated and usurped by the Public schools to subsequently and falsely claimed as their own.  

But there is a third area of football myth to challenge, that of the creations of Scottish football and more particularly the way that Scotland took to the game and then carried it forward with one team, Glasgow's Queen's Park, presented as both the Standard-Bearer and standard-maker, when there were two more both from the Vale of Leven, the valley of the Dunbartonshire River Leven so outwith Glasgow; they being Vale of Leven, F.C., "The Vale", from the parish of Bonhill and the town Alexandria and from the parish of Cardross and the village of Renton, Renton F.C.. And, whilst we will here look, because it is formulaic, at the role of the Glasgow former, it is on the Leven latter that this piece concentrates. 

And the story begins not in late but early 1872. In March Queen's Park, having received byes to the semi-final of the first London FA Challenge Cup, the FA Cup, travelled to London to face The Wanderers. The result was a draw and, with the visitors unable to finance travel to the replay, the visitors had to default. But the one meeting that did take place tells us several things. The first is that, in order to take part Queen's Park accepted two things, that Association football was a winter game and the London rather than its own version. The second is that two facts emerged, a) we know the team - Gardner, Edmiston, Hepburn, Ker, Leckie, J Smith, R. Smith, Taylor, Walker, Weir and Wotherspoon - and b) just now we do not know the formation.     

We also know that, whilst the internationals between England-Scotland, now designated as unofficial, all of which had taken place also in London, the first in March 1870 and last just a month earlier had had not inconsiderable Press-attention, this club match generated still more but actually not much on-field activity. A month later a single match was played against Granville, newly officially-formed just up a few hundred yards up the road at Myrtle Park. It too was a nil-nil draw

In fact the next game was not to be until 28th August and the one after that on 19th October, against Airdrie, an emphatic 6-0 win, and Granville once more, again a win 4-0. But there was a difference. In both cases we have the teams - Gardner, Wotherspoon, Taylor, Thomson, McKenzie, Leckie, Weir, Ker, McKnnon, Rae and then Thomson, Taylor, Gardner, Hepburn, Lockie, Weir, Wotherspoon, Grant, Rhind, McKinnon and Rae respectively with captain, Robert Gardiner, in the first playing in goal and in the second as a half-back, but crucially we also have the formations. In the second match Queen's Park seems to have played, as was the case with English teams of the era, 1-2-7 but in the former it had been a completely innovative 2-2-6, the same shape that was to be employed, in the last encounter of the year, played now in Glasgow and the World's first official international.

Now at this point we have to wind back slightly. At some point still in 1872 in the Summer or Autumn Queen's Park, as part of its programme of demonstrating specifically the Association game and creating opponents had travelled to the valley of the Dunbartonshire Leven, specifically the Park Neuk recreation-ground in Alexandria. No-one knows exactly when it was but Vale of Leven Football Club is said to have been formed on 20th August, suggesting it may have been then but also that it might have caused formational experimentation just a fortnight later.