Intro

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 its "creation" over thirty to a hundred years, depending on stand-point and, sadly sometimes, prejudice. 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 in the encouragement almost to the point of midwifery 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 then role from 1870 and even to the idea that Association football began as a game of the Public Schools and upper-classes. In the former, as the full Association game began to prosper, not least with the arrival of it in 1871 to Scotland, the Yorkshire city's game first imploded, seemingly due to local politics and mismanagement, and over the best part of two decades struggled as it gradually subsumed 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 be subsequently, and falsely, even distastefully claimed as their own.  

But closer to home there is a third area of football myth to challenge, that of the creation of Scottish football and more particularly the way that Scotland took to the game and then carried it forward. Here one team, Glasgow's Queen's Park and "its passing game", which in fact had already been used in both Sheffield and London, has been and is still often presented as both the Standard-Bearer and standard-maker, see the inexact gas-lighting by again Glasgow's Football Square Mile, when the reality is 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 of Alexandria and just to the south from the parish of Cardross and the village of Renton, Renton F.C.. And, whilst here at SFHG, because our approach aspires to be, first, neutral, second national and at all times philosophically forensic, even scientific, we have and will continue to look at the role of the Glasgow former, it is on the Leven latter that the six episodes of this piece concentrate. - IPCW

Episode 1 - The Making

Episode 2 - The Passing-Game

Episode 3 - Our Scots Game's First Eleven

Episode 4 - The Un-Making

Episode 5 - The Re-Making

Episode 6 - The Breaking