So first a resume, a rapid recapitulation. In 1878, having made it to the second round of the Cup only to be thrashed 11-0 by Vale of Leven, Renton Thistle, the village's second but still senior club, allowed a first round walk-over in the September of the following season and was then, having played one further game in October, seemingly dissolved. And in 1881 the pattern of walk-over and dissolution was repeated by Renton F.C. itself, this as The Vale stuttered in 1879 but regrouped, rebuilt and came again to reach successive Cup finals in 1883 and 1884.

But this is, as newly identified, not to say that football ceased in Renton. The fire was still smouldering and through a third club, exploits of which are monitorable only in the local papers of the time. It was Renton Wanderers, the name of which implies a somewhat ad hoc nature and, albeit Tontine Park must have been under-employed, no fixed ground. In 1880 it had at least one match, in October, two more at the end of the 1880-81 season, one in January 1882, another in February and a third in December, so the following season. And two names for the future, Andrew Hannah and John McNee are said by 1882, then aged 18 and 16 and living on Renton Main St. and at Succoth Farm respectively, to have emerged from it, plus David Hannah, aged fifteen and in Park Buildings, from non-existent Renton Thistle, so perhaps a third. Moreover, we know from the 1880 fixture two of the players to have shown up the best, Lindsay and McIntyre, the former perhaps in David Lindsay a link to the past via shinty and The Vale and the latter a link forward to the near future. 

The emergence itself would be from early September 1882. Having re-joined the SFA that summer Renton - version two - was once more eligible to enter the Cup. And that it did, going from nowhere on a mini-run, albeit with a team, of which just now we have not one detail. In the first round it defeated Dumbarton's Alcutha 1-3 away. In the second on the last day of the month it was Southfield from Slamannan, away once more and impressively 1-14. Then at the end of October Falkirk was accounted for 4-1 at home, after a 2-2 draw away. Only in fourth round did the opposition prove too much. Lugar Boswell came to Tontine and won, but it must still have been an epic encounter, the final score being 3-5. 

However, despite the successes the second thing, after team-sheets, that did not re-emerge was Press interest. But it would, when on 8th September 1883, with the initial Cup rounds played regionally, the holder, Dumbarton, travelled the ten minutes on the railway to Tontine and was defeated, 2-1. It was to prove seismic, albeit initially sedately so. The Glasgow Herald would quietly write:

"It may be remembered that the Renton club succeeded some years ago in running into the final tie, and played with the Queen's Park but on that occasion they were unsuccessful, since then the club has been little heard of, Saturday's team being an entirely new one." 

And, whilst this time the run only went as far as third round, a win 6-1 win at home over Kings Park from Stirling but then a loss up the road away to The Vale, 4-1, there are team-sheets known and finally further reports of other, friendly games. In terms of the latter in a 6-1 victory over Paisley Athletic its "brilliant passing had been very much admired" and at the end of the season in April, it would again lose to Vale of Leven, 4-2, but do so in a match that was "well-contested", The Vale having just been runner-up in the Cup-final and on a walk-over. And in terms of the former three things become clear. 

The first is that the Renton players were by the footballing standards of the times not in the flush of youth. Whilst Bob Kelso and James McCall might have been just eighteen and Andrew Hanna by now nineteen, Archie McCall and Donald McKechnie were already twenty-two, the younger of the two McIntyres, along with several others, twenty-one and his probable, older brother appears to have been an old man of twenty-three. 

The second is that they, about eighteen in total, were a very local, close, village group, although one which remarkably was within five years to prove of national, indeed, international, importance. Of the main eleven Archie McCall, half-brother, James, plus Donald McKechnie, John Lindsay and Andrew Hannah were all living on Main St.. Alick Barbour was on Back St., as was Joseph Thomson, Hannah's future brother-in-law. Meanwhile Bob Kelso stayed on Thimble St.. Then throw into the mix the McIntyres, probably Alexander and John, both from Stirling St., aged 23 and 21 respectively, whose elder sister, Christina, had a decade earlier married John Kelso, Bob Kelso's elder brother. And that leaves just John Mall, perhaps McColl, possibly an Irishman, who emigrated to America, or maybe from Jamestown. 

And third is that, having been aged between fourteen and nineteen or twenty when the first Renton folded, they must somewhere have learned and, under the radar, had considerable practice, perhaps mostly in-house, at what they were obviously able to do so well, with really only one candidate known, the shadowy but clearly very effective Renton Wanderers.

But the Dumbarton Cup-tie would not be the first game Renton had played that season. A week earlier on 30th August there had been an odd one on-the-face-of-it, again at home, a first against non-Scottish opposition, won substantially 10-1 but also perhaps the result of former more glorious times. The away-team was Irwell Springs, the club from the Irwell Springs Dyeing Works, the Irwell being Manchester's river. The team still exists today, now as Bacup Borough, Bacup being the adjacent town. The club had been formed in 1879, one of the last in that East Lancashire footballing hot-spot and by two brothers, John and Robert Rankine, said both to have been "former Vale of Leven players", the assumption being that they had played for The Vale. It is unlikely. They were not Vale-men. Both had been born in Rutherglen, where its football club had been founded in 1875, but there is a link and it is not to Alexandria.

Both John and Robert were in the textile trade and it was that, which had in 1878 taken them, the former aged twenty-two and the latter twenty, from Scotland to Bacup in the first place. John was a Turkey-Red Dyer, Robert, a cotton yarn dyer, who would eventually become the works manager but a clear, Scottish passion for football was in the meantime and in what would become their permanent home a driving force outwith their professional lives. And in settling John would marry a local, Bacup girl, whilst Robert would shortly after arrival return to Rutherglen for his bride, Annie, with whom he would have seven children. But in 1891 she died and a year later Robert at thirty-four would remarry. His new wife would be twenty-four. Her name was Magdaline Gillespie. She had been born in 1868 in Dumbarton and as a girl in 1881 had been living there on on the east side of the river in Levenbank St. so in the parish of Cardross, the same parish as Renton, and was still there in 1891 by then a Printfield Worker, presumably at Dalquhurn. 

It suggests that certainly Robert knew the valley of the Leven, had maintained contacts there, might even have briefly worked and lived there in the mid-1870s, could even with his brother have played football there and be held in high enough esteem in wider Cardross not just for the 1883 visit, but another exactly a year later and then a third game, on 2nd April 1885 this time in Bacup. It would be the first but far from the last time Renton would demonstrate its emerging abilities outwith Scotland. Indeed, that third game would be part of a Lancashire tour, but one which still suggested frailties. Irwell would be beaten, yet this time only 1-3 , but the game the following day against Blackburn Olympic was lost 3-1 and the one the day after that against Bolton Wanderers was also a defeat, 2-1.

In the meantime the 1883-4 season in Scotland had seen, as already mentioned, the Tontine team after the knocking out of The Sons of Rock progress to a third round defeat to The Vale, which itself would go to the defaulted final. Then Renton's 1884-5 campaign would start with a narrow first round win over Alexandria's other team, Vale of Leven Wanderers, be followed by a far easier 2-10 victory over East Stirlingshire in the second and another, 9-2, over Northern from Glasgow in the third, this as notional Cup-winner, Queen's Park, was knocked out. Then November's fourth round would produce a narrow home win over St. Mirren and the there was a stroke of luck, perhaps two. The club was granted a bye into the quarter finals and there defeated Rangers, did the same to Hibernian in Edinburgh in the semi-final and thus had only to face Vale of Leven in the last match and this time emerge with a replay- victory.         

And over the same period there had been other changes. More generally the first player from the whole valley of the Leven to have gone South professionally had been Dan Friel. It had been in the summer of 1883, he had played for The Vale, been twenty-two, had left for Accrington but was uncapped. But the next to go the following season and from the same club was more immediately notable. It was Sandy McLintock, capped three times, aged thirty and Burnley-bound. This was as his home-club was, albeit that Johnny Ferguson was still playing at thirty-four, rebuilding for a second time. As to Renton by the end of the 1884-5 season and the final, whilst the defence remained settled, Alex Grant had had come in for the younger McIntyre and in the wing-pairing with Alick Barbour the replacement of the mysterious Mall was a certain, nineteen year-old James Kelly.   

And the 1885-6 campaign was for that same club in terms of personnel to start much the same. John Lindsay was in goal. Hannah and Archie McCall were the full-backs, McKechnie and Kelso the preferred half-backs in a 2-2-6. That is until December against Cowlairs. There for apparently the first time three half-backs was tried with a player called Watt between the two incumbents. It, the 2-3-5 system, was, however, not new. A formation to have come out of Wales in 1878, Midland and now Northern teams in England were already using it, Edinburgh football had also turned to it early with Nick Ross, even when he had joined Preston from Hearts, a notable exponent. And from Auld Reekie it had been creeping westward, in addition to which all the international teams except Scotland now employed it too. Nor did it even at Tontine go away but went change-about. For the following game 2-2-6 was reverted to but against Edinburgh's Hibernian in the one after that, man-on-man, it appeared to be back with now erstwhile half-cum inside- forward, Alex Grant, in the middle of the three, whilst for the Cup Final against Queen's Park on 13th February the line-up was back to Renton conventional.  

But then came the PNE debacle. It was to be the clubs' first meeting. It took place on 27th March 1886 and in Preston at Deepdale. There were nineteen Scots on the pitch on the day. North End, as they had for much of a season that had see them undefeated and only handful of draws, fielded eight as Renton was massacred 7-0 but with no possibility clearly that it was anything to do with national styles. It was personnel or tactics, this as Dewhurst scored after fifteen minutes, then young Jimmy Ross hit two, his brother Nick one, from full-back, as did John Goodall, Jack Gordon and even known hard-tackler, Davie Russell, from defensive, repeat defensive centre-half one also. And it led after the match to Renton's then captain, a soul-searching Alick Barbour, sitting down with his opposite number, Nick Ross, and getting him to explain in detail what Preston was doing and Renton was not. It proved to be a revolutionary conversation although not quite yet. The club had first to return to a home-match against Hibernian once more, a 3-5 defeat.

However, obviously more thinking was needed and change necessary with both perhaps first showing their faces in a 6-2 defeat in a friendly at home of Aston Villa on about 20th August 1886, but with no team and therefore formation known. However, we do know on the 25th September 1886 at the start of the new home season Renton faced Rangers and again played three half-backs, Kelso, Kelly and a new name from the second team, Allison, with Barbour and an another new-comer, seventeen-year-old John Campbell as the right-wing pairing. But then it was back to the more conventional but with Kelly then being moved about still more. He and Barbour were at right-wing for the next game and three weeks later with Campbell back he and and McIntyre, presumably the more advanced of the two, were the central pairing. 

And it is at this point that in still captain Alick Barbour's mind something must have been taking more solid shape. Throughout November, December and into January 1887 the formation remained the same against home-grown clubs and in defeat of visitors alike;  Accrington in October, a home draw with Blackburn Rovers in November and an away win in Blackburn in December. Indeed, if something were gelling, it needed to not least because in January Preston was coming north not for one but two games a week apart, a friendly and an FA Cup tie. 

The friendly was on 15th and ended as a 2-2 draw. But on 22nd Preston got down to business. The result for Renton was a 0-2 home defeat, the response to which and the fact that the Dunbartonshire team had never yet beaten the Lancashire one was that first Barbour dropped himself, bringing in a further new name, Neil McCallum from Bonhill, himself replaced Kelly for the game after that, then brought him back and played himself on the wing with either Campbell or McCallum for the remainder of the season, which was going more or less to end with an April tour to, you have guessed it, Lancashire once more.  

It would not go well. The first game was yet again against North End. It was a 2-1 defeat. Then came draws at both Burnley and Bolton Wanderers, at which point but aged just twenty-five Barbour clearly decided at his home-town club at least he had done what he could. That summer he joined the Bolton club and, whilst he returned to Renton or more specifically to Bonhill village to live out his life after football, he would spend the rest of his on-field and coaching days across The Border. 

As such he would be the first Renton player to make such a move, although there had been more leakage from The Vale. In the summer of 1886 Robert McRae had gone effectively from its second team. Without him having played a first-team game of note again Burnley acquired his services Then the summer after it would be Will McColl to Morton with George Davie at twenty-three and a centre-forward moving briefly to Renton and eighteen year-old James Cowan going the other way, both probably feeling their paths blocked by talent ahead. And this was as, meanwhile, the captain's armband at Renton would between the end of season 1886-7 and start of 1887-8 be passed to Archie McCall. 

And at that point quite simply something extra happened. Perhaps it was generally maturity and timing, perhaps it was that McCall's by then twenty-six year-old head had in it ideas for fine-tuning or that he just had different leadership qualities. The suspicion is that it was a little of all three, a combination of more experience throughout the team, an adjustment of Kelly as the normally central one in the half-back trio from an emphasis on defensive duties a la Preston to more attacking ones, as might befit a player, who had begun as a proto-inside-forward, and an ability to cajole a still relatively inexperienced Kelly, perhaps by McColl himself and now from behind, to hold a position behind the five forwards but not between but in front of the Scottish tradition of just two half-backs. And the results were to be spectacular. With a fairly steady first-team and a total pool of about twenty-five players by the turn of the year they were in the Cup semi-final with a tally of thirty-nine goals for and six against and here is the run of games from then, the 1st January, to the denouement at the season's end.                     

2nd January 1888 Dundee Harp - Renton 0 - 5

3rd January 1888 Forfar Athletic - Renton 0 - 4

14th January 1888 Renton - Queen's Park 3 - 1

in the Scottish Cup semi-final

21st January 1888 Dumbarton Athletic - Renton 0 - 2 

in the Dunbartonshire Cup 

4th February 1888 Renton - Cambuslang 6 - 1 

for the Scottish Cup Final

11th February 1888 Renton - Vale of Leven 1 - 2

for the Dunbartonshire Cup Final

25th February 1888 Hearts - Renton 0 - 3

3rd March 1888 Rangers - Renton 3 - 7

(10th March 1888 Scotland - Wales)

and Queen's Park - Renton 1 - 1

(17th March 1888 Scotland - England) 4 players in Scotland team

(24th March 1888 Ireland - Scotland)

and Partick Thistle - Renton 2 - 4

31st March 1888 Renton - St Mirren 3 - 2

7th April 1888 Kilmarnock - Renton 1 - 1

14th April 1888 Renton - Morton 2 - 2 

19th April 1888 Queen's Park - Renton 2 - 2

for the Glasgow Charity Cup

21st April 1888 Sunderland - Renton 2 - 4

28th April 1888 Vale of Leven - Renton 0 - 5

2nd May 1888 Queen's Park - Renton 0 - 2

for the Glasgow Charity Cup replay

8th May 1888 Rangers - Renton 1 - 5

12th May 1888 Renton - Cambuslang 4 - 1 

for the Glasgow Merchants Charity Cup

19th May 1888 Renton - West Bromwich Albion 4 - 1

for the "World Championship"

26th May 1888 Scoto-English played Scoto-Welsh

(The Scotland players against England v the Scotland players against Wales) 

28th May 1888 Celtic's first game 

2nd June 1888 Renton - Preston NE 4 - 2

for the "World Championship" II

In the twenty-six games over five months four finals (and they say modern, professional footballers play too much) were reached and three won. There was just the one defeat, to The Vale in the Dunbartonshire Cup. There were three draws, two when resources were stretched by internationals, one to Queen's Park. Seventy-two goals were scored for and twenty-four conceded, exactly 3:1 and, as well as taking the Scottish Cup then playing and roundly defeating the English Cup winners, West Bromwich, to become de jure World Champions, they finally beat Preston, which the following year would be the World's first Double-winners.

Oh, to have seen a rematch that following season but it would never be because at that moment the Renton World as was would fall apart, a combination of rapaciousness and from each side of the border. First came the departure to newly-formed Celtic of both James Kelly himself, there to be captain, and Neilly McCallum, but it should be remembered that also Andrew Hannah went initially to West Bromwich, Frank Dyer to Bolton, George Davie to Everton and William Brady to Burnley, a ration of 2 to 1, South of the Border to North. And Vale of Leven almost by proximity was not immune either. It lost James Coyne also to Everton and from its first eleven John Forbes to Blackburn and Tom McLean to Notts Co., so two North and seven South so far. 

And the drain would continue at the end of the following campaign with from Renton John Lindsay going and once more to Accrington, Andrew Hannah, another to Everton, Harry Campbell also to Blackburn, John McNee to Bolton Wanderers and even Frank Dyer brought back from Bolton to replace Kelly taking himself to Vale of Leven. And to that, never mind Dumbarton was now being similarly impacted, must be added The Vale's further losses of John Baird to Aston Villa, Frank Dyer off again, this time to Warwick County and James Cowan again to Warwick County before Aston Villa, so from the two upper-Leven clubs one North and seven South from that season alone and totalling three and fourteen overall thus far.

But even then it did not stop. In the summer of 1890 Renton was virtually cleaned out. John Harvey and John Campbell went to Sunderland, David Hannah to again Sunderland and then Liverpool, Patrick Gordon to Everton, Billy Fraser to Stoke and Robert McDermid to Accrington. Whilst the exodus from The Vale comprised John Murray to Sunderland, Alex Paton to West Manchester, Archie Osborne to Notts County, James McLachlan to Derby Co., John Walker to Grimsby Town and Daniel Paton to Aston Villa. That is twelve, all heading South, so now three still North and twenty-six South.  

And by the middle of 1891 it was even worse. From Renton Duncan McLean had moved to Everton, George Campbell and James Brown to Aston Villa, Harry Gardiner to Bolton, Duncan McNair to Middlesbrough Ironopolis, John McNee back to Bolton, John Cameron to Stoke, John Duncan to Notts Forest, Willie McArthur to Sunderland Albion and George Davie to Arsenal. Whilst from The Vale they were accompanied by Andrew Whitelaw to Notts Co., James Sharp to Preston, John Baird to Aston Villa, James McMillan to Everton, the returned McCallum to Nottingham Forest and Malcolm McVean to Liverpool.

Moreover, still there was no end. 1892 would see the departures or re-departures from Renton of Andrew Hannah, James McBride and James Kelso, all to Liverpool, and Thomas Towie briefly to Celtic and then Derby County. In 1893 its was Gilbert Rankin across to Vale of Leven, Robert Glen to The Wednesday, John Cowan to Preston North End and Aston Villa and Andrew Hannah back to Liverpool, whilst in 1894 it would Jack McNee, now to Newcastle Utd and Jock Bell to Wolverhampton Wanderers. This as The Vale saw the departures in 1892 of Daniel Bruce to Rangers and Johnny Darroch also to The Wednesday, in 1893 amazingly none and finally in 1894 Duncan (Mc)Nichol to Darwen. 

It meant in the seven season from 1888 there were something like seventy-eight net out-flows to English clubs and and ten to Scottish ones, eighty-eight in all or eight teams, one plus a season. It was, of course, unsustainable. Indeed, the clubs would begin a long wither-on-the-vine, this whilst ex-players and the few originals who remained in Scotland taught and/or demonstrated to the rest of the nation the distinctive Renton cum Leven way of play, those who went as a new wave of this time more properly qualified "Scotch Professors" to England did the same there and with in time, largely but not entirely the former, taking the same to the wider World. It would be a still distinctive but now renewed Scottish style of play, the new Scottish Game with a mobile, attacking, passing rather than defensive, non-Preston, pivotal centre-half, essentially the first, dedicated mid-field and, dare it be said, not unlike shinty's "full-centre". He would be positioned in front of narrow half-backs with full-backs now able to widen and all behind a forward-line, already operating in vertical pairings that had or would soon produce from the back-up- or half-forwards of the old system inside-forwards, right and left. And from those adjustments would emerge the concept of those same inside-forwards fetching and carrying, the one-man mid-field becoming at times three, and almost organically until really the Hungarians the again Scottish adaption of the half-backs marking inside-forwards and full-backs the wingers. The long-term superiority of this final concept was nowhere better expressed than by Jimmy Mullen, the experienced Scotland captain a full forty years later on the victory of the Wembley Wizards of 1928. He said: 

"I want to emphasise that all our forwards are inherently clever. ... But I wish to say that the English tactics were wrong. The Saxon wing-halves paid more attention to the wingers than the inside forwards – therefore the latter were given a lot of space. It is a common thing in England to let wing halves, and not fullbacks, mark the wingers. It doesn’t pay and I don’t know why they pursue it." 

To which he might have added. "I feel sure that the wider, global, footballing World will not make the same mistake."