In November 1872 something happened. It was the World's first Association football international, in Glasgow but expected to be something of a walk-over for the away-team, England. It proved, thanks to intra-club familiarity, some with-ball talent and nous and the organisational, read tactical, ability of the Scottish captain on the day, Robert Gardner, a little different. It was also the catalyst for the creation of four specifically Association football teams in Dunbartonshire along the banks of the River Leven that flows the five miles from Loch Lomond to The Clyde and then more clubs elsewhere; by less than a year later at least sixteen in all. 

In the meantime four more games had taken place, all important. The first, it is reported, had been on 21st December 1872, the second on 11th January 1873, the third on 15th February  and the last on 1st March, two in Glasgow's southern suburbs, two not and all between the same two teams, Queen's Park, Scotland's doyen, and Vale of Leven F.C., The Vale. The first and last would be wins for the former, but the middle two, the younger club clearly learning fast, were goalless draws.   

More games followed after the summer-break, not least now with the instigation under the auspices of the almost equally new Scottish Football Association of the first Scottish Football Association Challenge Cup, the "Scottish Cup". But The Vale was not to be there. Its second nearest and neo-contemporary neighbour, Dumbarton, had accused one of its player of being that heinous thing, a professional. It was a try-on. The player in question, Johnny Ferguson, at twenty-four an old man in a young man's game but who nevertheless would become football's working-class star, had won prize-money only for running. But it was a stoochie, despite Ferguson nevertheless in the meantime being chosen for Scotland, that, at club level at least, would take two years properly to resolve. So Queen's Park found itself in December 1873 in the semi-final meeting Renton, the third of four brand new Vale of Leven's clubs. It had eliminated Dumbarton in the previous round and just now would be eliminated itself.       

Thus there were by October 1873 already three obvious clubs in the Vale of Leven, four with a second Dumbarton club, Alcutha, also there in the background. And that a year later would become six, three now in Alexandria with the addition of Star of Leven and Vale of Leven Rovers. The former would last a decade, the latter at least four seasons. Both would never get beyond the Cup's Second Round. But Renton, with The Vale effectively still excluded, had done so for a second time. In fact in April 1875 it was to go all the way to the final, there, having kept it scoreless for more than an hour, to beaten by Queen's Park once more.

It was all very encouraging and in 1875-76 enough for a further club, Renton Thistle, the seventh to join the fray and from Queen's Park Juniors receive a walk-over into the Second Round. Moreover, finally unhindered The Vale would get to that same next round after walking-over Vale of Leven Rovers. And it would be both The Vale, via Renton and Mauchline and Dumbarton via Renton Thistle and a bye that would make it to the semi-finals with, however, neither making it further. The Cathcart combination of Queen's Park and Third Lanark contested the final that season. 

But there had been successes elsewhere and more to come. In March of 1875 in the Cup semi-final eventually won by Queen's Park it had conceded its first goals ever, to Clydesdale and a brace. Indeed it had had to come from behind not once but twice. Then in February 1876 it lost its first match, 2-0 in London to the Wanderers. Reasons given were that because of injury they essentially played with ten men and interestingly the pitch had been narrowed, the home team clearly wanting to constrict the visitors' game. And finally in December 1876 the Hampden team lost its first game to Scottish opposition. It was in the Quarter-Final of the Cup, it was at home and to The Vale, the last survivor of seven Leven teams that had in September entered the competition, Queen's Park having held the lead at half-time.

The game had and would not be without controversy, as would the Final be also, one which The Vale would go on to win via two replays and a remarkable total of 35,000 being thought to have watched the three matches. But it marked three things. The first was Queen's Park as a team was fading and would not be a driving-force in the Scottish game for another three seasons after it had actively recruited to rebuild its playing-strength. The second was that The Vale was the coming-team and would be that driving-force for those same three years. It would have a trio of Scottish Cup wins in a row and do it with a combination perhaps of greater fitness due to its players' working-class lives but also because of positional innovation in attack and then team-linkage. The six forwards would become notated in pairs, first across the pitch, as a 2-2-6, and working in combination, and subsequently then vertically as 2-2-3-3 with the source being quite possibly shinty, the winter game played along the Leven from its source to its mouth before the Association game and then still practiced. And, thirdly with nine teams in the 1877-8 Cup with the addition of Alexandria, based around the town's cricket club, and 10th Dumbarton RV, then Jamestown joining the following season to make ten, the baton would be passed on locally, so locally that today between Jamestown and Dumbarton it is just twelve minutes in a car. In 1879-80 Dumbarton, having eliminated both The Vale, in a seven-goal, First-Round tussle, and Renton on the way, would reach the semi-final only to be beaten but a single goal in the second half by eventual champions, a re-emergent Queen's Park. 

And thus it seems there is a more than adequate argument that a coherent, distinctive style of very successful Scottish play, began to emerge not so much from Queen's Park to 1876 but under The Vale to 1880, with it being adopted by the other Leven teams, also by the "new" Queen's  Park, by the West of Scotland at least, Edinburgh going something of its own way with its earlier adoption of the Welsh developed 2-3-5, and by the Scottish national team that was not to lose a game in a decade. And that distinctive style is again reflected in the almost complete dominance of the Scottish Cup by the Hampden club and first two, Dumbarton and The Vale ,and then three Leven clubs for the next seven campaigns. And this may have been longer still had that third, a re-emergent Renton, and Leven clubs more generally not been, in the case of the former, "raided" by a nascent Celtic and then the collective "pillaged" by clubs Down South, Renton having from 1884 developed and in 1888 revealed, indeed unleashed, a final ingredient to the mix, the Scottish Centre-Half; it taking that distinctive and repeatedly successful football already played in Scotland from a "Style" to a "Game", arguably eventually the World Game.             

It meant that in a rapidly changing football scene on both sides of the border as the source was effectively drained to dry only Dumbarton would survive long-term. Alcutha and the 10th RV from that same town are long gone as major teams, as are Jamestown, Alexandria's Star of Leven and Vale of Leven Rovers, Renton Thistle too, and, of course, The Vale and Renton themselves. But is does not change the facts.