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ScotsFoundedFootball

@gedboy58.bsky.social

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Football History of the Scotch Professor. Telling the story of how Scotland invented modern world football. Working to Preserve, Protect and Publicise the history of the game from a Scottish perspective and crush the myth that England invented the game.

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ScotsFoundedFootball @gedboy58.bsky.social · Aug 7

A non-Football point about Privacy and Data protection. I have not signed up to the new UK laws on Identity. Bluesky seem to be using a games company to harvest my details before I can get back on my messages. Nah. Not going to happen. I am skeptical. [email protected] if you need to contact me.

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ScotsFoundedFootball @gedboy58.bsky.social · 1h

4 of 4 So what? If Scotland is mentioned, it is a problem. It is apparently not the solution for the whole world. It is hard to see the writer in this edited work: most likely WJ Oakley or GO Smith - both Corinthians. Scotland is almost completely ignored. THIS is how you change the narrative.

ScotsFoundedFootball @gedboy58.bsky.social · 1h

3 of 4 The growth of clubs like Southampton FC f. 1885 is not a good thing. Why? p.274 ‘...local talent is conspicuous by its absence.’ It gets worse. Who are the culprits? Local youths have ‘become spectators instead of players, preferring to watch the paid gladiators from Scotland’. GLADIATORS.

ScotsFoundedFootball @gedboy58.bsky.social · 1h

2 of 4 The books follow the same, blinkered path. I will pick one issue: professionalism.The only people who love the game are apparently the amateurs. In a passive aggressive manner, we are left to imagine the professional’s attitude to football. Warning: contains anti-Scottish tropes.

ScotsFoundedFootball @gedboy58.bsky.social · 1h

1 of 4 #scotsfoundedfootball From the 1890s onwards there was a surge in publication of books about the history of the game. Most of the pioneers were still around, though in their 60s, so it made sense. 1904 ‘The Badminton Library of Sports and Pastimes’.

Front Cover: the Badminton Library of Sports and Pastimes' published 19045. Brown cover with a picture in brown tones (known as Brunaille) of a wooden chair and table and sports equipment such as a cricket bat leaning against the chair.

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ScotsFoundedFootball @gedboy58.bsky.social · 19h

5 of 5 So What? I am not overly interested in Football Stats. Read a book of them if that floats your boat. The true meaning of Scottish Combination lies in it being a window to the human condition: the best parts of us. Brisbane John deserves a better grave.

ScotsFoundedFootball @gedboy58.bsky.social · 19h

4 of 5 Here’s a thing. I don’t believe in coincidences so the Johnny Jaap from Bellshill who played for Bethlehem Steel and had ten games for Hearts 1930-31 is surely related to our John Jaap from Glasgow University. We are talking about a name that is going to be one of the rarest in Scotland.

ScotsFoundedFootball @gedboy58.bsky.social · 19h

3 of 5 This is one of the myriad reasons why Football is the world’s greatest cultural phenomenon. It is more important than a way of filling your leisure time. The Scientific Game helped the mentally ill. It did not involve dangerous physical excess. It was a positive thing for the poor souls.

ScotsFoundedFootball @gedboy58.bsky.social · 19h

2 of 5 He is an example of the Scottish intelligentsia’s part in the spread of Scottish Combination around the world. Glasgow University awarded him his MD in 1858 and he was made MRCSE in 1861. We are looking at a guy whose profession was not Football, but Football was a tool for his profession.

ScotsFoundedFootball @gedboy58.bsky.social · 19h

1 of 5 #scotsfoundedfootball On behalf of the Scots Football Historians’ Group, I went to pay my respects at the grave of Dr. John Jaap. He is buried in Toowong Cemetery, Brisbane. He was a valued member of the local medical profession, being Surgeon-Superintendent of the Woogaroo Lunatic Asylum.

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ScotsFoundedFootball @gedboy58.bsky.social · 21h

@fotc.au If there is ever a Football tour (no - I will not call it sokkah) then you will start with Dr. John Jaap of Woogaroo Lunatic Asylum. #scotsfoundedfootball

ScotsFoundedFootball @gedboy58.bsky.social · 1d

The grave of Dr. John Jaap of Woogaroo Lunatic Asylum died 1877. Interred Toowong Cemetery. And Glasgow University.

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ScotsFoundedFootball @gedboy58.bsky.social · 1d

5 of 5 So what? Hammer this point home whenever you can. Arguing about types of throw-in or the height of goalposts is a waste of time. You have to start and finish on the idea of Combination and the practice required to perfect it. That is part of Scottish culture. Tell me again how England...

ScotsFoundedFootball @gedboy58.bsky.social · 1d

4 of 5 It isn’t the rules: that’s how. Taking a Sheffield mark. Having a three person London Offside. Hacking. Rouges. Scrimmaging. All irrelevant, when placed against the only Football concept that matters: Scottish Combination. THIS is why Scotland invented the modern world game.

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ScotsFoundedFootball @gedboy58.bsky.social · 1d

3 of 5 Individually they played well and determinedly, but the tactics of the home team prevailed...’ One of the best teams in England - who had played Nottingham, London, Sheffield and Scottish Rules, were utterly destroyed by the #scotchprofessor How could this have happened?

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ScotsFoundedFootball @gedboy58.bsky.social · 1d

2 of 5 Notts County were one of the first provincial teams to have players capped by London: Cursham and E. H. Greenhalgh played against QPFC. However: ‘The strangers, too, lacked the combination so observable in the play of their opponents, and seldom ventured the “passing” game at all.

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ScotsFoundedFootball @gedboy58.bsky.social · 1d

1 of 5 #scotsfoundedfootball In the 1876 match I tweeted about yesterday, what did the Paper say about Notts County? A Club in that no-man’s land between Sheffield Rules and London Rules. In 1879 QPFC played Notts County at 1st Hampden: Sheffield Rules 1st half Scottish 2nd. 4-0 to the Spiders.

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ScotsFoundedFootball @gedboy58.bsky.social · 2d

I will be taking Peter Eedy’s expert comments and looking at all my pics in the hotel but the historical evidence and my site visit give me hope I am on the right lines.

ScotsFoundedFootball @gedboy58.bsky.social · 2d

Notice the steep drop to the river. I am standing up where the main building was in 1875. The Club House uses a building from the 1950s. The first inmates arrived by boat from Brisbane. I think it was just outside the Brisbane boundary.

Photo of the First Hole, looking through the trees and across to the Brisbane River. On the left is the Wolston Park Golf Club House.

ScotsFoundedFootball @gedboy58.bsky.social · 2d

When the Brisbane River floods - it really floods. A wee boat dumped on top of the roof of a shed from the last floods. The original planners in the 19th century were misinformed about the flooding issues.

Wolston Park Golf Club Brisbane. First site of Woogaroo Lunatic Asylum where Football was played in 1875. There is a boat dumped on top of a shed from the last floods. Three metres high flat crinkle roof.

ScotsFoundedFootball @gedboy58.bsky.social · 2d

Here I am at one of my bucket list trips. Wolston Park Golf Course First hole. The guy in the club shop says the first hole is pretty much unchanged. So clear to see before the floods forced a move a few hundred metres north, that this could have been a Football pitch.

First hole Wolston Park Golf Club. Easily able to fit a pitch on here in 1875. Steep rise of ground and the river and the Woogaroo Creek behind the camera made it a secure site for an Asylum. Except for the floods.

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ScotsFoundedFootball @gedboy58.bsky.social · 2d

5 of 5 So What? Jaap was a student when they played proper Football i.e. the late 1850s. I would relish someone explaining how he would have ignored the communitarianism at the heart of Scotland and Football and picked either Victorian or Rugby. Both were literally foreign games to this immigrant.

ScotsFoundedFootball @gedboy58.bsky.social · 2d

4 of 5 I know Dr John Jaap was there briefly and was unwell in a life that ended in 1877 before he had made 40. Still, he was at Woogaroo 1872-77 and he was an ex Glasgow University boy. Are you seriously telling me that he would have picked Dodoball? A man steeped in the Culture of Combination?

ScotsFoundedFootball @gedboy58.bsky.social · 2d

3 of 5 Brisbane Courier 1875 14th Aug. had a nice article ‘One rule provided that the ball should not be handled nor carried...’ This surely rules out a rugby or modern AFL game. There is still the issue of the core rules. Association or another? Whatever - this specifically made it a kicking game.

ScotsFoundedFootball @gedboy58.bsky.social · 2d

2 of 5 People now get to hit a wee ball with a stick. I am unsure of its efficacy in any healing process. Anyway, there is still debate as to the type of Football played, when the old Brisbane Club seemed to have had a shot of Association, Union and Melbourne Rules. It was the 1870s, after all.

ScotsFoundedFootball @gedboy58.bsky.social · 2d

1 of 5 #scotsfoundedfootball Here I am in Brisbane to meet Peter Eedy and visit a place I have dreamed about for five years: the Woogaroo Lunatic Asylum. The original site is now the clubhouse of Wolston Park Golf Course, so not much of a change of use, there. Also the Pineapple Hotel.

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