Andrew Watson: Scotland's first black international footballer

Twitter recently led me to a fantastic post by Andy Mitchell on his Scottish Sports History blog.

Before the England v Scotland he sought out the modest grave of Andrew Watson, a footballer whose significance in the game has often been overlooked:

"I placed a Scottish saltire flag and a few flowers on the grave to commemorate his place in Scottish football history. But I have a strong feeling that Andrew Watson deserves more, a prominent and permanent memorial that truly recognises his place in sporting history as the first black international footballer, the first black administrator (he was secretary of Queen's Park) and possibly the first black professional player (at Bootle)."

I couldn't agree more.

Watson's progress in the game - and the acceptance of that progress - still seems hugely relevant today, even in what we like to consider our more enlightened age.

Andrew Watson also captained Scotland and, in his three games for his country, we beat England twice (6-1 away, 5-1 at home) and Wales once (5-1).

To his list of "firsts" we could possibly add:

• First black captain of an International team (v England 1881)
• First black player to win a major competition (Scottish Cup 1881)
• First black player to play in the English FA Cup (London Swifts 1882)

The SFA annual of 1880-81 described Watson as:

"One of the very best backs we have; since joining Queen's Park has made rapid strides to the front as a player; has great speed and tackles splendidly; powerful and sure kick; well worthy of a place in any representative team." (Football Unites, Racism Divides)

A remarkable story. A story that, as Andy Mitchell points out, deserves more recognition than a neglected grave in a Richmond cemetery.

Forgotten Scotland Players: Paul Bernard

Another week spent dodging ever more dire warnings about the state of Scottish football.

This time everything's got a lot Grimmer with Aberdeen losing a lauded protégé to the mysterious land of riches that some people call England.

Highly rated youngster leaves Aberdeen area to chance his arm in England? If Jack Grimmer turns out to have a career like Denis Law's not too many Scotland fans will be complaining.

Still, it would be churlish not to concede that Grimmer's departure to Fulham exposes once again the divergence between football on either side of Hadrian's Wall. We're not so much the poor relations as the member of the family locked in the attic to save embarrassment.

Of course it wasn't always this way.

Not so long ago we could compete. Not only on the pitch but to an extent financially. Really, it wasn't that long ago.

Look back to Aberdeen in the mid-1990s. An Aberdeen where the memories of Alex Ferguson's achievements burnished even brighter than they do now.

An Aberdeen where signing a player for a million pounds wasn't some kind of bad Doric joke. An Aberdeen who did actually sign a player for a million pounds.

Hindsight. It's a wonderful thing.

Hindsight might tell Aberdeen that signing a player for a million pounds wasn't the sort of sustainable business decision they could afford to make.

Hindsight might tell Aberdeen that signing a player for a million pounds to show the Old Firm that there was still life in the north-east was folly.

Hindsight might tell Aberdeen that if you're going to sign a player for a million pounds you better make damn sure he's worth the money.

But hindsight is like finding the instructions after you've built the Ikea furniture. Which is why Aberdeen ended up paying a million quid to play a wonky wardrobe in midfield.

Paul Bernard.

The deal looked promising. Bernard was young, he'd built a reputation at Oldham and he'd already won two Scotland caps.

But something went awry.

Born in Edinburgh, Bernard grew up in Manchester and joined Oldham as a teenager. He made his debut in the 1990/91 season.

In just his second game he scored the equaliser as Oldham came from two down to beat Sheffield Wednesday and win the Second Division title on what we'd call a "helicopter Sunday" if it had been a Sunday and a helicopter had been involved.

That win, which denied Billy Bonds' West Ham a title they thought they'd won, saw Oldham back in the top flight after almost 70 years.

It also gave the young Bernard a ringside seat for an era of English football history: the Second Division Championship win gave Oldham a place in the last First Division, their survival ensured they became founder members of what was then called the Premiership.

In 1993/94 Oldham and Bernard were relegated, finishing second bottom on 40 points, ten ahead of bottom place Swindon but three away from safety.

That season he'd also featured in the FA Cup semi-finals as what Alex Ferguson described as a "dogged" Oldham took Manchester United to a replay before going down 4-1.

Back slumming it in the Football League Oldham faced some re-entry issues. 61 points wasn't enough for any more than a mid table finish as their away form - four wins and 13 defeats - dented any hopes of an immediate return.

Despite the reduced glamour of his surroundings - and fewer appearances than he'd managed in the previous two seasons - Bernard had made someone sit up and take notice.

Craig Brown was taking his Scotland team to Japan for the Kirin Cup at the end of the 1994/95 season and Bernard was on the flight.

A 22 year old in a Craig Brown squad might be considered something of a rarity and would probably not expect to play a major part in proceedings.

But Brown obviously saw the Far East as a place to experiment.

On 21 May 1995 Bernard, as he probably expected, took his place on the bench for a 0-0 draw with Japan that featured Jim Leighton as captain, Brian Martin and Rob McKinnon in the starting XI and a John Spencer red card.

Bernard came on for a 13 minute debut when he replaced Scott Gemmill.

Did he impress? Well, he certainly didn't do anything catastrophic enough to change Brown's mind about trying something different in the final game of the tour against Ecuador.

This time Bernard started in a reworked side and lasted the whole ninety minutes. His first full game was marked by a Scotland win: goals from John Robertson and substitute Stevie Crawford grabbing a 2-1 victory.

So it's the summer of 1995. Our hero - only recently described on an Oldham website as a "charismatic midfielder" - is now a full Scotland international and faces big decisions about his future.

He looks north.

Manager Roy Aitken had seen his transfer budget swollen by a share issue. Aberdeen, shaken by the sacking of Willie Miller and their apparent descent from the summit of Scottish football, needed to make a statement.

That statement largely involved making Paul Bernard the first - and still the only recorded - £1 million signing for a non-Old Firm club.

Did they actually pay £1 million? There are hints that so keen were Aberdeen to show their intent that the widely quoted figure was actually made up of both the transfer fee and Bernard's own signing on fee.

Whatever the truth, Bernard had the label: he was Aberdeen's £1 million pound man.

So drenched in despondency has the Aberdeen tale been of late it's tempting to say that Bernard was a disaster from the off. That's not true.

Aitken's side started well enough and even recaptured some silverware with a league cup win in November 1995. In what was Aitken's first full season they finished third in the league, pipping Hearts on goal difference.

They weren't ripping up the ground they'd lost on the Old Firm - there was a 28 point gap between Aberdeen and second placed Celtic - but they were offering hope for the future.

The million pound man was still just 23, Aberdeen looked to be on the up and European football was about to return to Pittodrie. Certainly Bernard's impact was somewhat muted but he had a lot to live up to with the price tag and he was acquainting himself with the Scottish game after serving his apprenticeship in different circumstances at Oldham.

Still, when Scotland travelled to Euro 96 the midfield maestro from the win over Ecuador was not part of the squad. If Bernard had thought a move to Scotland would increase his international chances he was mistaken: he was never to bother the Scotland team again.

His club career also faltered. Over 30 appearances in his first season at Aberdeen were followed by just 40 or so in the next three seasons.

What went wrong?

Injuries played a massive part. Maybe bad luck did as well. Perhaps the injuries contributed to a loss of form. Or maybe the pressure of being the million pound gem in a team that endured periodic struggles was too much.

If his first season had been underwhelming with hints of potential the next three were a disaster and the "million quid signing" tag became something of a Scottish football punchline.

He enjoyed a slight renaissance in 1999-2000, playing more regularly and scoring four goals - one of them coming in that memorable 6-5 away win over Motherwell when two Scottish international goalkeepers conceded 11 goals between them.

But Aberdeen were now under the control of the idiosyncratic Ebbe Skovdahl. With cost cutting to the fore and Skovdahl keen to mould his own team the end of the road had come.

Paul Bernard drove his Ferrari out of Pittodrie for the last time in October 2000.

The next stop was Barnsley where he went a season without a league appearance before joining Plymouth and managing fewer than a dozen games.

He returned to Scotland with St Johnstone in 2003 and appeared sporadically for a couple of years before a season with Drogeha United brought the curtain down on his career.

At 22 Paul Bernard had enjoyed instant success at Oldham, seen the dawn of the Premiership age, become a full Scotland cap and been the million pound signing who might just have ushered in a new era in Scottish league football.

At 33 he was retired: in a decade he'd barely doubled his career appearances, failed to add to his international caps and become a byword both for unfettered spending and an era of Aberdeen malaise.

He was probably quite comfortably off though which might just make this a very modern football tale.

A tale, all the same, of lost potential and, for whatever reason, of a talent squandered.

Forgotten Scotland Player number 12: Paul Bernard, Oldham Athletic. 2 caps.

Like this? Like the Scottish Football Blog on Facebook.

Forgotten Scotland Players: Henry Renny-Tailyour

Meandering through The Sunday Post (the scrapes that Oor Wullie finds himself in!) I spotted something in Brian Fowlie's TV review of Scotland's spectacular win in Liechtenstein:

"Craig Mackail-Smith's goal calmed things for a while, I'll swear the commentators paused to take a breath.

"I did wonder if the Brighton striker was the first player with a hyphenated name to score for Scotland. That information wasn't forthcoming."

I'd wondered the same thing myself. And now I can reveal all.

He's not. Double-barrelled Scotland caps are almost as old as the international game itself and they have always carried a goal threat.

They're not common. My trawl of the archives suggest Mackail-Smith is only the second Scotland player to greedily snaffle two surnames all to himself.

But his predecessor had a storied career.

March 1873. Scotland, representing the burgeoning Scottish Football Association for the first time, travelled to London to take part in football's second international football match.

After a 0-0 draw in Glasgow in 1872, England claimed the first cross border bragging rights with a 4-2 victory in London. The visitors could only afford to send eight players down south. The team was supplemented by three exiles.

One of those exiles scored Scotland's first ever international goal in the 25th minute of the match.

Henry Renny-Tailyour. Not an ordinary name for a Scotland player. Not an ordinary life for a Scotland player either. Before the days of tanner ba' players learning their craft playing football on the streets there were internationals like Henry.

Scottish footballers should be born in Scotland? Henry wasn't. He was born in India in those far off days when the sun never set on the British Empire.

He grew up in Montrose. Or near Montrose. I have to assume that the Renny-Tailyour's family estate amounted to slightly more than a typical Montrosian dwelling of the time.

From Montrose to Cheltenham College and then, as was the way for gentleman of the age, the British Army.

It was as a lieutenant in the Royal Engineers that Renny-Tailyour cut a dash through the early days of organised sport.

He had played for Scotland against England in 1871 but the match was scratched from official records because the Scottish team was drawn entirely from the London area.

In 1872, the year of his sole Scotland cap, he played for the Royal Engineers in the first ever FA Cup Final. They lost that game to The Wanderers and were foiled again in 1874 by Oxford University.

In 1875 the Royal Engineers finally got their hands on the trophy. Lieutenant Renny-Taylour scored in a 1-1 draw and then again in 3-0 replay win. That it was the Old Etonians that were beaten in the final will have made the experience that bit sweeter for the goalscoring Old Cheltonian.

Given his football commitments it's difficult to see how much time Henry had for engineering - royal, military or otherwise - but he progressed to the rank of colonel in the Sappers.

Amazingly though he didn't confine himself to just football and the army.

Scotland and England had met in the very first rugby international in Edinburgh in 1871. In 1872 England hosted a return match. Lining up for Scotland that day was Henry Renny-Taylour.

It's a unique achievement.

He played in the second official football international and he played in the second official rugby international. He remains the only person to have represented Scotland in both sports. Both games were played, incidentally, at The Oval. Both were lost. But for a gentleman amateur like Henry that might not have been the point.

The venue was fitting: between his football, rugby and military careers he also found time to play 28 first class cricket matches as a middle order batsman and right arm bowler.

On retiring from the army, and sport, Henry topped off what sounds like a rather enjoyable career as managing director of Guinness. I suppose there just weren't the same punditry opportunities in those days.

He died in 1920 at the age of 70, back at home in Scotland.

It seems that, unhindered by a double barrelled surname, he gave life both barrels.

Forgotten Scotland Players Number 9: Henry Renny-Tailyour, Royal Engineers. 1 (official) cap.

Forgotten Scotland Players: Barney Battles

Barney Battles.

A name worthy of echoing down the decades. And Scottish football can boast two of them.

Both with a tale to tell.

Barney Battles Senior played for Celtic, Liverpool, Dundee, Hearts and Kilmarnock and was capped for Scotland three times.

In 1896 he went on strike at Celtic because he'd been criticised by a number of journalists. It seems a wonderfully modern reason for withdrawing labour, confirming that football today doesn’t have character enough to even harbour original grudges.

Tragically Barney Battles died in 1905 at the age of just 30 when a bout of ‘flu developed into pneumonia.

Some months later Scotland played Ireland at Celtic Park and the gate receipts were donated to his pregnant wife.

That October she gave birth to a son. She named him in tribute to his father.

Scottish football's second Barney Battles was born. But the game in his homeland would have to be patient.

The younger Barney attended Edinburgh's Holy Cross High School, since amalgamated with St Andrew’s Junior High School into St Augustine’s, before his mother decided the family would enjoy a better life an ocean away.

And so a teenage Barney found himself in Boston.

Perhaps not entirely predictably he discovered an America that offered him the ideal place to launch his football career.

The game has often enjoyed sporadic booms in the States but lacked sustainability. The early 1920s was a boom time as the American Soccer League made inroads in the north east of the country. Immigrant communities offered talent and supporters, industrialists offered sponsorship.

Barney was in the right place at the right time.

He impressed with the Boston Celtics and then, at the age of 19, was offered professional terms with the Boston Soccer Club, known as the Wonder Workers. In his first season he was something of a scoring sensation as the club won both the Lewis Cup and the American Professional Soccer Championship, a mash up competition between the ASL and the older St Louis Soccer League to determine which team could be considered national champions. He scored both home and away in a two legged decider against the Ben Millers.

International recognition was immediate. Battles was picked to play for the United States national team against Canada in Montreal, the hosts winning 1-0.

He continued to impress as the Wonder Workers performed consistently in the ASL and finally landed the championship in 1928.

But by the late 1920s the ASL - which had contributed to soccer becoming America’s second largest spectator sport - was splintering. The economy was careering towards the misery of the Great Depression.

It was time to come home.

Willie McCartney, who would later cross the city and become the architect of Hibs’ Famous Five, had taken over from his father as Hearts manager in 1919. Hearts remained a big club but throughout the 1920s they had struggled to recover from the sacrifices their great pre-war team had made during the First World War.

The manager liked what he saw in the 23 year old Battles. A £9 a week contract was signed and - a tribute to either his celebrity spreading across the Atlantic or because of his famous name - 18,000 turned up to watch him make his debut in what amounted to a match between Hearts and Hearts reserves.

His first competitive game was at Hampden against Queen’s Park. Not a bad homecoming for a footballer. And a fine place to score a first competitive goal for a new club. A goal in his first game, two goals in his second game and three goals in his third game. The young Barney had a certain flamboyance.

What standard of football had he been playing in the States? If his return to Scotland involved a step up in class he didn’t let it show. He scored 31 goals in 28 league games that first season. In the local cup competitions that used to round off the Edinburgh football season he scored a scarcely credible 11 goals in just three games against Hibs. Across all competition he scored 68 times, including five in a league representative match against Ireland.

I’m not an expert on the feats that build a Tynecastle legend but he must have been getting pretty close.

He scored 26 league goals the following season and another seven on a Scottish Cup run that was ended by Rangers in the semi final. He also scored another four for the Scottish League side. In one game. Against Ireland. Again.

How to top that? Barney had an answer. In 1930/31 he missed some games with appendicitis, scored hat-tricks in three straight games and ended up with 44 league goals. Hearts finished fifth that year and scored 90 league goals. Barney came very close to contributing half of that tally.

This was a striker playing something close to fantasy football. Even Scotland’s infamously rubbish selectors had to pay some attention. They did. Amazingly though they chose to give him his only cap right the start of his annus mirabilis.

25th October 1930. Scotland v Wales at Ibrox. A 1-1 draw. Inevitably Scotland’s 42nd minute goal was scored by Barney Battles.

It was to be his only Scotland cap. He had a goal a game record. To offer those maligned selectors an olive branch of understanding it is important that they preferred to pick Hughie Gallacher throughout Barney’s Tynecastle pomp. Gallacher, of course, had an international goals to game ratio of 1.15 across 20 caps.

Sadly, just when it seemed nothing could stop Battles at club level, a knee injury proved more troublesome than his appendix. His appearances for Hearts became more sporadic. Over the next four seasons he retained his goalscoring ability but the fitness to enjoy a sustained run in the team eluded him.

In 1936 he retired from playing. Willie McCartney had already left Hearts and tried to tempt Barney to Easter Road. He refused:

“What would the Hibs or any other do with a player who because of some physical handicap was liable to let them down in the course of the game?

“So I stayed out, having retired from active participation at the comparatively early age of 29.” (London Hearts)

Journalism followed. He opened an eponymous pub in Newhaven - the boy born in Fisherrow who conquered football on both sides of the Atlantic drawn to the coast again - that lives on in the memory of locals of a certain age.

Two international caps for two different countries. And a goalscoring record at Hearts that would have left his father, the doughty defender he never knew, awestruck.

Forgotten Scotland Players number 8: Barney Battles Junior, Hearts. 1 cap.

Gordon Smith: Prince of Wingers

There is an argument to be made that Gordon Smith is the forgotten giant of Scottish football.

Although his memory lives on with those lucky enough to have seen him play, recognition for his exploits as a player and for his unique acheivements seems to have slipped away.

Yet his was a remarkable career: five league championships with Hibs, Hearts and Dundee. European Cup appearances with those three clubs, including semi-finals with Hibs and Dundee.

He made more appearances for Hibs than any other player and, despite being converted into a winger, scored more goals for them then any other player. Five goals in one match from the wing remains a Scottish record.

When Hibs feared age and injury had robbed him of his genius he got himself fit, joined Hearts and won the League and League Cup in his first season.

When he felt the atmosphere at Tynecastle was diminishing he left, only to reinvent himself once again as the elder statesman in Dundee's championship winning side.

Manchester United, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur, Aston Villa, Newcastle, Fiorentina and Vasco de Gama were among the clubs who tried to prise him from Scotland. In the late 1940s Matt Busby was willing to sign him for £40,000, Newcastle repeatedly offered Hibs a blank cheque.

This was a career that Scottish football will never see replicated.

Yet until now there has never been a biography published charting Smith's remarkable endeavours.

His son, Tony Smith, has set out to remedy that with Gordon Smith: Prince of Wingers.

He's produced a fascinating account of a fascinating life.

One of the reasons for Smith's continued lack of widespread recogniton was his insistence, both as a player and in retirement, of leading an intensely private life.

Yet in a number of ways he was Scotland's first superstar footballer, the top draw in the days when 5000 fans would be attracted to watch Hibs play cricket on Leith Links.

And, despite his craving for privacy, his life often reads like a prototype for the modern footballer.

No bad behaviour but plenty of glamour. When footballers more easily identified with the working man Smith was driving a Porsche and holidaying in the south of France.

Before million pound wages turned footballers into front page celebrities, Smith was friends with the jazz star Sidney Bechet, the golfer Bobby Locke, the singer Frankie Vaughan and war hero Douglas Bader.

When footballers still took their holidays at Butlins, Smith was taking time out from his holiday in Cannes to work as an extra on an Alfred Hitchcock film and being invited out for a meal by Bridget Bardot.

For someone who grew up in Montrose at the time of the Great Depression and who played all but a handful of his club games for teams based on Scotland's east coast this was a life less ordinary.

And that's without the football.

After impressing in a game against a Hibs and Hearts select, the Tynecastle club - the team he and his father supported - were desperate to sign Smith.

But Hibs moved quickly. Manager Willie McCartney, a former Hearts manager, signed him on a Sunday. On the Monday evening, in borrowed boots, he scored a hat-trick in a derby. Most present had expected him to play as a trialist for Hearts .

And so began a career that seems incredible to those of us weren't there to experience it.

The skills, the plaudits, the goals, the best of Scotland rubbing shoulders with - often beating - the best in England, Europe and the world.

The development and blossoming of Hibs' Famous Five: hallowed still are the names Smith, Johnstone, Reilly, Turnbull and Ormond.

The way he slotted into a Hearts team, a seismic city switch that seems to have been handled with remarakable magnanimity on both sides, and promptly won another league medal.

The veteran at Dundee who was hero worshipped by his team mates and found in Alan Gilzean the perfect foil.

The sheer appetite for football at the time seems incredible now: two legged cup ties decided only after two replays with the total crowd nudging 200,000, matches played on consecutive days, thousands filling stadiums for five-a-side tournaments, Princes Street Gardens mobbed to see the Edinburgh teams play head tennis.

A lost age. But not all that long ago that links don't remain - Craig Brown played with Smith in that Dundee league winning side.

Smith wasn't without his flaws. His great Hibs team had a shocking record in the city derby - I suspect they'd argue that they saw Rangers as the bigger rivals at the time - and he rarely flourished in a Scotland jersey.

Willie Waddell of Rangers was preferred for most of Smith's sporadic international career, although he did captain the side during a tour in 1955. Perhaps not coincidentally this responsibility was coupled with his most sustained run of international form.

He wasn't without complexity off the pitch either. A worry with a biography written by a son is that it will gloss over such issues and to an extent that is the case here.

It would have been interesting to have a more thorough exploration of a couple of hints of certain unpopularity in the football world. Was that inspired by jealousy - bonus payments, private interests, a whopping testimonial purse and unspecified stocks and shares dealings with his close friend Waddell left Smith rich beyond the dreams of many contemporaries - or by a distrust of a man whose shyness was often covered by a defensive aloofness?

And given that shyness, that dislike for the public aspects of a life led in the public glare, how did Smith end up befriending Locke and Bechet, meeting Bardot and Mohammed Ali, developing such close personal bonds with Stanley Matthews, Matt Busby and countless others?

Or maybe it's best not to know, to just explain it away as some inexplicable aura of greatness that attracted those who recognised or shared his genius and scared those who would be forever in his shadow.

The book still rattles along, perhaps surprisingly so given the detailed coverage of each of his seasons in professional football. Although, as many a gentleman of a certain age would tell you, Gordon Smith always did make the game exciting.

In a moving epilogue Tony Smith chronicles his father's Alzheimer's hastened decline. This is a book written by a son who had the pain of losing his father twice.

If his writing goes some way to helping Scottish football rediscover the greatness of Gordon Smith then this book will be a fitting tribute.

Gordon Smith: Prince of Wingers by Tony Smith, Black and White Publishing

> There's a fine collection of testimonials from a variety of contributors at the beginning of this book, providing an insight into how his contemporaries, rivals, teammates and supporters saw Gordon Smith.

To Jim Baxter he was "my hero", to Lawrie Reilly "one of the greatest players of all time," to Alex Ferguson - once an opponent - "a dream footballer", to Alan Gilzean "absolutely terrific." For Bob Crampsey Smith's five titles with three clubs amounted to the "the greatest individual accomplishment in the entire history of Scottish league football."

My favourite is one from a supporter, Wattie Robb. Wattie, who I knew vaguely towards the end of his life, might well have been the greatest Hibs supporter of them all. His mantra about Gordon Smith never changed: "I would say he was a better footballer than Pele - I really believe that."

Forgotten Scotland Players: Brian Martin

While I’d find it hard to deny that I have my share of strange habits and odd quirks, it is not the norm for me to have images of bald men racing through my mind.

So I find it hard to explain why I found myself thinking about Brian Martin the other day.

But I did. And it’s inspired what might be an occasional series on ‘Forgotten Scotland Players.’

Given this is Scotland, and especially given the selection scatter gun in play during the Vogts' years, this could be a series as long running as The Archers.

But let’s start with Brian.

His career began in 1980 with Albion Rovers and quickly rocketed down a cul-de-sac. A stint at Stenhousemuir followed but it wasn’t until 1985 that he landed a move to Falkirk, switching to Hamilton in 1987 and moving on to St Mirren less than a year later.

At Love Street he established himself in the first team and caught the eye of Motherwell manager Tommy McLean.

By November 1991 McLean could claim to be a Scottish Cup winning manager. But his cup heroes were slipping away from the club and his team were heading nowhere fast, except perhaps the First Division.

He saw something he needed in Martin and duly signed him for £175,000, the only transfer fee of note that Brian ever attracted in his career.

And, at Motherwell, Martin blossomed. Motherwell survived in his first year and he was part of the team that finished third in the league under McLean and second when Alex McLeish took over as manager. Suddenly our hero was hobnobbing with Borussia Dortmund in European competition.

By 1995 the national boss, Craig Brown, was taking notice of Martin’s progress. Never much concerned with youth, Brown plucked the then 32 year old centre half from Fir Park and named in his squad for the 1995 Kirin Cup.

And so it was that on 21 May 1995, some 15 years after he took his bow with Albion Rovers, Brian Martin lined up for Scotland against Japan in Hiroshima.

The starting eleven for a goalless draw was:

Jim Leighton, Brian Martin, Colin Calderwood, Alan McLaren, Craig Burley, Paul Lambert, Billy McKinlay, Scott Gemmill, Rab McKinnon, John Spence and Darren Jackson

Three days later Scotland played Ecuador in Toyama. Brown had rung the changes but Martin stayed in the team for a 2-1 win:

Jim Leighton, Alan McLaren, Brian Martin, Colin Calderwood, Derek Whyte, Paul Bernard, Craig Burley, Billy McKinlay, Scott Gemmill, Darran Jackson and John Robertson.

Names to conjure with there. Not least the four centre halves. Stevie Crawford came off the bench to join Robertson on the score sheet.

Two games, no defeats and only one goal conceded. For a Scottish team that relied heavily on its fortitude in defence Martin’s introduction had been a success.

But his presence owed much to the absence of regulars on that trip and he soon fell out of the reckoning. By 1996 and the European Championships in England, Martin was in the crowd watching Scotland play England at Wembley.

By 1998 he was back in the lower leagues with Stirling Albion and then Partick Thistle. By the turn of the millennium he had retired from professional football but was still turning out in the juniors.

An old fashioned end to an old fashioned career.

Quite a modern claim to fame though. Along with Paul Bernard (who could feature here in the future) he made his only two appearances for Scotland in Japan.

Forgotten Scotland Players Number 1: Brian Martin, Motherwell, 2 Caps