For many years, the Corinthians would see in the New Year with a trip to Hampden Park for an annual match against their Scottish amateur counterparts. We look back at this unique festive football tradition…
 
The Corinthians woke up to an ominous, grey Scottish sky on 1 January 1886, as a bleak and stormy mid-winter’s morning welcomed sore heads and bleary eyes to the new year. Yet the cream of the London amateur football scene had other things on their mind than the dismal weather. Later that day, they would be lining up at Hampden Park for the first instalment of what would become a great friendly rivalry with their Glaswegian counterparts, Queen’s Park.

Billed as a game between the leading amateur clubs of England and Scotland, it would become a settled fixture in Glasgow’s New Year’s entertainment in the years to come. Often a return match was played in spring at one of London’s top grounds, and this annual tradition continued until the Great Split of 1907 saw Corinthian leave the FA in protest at the idea that professionals were now running the game, primarily with fellow professionals in mind. But that’s a story for another day.

Queen’s Park, founded in 1867, pre-date Corinthian by 15 years and are the oldest of the recognised modern association football clubs in Scotland, although evidence has since been found of a “Foot-Ball Club” in Edinburgh dating back to the 1820s.

The links between the two clubs pre-date the first friendly, with two former Queen’s Park men playing an important role in the growth of Corinthian into an all-star outfit. Andrew Watson – the first black international footballer – and Dr John Smith had shone for the Glasgow amateurs in the mid-1880s before moving south to join Pa Jackson’s band of crack amateurs in their breakout 1884/85 campaign. Both Scots were in the Corinthian team that earned their first statement victory with an 8-1 dismantling of then FA Cup holders Blackburn Rovers in December 1884.

There are those who believe these ‘Scottish professors’ helped to teach the Corinthians the combination (or passing) game that had seen Scotland eclipse England in the recent internationals. Either way, it wasn’t long before the two leading amateur clubs in their respective countries were meeting regularly.

In The Annals of the Corinthian Football Club, author B.O. Corbett – who himself played for the team more than 100 times – explained that the annual game against Queen’s Park at Hampden had “always been considered the most important of the tour.”

“Many a magnificent tussle has been seen on the fine enclosure of Old Hampden Park in what is often termed ‘the Amateur International,’” he added.

The first encounter, on 1 January 1886, was very much a game of two halves, as the teams responded to the stormy conditions. The Glasgow Evening News that night described the “short passing tactics of the home forwards” in the opening exchanges, while the Corinthians relied on “a series of long kicks by the backs and halfs” to make headway at the other end. It didn’t seem to occur to the reporter that this was almost certainly a result of the strong gale blowing through the pitch, working in the Corinthians’ favour during the first half.

Funnily enough, the same writer seemed surprised by the sudden improvement in the quality of the visitors’ passing game after half-time, while Queen’s Park went the other way.

The Scots took an early lead but were pegged back before half-time by an equaliser from the famed dribbler and England star, Nevill ‘Nuts’ Cobbold. Corinthian then took the lead midway through the second half, when they broke away, “passing to each other in beautiful order,” before Tinsley Lindley finished the move.

The home fans sportingly cheered the goal, even though it put their side behind, but not as loudly as they greeted the late equaliser that earned them a 2-2 draw.

In the years that followed, games between Corinthian and Queen’s Park took place in the second and third iterations of Hampden Park, the latter “New Hampden” becoming the biggest stadium in the world upon its opening in 1903.

Sixteen to twenty players were generally taken on the Christmas tours, which were arranged so that the squad would reach Scotland in time to have a clear day’s rest before the all-important meeting with Queen’s Park.

The team often stayed in Edinburgh before making the journey to Glasgow by train on the morning of the match. For the Corinthians tucked up in their hotel rooms on the bustling Princes Street, it meant tossing and turning through the lively New Year’s Eve celebrations on the eve of the big match.

“With a bagpiper practising his art enthusiastically under one’s window, and the buzz and whirl of a servants’ dance kept up below until the small hours, sleep is an impossibility.”

Corbett recalls one night on which the players’ boots had been left on the grate to dry out by hotel staff and then forgotten amid the New Year’s Eve merriment. By morning, he wrote, they were “discovered to be in cinders” and some of the players were forced to wear new boots for the game. “In all probability,” he added, “this had something to do with our lack of success.”

He also complained of biased officiating, telling the story of one game in which a Scottish referee had seemed to ignore any signal given by a “well-known Corinthian goalkeeper of great size” running the line for him that day, still donning his CFC cap. At half-time, the Englishman put his arm around the significantly smaller Scotsman’s shoulders and asked why he had not been paying heed to his calls. Corbett recalled that the home referee had simply pointed to the visitor’s headwear saying – as the author transcribed it in stereotypically accented Scottish – “if ye haidn’t that bonnet on yer heid it might have been deeferent!”

These festive matches seem to have been the source of a few jolly japes for the touring players. Corbett tells another story of a Queen’s Park player lining up “clad in an enormous red wig” which caused enough concern that he was given a piece of elastic to hold it in place, which tucked under his chin.

Tickled by the sight, two of the Corinthian forwards had a bet on who would be able to dislodge the wig first.

“The red head seemed ubiquitous,” he wrote, “but though the wig perpetually received the ball, it kept its place. Half-time came, and still the wig was there. Five minutes off time it had not been removed. Then came a terrible scrimmage on the wing, four men on the ground, including red wig and our two friends of the wager. At last a figure emerged from between a man’s legs showing a shining crown and holding the wig in his hand.”

There’s a recent trend for calling out this kind of embellishing of anecdotes by former footballers, but as far as I’m concerned, the colour is all part of the yarn. We can all make up our own minds where the forensic historians breaks off and the raconteur takes over. By recalling these moments of fun, Corbett highlights the part the tours played in team bonding and that spirit of camaraderie also made for strong relationships with the Corinthians’ opponents.

The two teams would dine together after the game, making a social occasion of it and Corbett noted that the Scottish players’ “humour, song and mirth” off the pitch matched their “prowess and endurance” on it.

The matches inspired the most excitement during the clubs’ heyday in the 1890s and early 1900s, but they did pick up again after the war, following Corinthian’s return to the FA fold in 1914.

Matches against their black-and-white hooped brothers in Glasgow resumed in 1920, but the football scene had changed irrevocably in favour of the organised leagues and by the mid-decade it had become trickier to arrange the game owing to Queen’s Park’s obligations to the Scottish fixture list. For a while, the game was moved to another date in the festive period, but in the end the tradition petered out and the struggling Corinthian FC became less and less relevant. Eventually, the club amalgamated with Casuals FC in 1939, joining the Isthmian League as Corinthian-Casuals.

The record for the 36 festive friendlies played between the clubs in Glasgow stands at 16 Corinthian wins, 11 Queen’s Park wins, and nine draws.

Since amalgamation, we have twice travelled north of the border to face Queen’s Park in summer friendlies (in 1983 and 1990) but never on New Year’s Day, as the two clubs’ league schedules take priority.
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Queen’s Park’s members voted to turn professional in late 2019, and the club has since been promoted twice, now competing in the Scottish Championship. ‘The Spiders’ play their home games at the newly built Lesser Hampden, a stadium more befitting of their fan base, while the cavernous Hampden Park remains the home of the Scotland national team.

Words: Dominic Bliss
Images: Corinthian-Casuals Digital Archive