Queen’s Park Football Club was certainly the most
influential Scottish club in the early development of the game of Association football
and arguably the most influential club in Great Britain and therefore the
world. The team from the southern
suburbs of Glasgow was at the centre of the development of the passing style of
football we are all so familiar with today.
This account of the early years of Queen’s Park’s
existence focuses primarily on the matches played by the club. It is not an attempt to replicate the content
of Richard Robinson’s outstanding work History of Queen’s Park Football Club
1867-1917, which provides a wealth of information about the formative years of
the club.
My principal sources in pulling together this early history of
an outstanding football club have been the newspapers of the day. The Mitchell Library in Glasgow and the British Newspaper Archive have proved
invaluable in providing access to old newspapers. I have also taken some of the details about
the very early days of Queen’s Park from the Robinson book because he had
access to information that is no longer available elsewhere.
Inevitably, there will be errors and omissions in some of my
descriptions of matches played by Queen’s Park.
There were no numbers on jerseys or team sheets in those days and it
was not uncommon for details of goal scorers etc to vary from newspaper to
newspaper. If there are any obvious
mistakes, please accept my apologies.
As well as first team matches, I have recorded the results
of Queen’s Park’s second, third and fourth teams, where available. Reserve team football had a higher profile in
Victorian times. Also, the Second XI (eventually known as The Strollers) and the Hampden XI (third eleven) often faced other clubs’ first teams,
including the likes of Aston Villa and Stoke (now Stoke City). I have also listed the results of "official" representative matches in which Queen's Park players were involved.
It had been my intention to cover the period from 1867 to 1890 and stop at that point. However, I have now completed seasons 1890/91 to 1898/99, using primarily on-line resources only, and I have attempted to compile details of Queen's Park's results up to 1900 - the point at which the club joined the Scottish League. I am also working on checking potential additional sources of information for the period up to 1899.
Frank McCrossan
August 2022
August 2022