The Gallant Pioneers: Rangers 1872

by Ralston, Gary

  Captain Fantastic: Tom Vallance, the first great Rangers skipper, who set the standards for many more to follow in the subsequent 130 years.

  For the most part, four-man teams on Glasgow Green raced a 1,000-yard course upstream between the Albert Bridge and St Andrew’s Suspension Bridge, while single rowers favoured longer distances of up to four miles. The demographic make-up of the Clyde and Clydesdale clubs at the time was white-collar – doctors and lawyers, but the gallant pioneers were aspiring middle class, serving professional apprenticeships. Peter Campbell may have been a shipyard worker, but he was from entrepreneurial and privileged stock and he and his brothers, as well as the McNeils and Tom Vallance, would have felt at home on Glasgow Green, not least because rowing was such an integral part of their upbringing on the Gareloch. The clubs may have been perceived as elitist, but the sport was not. Employees of each shipyard on the Clyde, for example, designed, built and rowed their own boats under the auspices of the Trades Rowing Association.

  In truth, it is more than likely that the founding fathers of Rangers were social rowers in Glasgow rather than competitive, not least because their new football team took up so much of their time and attention. The highlight of the rowing season in the city was undoubtedly the Glasgow Regatta, and it is astonishing to think in the 21st century that as many as 30,000 spectators would cram the banks of the Clyde in the 1870s to watch the best rowers in the country. There is no evidence to suggest that any of the club’s founding fathers, even including Vallance, took part in the main event on the Clyde, not least because it was generally held on the first or second weekend in September, when the football season had just got up and running. An examination of newspaper reports of the event throughout the 1870s failed to throw up the names of anyone connected with the Light Blues although, intriguingly, one ace rower was a Gilbert McNeil, while the regatta’s energetic secretary was a certain John Banks McNeil. The latter was the owner of the Clutha Boathouse and one of the principal hirers of small craft on the Clyde, not to mention the founder of the Glasgow Regatta itself. However, no connection between John and Gilbert and the McNeils of Rangers fame could be established.

  As a footballer, Tom Vallance was without equal in the Scottish and English game in the latter part of the 1870s, with the skipper, like his teammates, first shooting to prominence in the memorable Scottish Cup Final ties against Vale of Leven in 1877. He played the Final against the same opposition two years later and, although the Cup would leave the city in controversial circumstances on both occasions, the Charity Cup success of 1879 made some amends for the earlier disappointments. Vallance was revered by commentators at the time, with respected football analysts such as D.D. Bone arguing that ‘for several seasons, but more particularly that of 1879–80, none in Scotland showed better form. His returns near goal were neat and clean, and without being in any way rough with an opponent Vallance’s length of limb and good judgement often saved his club from losing goals.’3 The Scottish Athletic Journal reckoned: ‘He was worshipped by a very large section of the football community, and that worship at times had in it all the fire and enthusiasm which are commonly bestowed on a hero.’4

  Scots Wha Hae: the Scotland team that defeated England 6–1 at The Oval, London, on 12 March 1881. The side included three Rangers – Tom Vallance, back row, centre. Forward David Hill, middle row, left; with George Gillespie (now goalkeeper, no longer a back) second from right in the middle row. Harry McNeil is middle row, far right. The match was especially significant as it marked the first time a black player, Andrew Watson of Queen’s Park, played international football. (Picture courtesy of Scottish Football Museum.)

  Were he playing today, Vallance would command a substantial seven-figure transfer fee, but in those innocent, amateur days football was only a pastime for most. Looking to the future, Vallance decided to leave his lodgings at No. 167 Govan Road in February 1882 and forge a career on the tea plantations of Assam in India. It was a bold move as it was a fledgling industry that had only become commercially exploited in the previous 50 years. However, conditions in the north east of India were far from idyllic. Assam historian Derek Perry (5) has painted a picture of a remote, lonely region at the time of the emigration of Vallance. The conditions would have been daunting, even for a man such as Vallance at his physical peak, but he had little chance to settle as he was struck down by illness within a few months of his arrival. On the basis of later accounts, particularly those which reveal that the illness compromised his football career on his return to Scotland, Perry suggests he was likely debilitated by the dreaded Kala-azar, or black water fever, a form of pernicious malaria. Another attack could have been deadly and it was in light of concerns about his health that Vallance returned to Scotland after only a year away. He played three times for Rangers in season 1883–84 but was a spent force. He kicked his last ball for the club in a 9–2 win over Abercorn at Kinning Park on 8 March 1884. The Scottish Athletic Journal sadly noted: ‘He still had a fancy for the game of football and donned the jersey several times but his eye was dimmed and his leg had lost its cunning and he was not even the shadow of his former self.’6

  His illness had clearly forced Vallance into taking stock of his life and soon after his return from India he abandoned his earlier aspirations of pursuing a career as an engineer to become a travelling salesman in the wine and spirits trade, opening the door to a new and lucrative existence in the hospitality industry. He was employed by James Aitken & Co. Ltd, brewers who operated from Linlithgow and Falkirk, brewing their popular ‘Aitken’s Ale’. His working life quickly back on track, Vallance also set about re-establishing himself at Kinning Park. If he could not do it on the field any longer, he could certainly contribute off it and he was elected club president for the first of six seasons in May 1883.

  During his 12-month absence John Wallace Mackay had come to the fore at Kinning Park. Vallance honourably resigned early in his presidency after that player coup moved to remove him as umpire for a match at Dumbarton and replace him with Mackay because he would not favour his own team in his decision making. However, ’keeper George Gillespie issued a grovelling apology on behalf of the team and Vallance returned within a week, his grip on his portfolio tightened still further. As a salesman he was undoubtedly used to flattery and cajolery to get his own way, but there also appeared to be a genuine streak of honesty and integrity running through Vallance to which people warmed. For example, he was an arch critic of Mackay and frequently stood up against the worst excesses of the honorary match secretary in his seemingly never-ending spats with the Scottish Athletic Journal. On one occasion, following the half-yearly meeting in November 1884, Mackay attempted to coerce Vallance into lying on his behalf by denying claims in the Journal that the match secretary had said Queen’s Park were on their financial uppers ahead of their move to the second Hampden Park. In a fit of pique, Mackay had also recommended Rangers never play Third Lanark again after their Glasgow rivals reported them to the SFA for the ‘Cooking the books’ scandal. Vallance refused and, not surprisingly, was showered with praise the following week by the newspaper.

  Increasingly, Vallance was dealing from a position of presidential strength as Rangers moved from a period of financial uncertainty to one of stability under his reign. Membership numbers increased and, with a far-sighted and energetic committee at the club, a move to the purpose-built first Ibrox Park was secured. However, Vallance missed the grand opening of the new ground against Preston North End on 18 August 1887 as he married Marion Dunlop, sister of former teammate, club president and friend William. Marion was from Glasgow and was six years Tom’s junior. The wedding ceremony was held in the Dunlop family home, with Tom’s younger brother Alick acting as best man.

  Within 18 months the couple’s first child was born, Harold Leonard Vallance, on 20 January 1889. By this time they lived at No. 89 Maxwell Drive in the south-west of Glasgow, before moving back into the city to No. 48 Sandyford Street a year later. It was at this point
that Tom’s career was suddenly injected with an extra impetus, as he moved from his position with brewer James Aitken to become a successful restaurateur. In 1890 he took on his first real business venture – a pub/restaurant located at No. 22 Paisley Road West at Paisley Road Toll. He called the restaurant The Club and it quickly became a popular venue for the Rangers’ ‘smoker evenings’. He would also go on to own and operate at least two other restaurants in the city: The Metropolitan at No. 40 Hutchison Street and The Lansdowne at No. 183 Hope Street. His reputation among his business contemporaries was underlined in 1906 when he became president of the Restaurateurs and Hotelkeepers Association.

  The happiness of Tom and Marion was sealed still further in 1891 when another son, James Douglas, was born. The Vallances seemed to lead a somewhat itinerant life at this stage as James was born in the new family home at No. 219 Paisley Road in Glasgow, before they moved to nearby Lendel Terrace then, soon after, Maxwell Drive and back to Kersland Street in the west end. Finally, in 1908 Tom and Marion settled at No. 189 Pitt Street in Glasgow city centre and the place they would call home for the rest of their lives.

  In addition to his work with Rangers and his various business concerns, Vallance was also a member of the ‘Old Glasgow Club,’ a local history society. He also found time for another passion: art. Self taught, he exhibited at the annual exhibition of the Royal Glasgow Institute at least twice, in 1897 and 1929, and his work was also displayed by the Scottish Academy. He never became as celebrated as contemporaries such as Glasgow Boys James Guthrie and James Paterson, or Scottish colourists Samuel Peploe or John Fergusson, but his work was popular and still occasionally appears at auction. One of his final commissions was an impressive and dramatic canvas almost six feet in height entitled The Charge, which was presented to Cadder Golf Club in Bishopbriggs on its opening in May 1935. The painting, which featured an army battalion on horseback, was so impressive it was even reproduced in the Daily Record in February 1934. Unfortunately, despite its size, the golf club lost track of the painting when it was removed during World War Two and its current whereabouts is unknown.

  Sadly, the events of World War One were to have a lasting impression on the Vallance family. Harold Vallance joined the 7th Battalion (Blythswood) of the great Glasgow regiment, the Highland Light Infantry. Tragically, on 28 September 1918, just six weeks before the end of the war, Second Lieutenant Harold Leonard Vallance, aged 29, was killed in one of the closing conflicts in the assault on the Hindenburg line in France. He was buried with honour at Abbeville Communal Cemetery.

  A reproduction of The Charge by Tom Vallance, which appeared in the Daily Record in February 1934. The original oil painting, a six foot tall canvas, was presented to Cadder Golf Club ahead of its opening in 1935.

  Thankfully, the story involving second son Jimmy has a much happier ending. He married Elizabeth Wilson and moved to England to continue the family’s football tradition. Jimmy became trainer for Stoke City and helped the side win promotion to the First Division under team manager Tom Mather in 1932. One of the emerging stars of the club at that period was Stanley Matthews, who married Jimmy’s daughter Betty in the summer of 1934 at Bonnyton Golf Club in Eaglesham. Their courtship had started 12 months previously when Jimmy invited Stanley to his holiday home in Girvan to teach him how to play golf. In fact, Stanley’s relationship with Betty was sealed over a four ball in the Ayrshire town involving Stanley, Betty, Jimmy – and Sam English. The Rangers striker, so unfairly tarnished by many rival fans following the tragic and accidental death of Celtic ’keeper John Thompson at an Old Firm game at Ibrox in 1931, was also a family friend of Jimmy Vallance who, by the time of his daughter’s marriage, had moved from Stoke to become golf manager at Bonnyton.

  Betty, who became Lady Betty following Sir Stanley’s knighthood in the New Year’s Honours List in 1965, died in November 2007 aged 95, seven and a half years after her husband passed away. Sir Stanley, the first superstar of football, played until he was 50 and left a rich sporting legacy from his spells with Stoke and Blackpool. He also won 54 caps for England and was the first European Player of the Year in 1956. The Vallance connection with Rangers clearly held good, however, as Matthews guested for the Light Blues twice during World War Two, including a medal-winning appearance in the Glasgow Charity Cup Final of 1941 when Bill Struth’s men saw off Partick Thistle 3–0 at Hampden in front of 25,000 fans, courtesy of a Torry Gillick double and a strike from Alex Venters.

  Senior statesman: Tom Vallance, pictured in the 1920s.

  Jimmy’s son Thomas, born in Stoke in 1924, was also a footballer of some promise. He played for his home-town club during World War Two and also had a short-lived spell at Torquay before moving to Arsenal in 1947. A left-winger, he made his debut for the Gunners the following season and played 14 times, scoring twice. However, competition for places at the North London club was fierce and he played only once in the following campaign before becoming a reserve-team regular, finally being freed in the summer of 1953.

  By that time his grandfather Tom had long since passed away although, fittingly, he was given the Ibrox equivalent of a state funeral following his death at home on the evening of Saturday 16 February 1935, with his burial three days later at Hillfoot Cemetery in Bearsden. Rangers chairman James Bowie took one of the cords as the gallant pioneer was laid to rest, while former teammate James ‘Tuck’ McIntyre, also in his late seventies and one of the oldest surviving former players at the time, took another. Bill Struth attended, along with other senior club officials, while a host of former opponents from clubs such as Dumbarton, Clyde and Third Lanark also turned out. In life, some people are lucky if they experience shades of grey. Tom Vallance led an existence that was a riotous rainbow of colour, with the prevalent shade always that of the Rangers blue.

  Happily We Walk Along the Copland Road

  It was a measure of the new-found confidence of Glasgow that the city hosted its first International Exhibition in 1888 on the stretch of parkland that had earlier provided a place of contemplation for four youngsters who were interested in forming the football club that quickly became known as Rangers. Glaswegians grew giddy at the thought of the cosmopolitan delights of a showcase for their city that would eventually be nicknamed Baghdad on the Kelvin as a result of the eastern influence on the architectural structures that dominated Kelvingrove Park for seven months between May and November. The Glasgow International Exhibition of Science, Art and Industry attracted almost six million visitors in total and was widely recognised as the first truly international exhibition since the great gathering at Crystal Palace in 1851.

  In addition to showing off Glasgow’s outstanding achievements as an industrial power and second city of the Empire, the exhibition was also aimed at turning a profit to fund a new gallery and museum at Kelvingrove. Glasgow now boasted such a treasure trove of art and other valuable artefacts there was no longer room to display them at the McLellan Galleries, which was until then its main museum. The art gallery and museum at Kelvingrove opened in time for the next major exhibition in 1901 and still stands today as one of the country’s top tourist attractions in all its refurbished splendour.

  In total, there were 2,700 exhibits at the 1888 event, including an electrically illuminated fairy fountain of different colours and a Doulton Fountain, now restored to all its former glory and housed at Glasgow Green. The River Kelvin was even deepened and cleaned and the flow of sewage into its waters stemmed to such an extent there were regular swimming galas. A gondola was brought to Glasgow from Venice especially for the exhibition and two gondoliers, nicknamed Signor Hokey and Signor Pokey, treated visitors to trips up and down the Kelvin. H. and P. McNeil also took the chance to exhibit their wares – at court number two, stand 1241, according to their adverts at the time. Glasgow was letting its hair down, more confident of its place in Britain and the world in general. It was a bold self-assuredness that was being matched at the time by the leaders of Rangers.

  The constant c
reep of industrialisation had long put pressure on land at Kinning Park, the ground Rangers had called their home, if not their own, since 1876. At least twice the Light Blues had fought the threat of eviction from their landlord, but the writing was not so much on the wall as the gable ends of the tenements that began to dominate in the district. The factor, land agents Andersons and Pattison, duly arrived early in the New Year in 1887 and gave Rangers notice to quit their home by 1 March. It was a sad blow, not least because the £60 per annum Rangers paid in rent was considered extremely cheap for the time and the facility. Nevertheless, the move to evict came as no great surprise. In the 1860s Kinning Park was a pretty patch of meadowland and even as late as 1872 the former ground of the Clydesdale Cricket Club sat in rural isolation. However, by 1873 the Clutha Ironworks had been constructed nearby, followed a couple of years later by a depot for the Caledonian Railway Company. By the turn of the 20th century the green grass at Kinning Park would disappear forever and be replaced by a coating of dust from the sawmill of Anderson and Henderson. A move west to the undeveloped lands of Ibrox beckoned.