Minutes of The Football Association, October 3rd 1872.
Representative sides from England and Scotland had played each other five times between 1870 and 1872. All of the matches took place in London. The results were:
England 1 Scotland 1
England 1 Scotland 0
England 1 Scotland 1
England 2 Scotland 1
England 1 Scotland 0
The Scotland teams for these matches were made up mostly of London based Scots or Englishmen with Scottish connections. In fact the Scotland teams for these early fixtures were selected by the FA! The possibility of Scotland challenging England with a 'homegrown' team was also hampered by the fact that the FA's rules had not been widely adopted in Scotland.
The Queen's Park Club of Glasgow took up the FA's challenge and consequently the first official international football match was played. The Scots had not originally intended to field an XI of Queen's Park players, but the absence of two English based players left Queen's Park players completing the strongest available line up.
SCOTLAND: (2-2-6)
Robert W. Gardner (c)
William Ker, Joseph Taylor
James Thomson, James Smith
Robert Smith, Robert Leckie, Alexander Rhind, Billy MacKinnon, Jerry Weir, David Wotherspoon
(All of Queen's Park)
ENGLAND: (1-1-8)
Robert Barker (Hertfordshire Rangers)
Ernest Greenhalgh (Notts County)
Reginald de Courtenay Welch (Harrow Chequers)
Frederick Chappell (Oxford University), William Maynard (1st Surrey Rifles),
John Brockbank (Cambridge University), Charles Clegg (Sheffield Wednesday),
Arnold Kirke-Smith (Oxford University), Cuthbert Ottaway (Oxford University) (c),
Charles Chenery (Crystal Palace),Charles Morice (Barnes)
The first ever case for goal line technology occurred when Scotland had a goal disallowed in the first half after the umpires decided that the ball had cleared the tape (pre crossbars let alone nets!).
Despite a combined presence of 14 attacking players and only 3 defenders, the game ended nil nil. It would be another 98 years before the two sides would produce a goalless draw.
