Scotland

When Association football came to Scotland in 1872 it was an English sport, played to English rules and English mores. Football, in fact several types of football, had existed in Scotland for many years, indeed for centuries. The documentary evidence is there. But the norm of this newly adopted game was dribbling-driven flashiness with little thought or fitness. And so, had it stayed a game of the self-obcessed cities, Glasgow and Edinburgh, so it might have remained. But the Vale of Leven would change all that. It took what it had been shown, learned it well, added what it knew and understood positionally and organisationally from its own sporting traditions, brought to it the fitness of labouring in the local dye- and print-works, changed what was a middle-class pastime into, for Scots players and spectators alike and, as a result, for much of the globe, a passion that persists to this day. And at the forefront of the transformation was first the persistance of Vale of Leven F.C. in rejecting, replacing, indeed overwriting the English style of play. Then came the innovativeness of the first Renton F.C., the obvious on-field success of again of Vale of Leven in the second half of the 1870s. And in the second half of the next decade there would be a re-born Renton, once again revolutionising the game, in the late winter and early summer of 1887-8 sweeping all before it not just North but then South of the Border too.    

England

The English, but not the Queen's Park and therefore Glasgow's, response to the above was first to carry on regardless, then to copy and finally to try to undermine. It did none well. In particular the Lane Jackson Corinthian initiative failed and badly. And meantime the Scottish all-class passion for the game would spread across the border to the working-classes of North- and Middle-England, making inevitable the anathema of the London game at least, that is professionalism, with again Scots at the forefront both off- and on-the-field. And whilst the driver for the former might have been Perthshire in origin, that for the latter was initially Ayrshire and Edinburgh but resulted latterly in the five seasons from 1888 the pillaging of the Dunbartonshire's Vale of Leven, The Vale and Renton clubs, with more still from Dumbarton, about a hundred players in all, mostly going South.               

Global

Nor would influence both within and outwith Scotland end in the 1890s. Johnny Madden, Scottish international, took his coaching expertise, the first to do so, from Dumbarton to Prague never to return and is lauded there still. One of World greatest footballers of the second half of the 1920s was Renton-boy, Alex Jackson. The statistically most successful Scotland manager of the last century was Ian McColl, Alexandria-born, his grandfather, Will, both a Vale of Leven and Renton player.

But the Vale of Leven's greatest footballing legacy has been not the players but the style of play that evolved there over a decade and half and has become the modern game. Defence might have been invented there in 1872. Effective defence certainly was, as too in 1888 was effectively mid-field linkage. Wide full-backs and therefore wing-backs were probably a result as earlier had been forward pairings and therefore inside forwards. The World's understanding of 4-4-2, 3-4-3, even 5-4-1 depends on the 2-2-3-3 and then 2-2-1-2-3 that took shape on Vale of Leven field and in Vale of Leven minds.