Although Queen’s Park pioneered the “Association” game in Scotland, football of one sort or another has been in Scotland for almost 600 years. In 1424 the Parliament of James I issued an Act banning football because it interfered with military gatherings and archery practice.

Mary Queen of Scots saw her final attempt to regain the Scottish throne dashed at the Battle of Langside on 13th May 1568. One month later, while imprisoned at Carlisle Castle, she watched her courtiers play at football. The game was noted for its skill and lack of foul play. A little over three hundred years later, 1st August 1868, Queen’s Park were to play their first competitive match on the site of the battlefield.

In the early days sides played with a lot more players than teams have today. In the first competitive match under Association Rules, a challenge match between Queen’s Park and The Thistle in 1868 both sides agreed to play 20 a side and the game lasted 2 hours.


A curious link with rugby during the 1860s was the “touch down rule”. When the ball went wide of the goal it had to be touched down before the game was stopped.

If a defending player touched the ball first he kicked the ball back into play roughly from the line where the ball had left the field. If an attacking player touched the ball first then a “touchdown” was awarded. If the game finished goalless touchdowns decided the winner.

The early laws of the game allowed goalkeepers to handle the ball anywhere on the pitch. In the course of a league match at Fir Park in 1910, Colin Hampton of Motherwell and Jimmy Brownlie of Third Lanark used this to their advantage by each scoring. The laws were changed the following season to ensure that goalkeepers could only handle the ball in their own penalty areas.