GIANTS AT CENTRE HALF-BACK
— Jonathan Oldbuck | 09/01/1928 —

As indicating a line of policy pursued by the Scottish selector, I have shown in previous articles how, in the past 30 years, only different players have kept goal against England, and that the centre-forward position has been held by 14 players.

Bearing on this policy of continuity of selection, one finds thta over the same period 11 players have shared the centre half-back role.

This menas that in the 27 matches against England since 1896 — for, of course, the War years are excluded — only 37 players have been chosen for goal, centre-forward, and centre half-back, where the possible selection was 81.

Scotland has been fortunate to have men upon whom she could place such trust, but the figures have also another significance, fo they indicate acumen on the part of the selectors in judging the type of player for these nerve-trying contests.

PERSONAL INTIMACY.

Scottish selectors do no choose a man merely because he can play well; by personal intimacy they make it part of their business to discover if he has the temperament, without which no player will reproduce his natural ability when conscious of an unusual issue being at stake.

Mistakes have been made in this direction, but, all things considered, these have been wonderfull few.

The three great Scottish centre half-backs of the past thirty years were the late James Cowan, Alec Raisbeck, and Charles Thomson. Cowan played three times against England, and would have done so oftener but for an untoward event in the 1898 match — his last — when England won by 3—1 at Celtic Park.

MEN OF PHYSIQUE.

Alec Raisbeck was seven times "capped," and Chartlie Thomson six times, with a seventh cap gained as right back, in 1907, at Newcastle. Among them the trio shared 16 honours as centre half-backs, and, as I say, Cowan might have had more to make the total greater.

Raisbeck and Thomson had something in common as regards physique and style. They were both big men, with shoulders which any opposing forwards might shun.

Cowas was neither so tall nor so broad, but he had a chest for staying power, and he was fleet enough to win a Powderhall Handicap.

As an Aston Villa player, Cowan got his three caps. He was one of the first five Anglo-Scots to play for Scotland in the 1896 match at Parkhead, and it was largely on account of his wonderful recovery and superb placing that the first victory was gained over England in seven years.

RAISBECK'S WAY.

But good as was his display in that match, I think he excelled it in the following year at the Palace, when Scotland again won by the same score — 2-1. He could send a lovely pass along the ground, and he usually made a lot of ground before transgerring, so that his forwards could afford to be well up.

Alec Raisbeck came into the Scottish team in 1900, when Scotland was represented by what many consider the most happily-blended eleven of the past 30 years.

BLOOMER'S POUNCE
"AND WHIPPED IT INTO THE NET."

For eight seasons no one else was thought of for centre half. He stood unchallenged, and it was only because he could not accept his cap in 1905 that he missed the match.

In his seven appearances against England he was only once on the beaten side, and that was in 1904, at Parkhead, when Stephen Bloomer, Scotland's deadliest enemy as a marksman, pounced on a ball miscked on the slushy pitch by Jackson, the Scottish left back, and whipped it into the net.

Raisbeck's upstanding figure, redolent of strength and radiating confidence, was a pleasant sight for Scotland's partisans. His positionla sense was so finely developed that he seemed to draw the ball towards him.

Few of us who were at Hampden in 1906 will ever forget the dominatign power he exerted. At periods it seemed to be Raisbeck against England — a delusion forced upon the spectator by the sheer commanding personality of the man.

A great captain was Alec Raisbeck — calm but grim, splendidly self-reliant, but conveying the unspoken message to his men that he required a special effort and that he knew he would get it from them.

Somehow one felt it was too big a thing to expect a sucessor of the same mould, and yet Charlie Thomson came near to fulfilling such a desire.

And so, for 13 consecutive seasons, these two sons of Anak figured in the key position of Scotland's team against England, with just one exception, which occured in 1909 at thw Palace, when Thomson was not available. James Stark played that day.

THOMSON'S DAY.

I should say that Thomson's best game against England was in 1910, at Hampden, when, with "Daddler" Aitken and Peter McWilliam, Scotland possessed as talanted a half-back line as ever went into an International field.

They so completely drew the sting from the English attack that the ball was amng the Scots forwards for three-fourths of the game. And thus arose the opportunity for McWilliam, Higgins, and the late Bobby Templeton (the two latter forming the left wing) to give their memorable triangular display.

Wilfrid Low, who played in 1911 and 1920, was another out of a big mould, but he did not quite reach the Raisbeck and Thomson standard.

Afterwards came George Brewster (1921), William Cringan (1922 and 1923), David Morris (1924 and 1925), William Summers (1926), and James Gibson (1927), the last anmed receiving his first cap in 1926 as a right-half.

As a centre-half, Gibson was the best since Thomson. Hence the concern in Scotland regarding the effect of the Aston Villa man's injury on his future.