That modern football players are well-paid, some very, very well paid is a given but only a fairly recent one. Here, and somewhat glibly, indeed lazily, I could invoke the Bosman Ruling as the point post-1995 at which the modern reality began but the truth is that Bosman was not really about footballers' pay but free-movement between clubs and even then only within the EU and only at end of contract. It would not, even if in force at the time, have, for example, affected the impasse that, for example, Alex Jackson found himself in 1932-3 at Chelsea. He and the club had fallen out. Several reason's are given but the bottom-line was probably that, as captain, he was the spokesperson and therefore face for any player grievances and a number of the several Scots in the squad, including himself, were unhappy about their incomes that were being limited by the club's wage-cap. In fact the problem went deeper because most of those Scots were internationals and, at the instigation of Arsenal in 1930 there had been an attempt if not to remove then severely to control the availability for International games of players contracted by English clubs but from outwith, so Scots, Irish and Welsh. It had meant that in the case of Scotland between June 1930 and September 1932 only one Anglo, Sunderland's Jimmy Connor, played for the national team with loss of revenue, not to say pride, to the established stars, Jackson amongst them. 

The matter was not resolved until October 1932 and its resolution largely due to the efforts, the balm, of the SFA President, Robert Campbell of St. Johnstone, one of the great and most unsung heroes of Scottish, indeed, international football. Here was a man who, elected in 1927 and remaining in post until 1934, was not only chairman of the selectors of the 1928 Wembley Wizards team but probably saved the globally the International from club-domination and therefore elimination. What might have been installed in Britain in 1931 would more than likely have become the model world-wide had it not been quietly charmed to death by Campbell at source.     

However, back to Alex Jackson. As perhaps in his era the best footballer in Britain and therefore worldwide and still only twenty-six Jackson might have played for Scotland for half a decade more with the consequent kudos and, importantly, income. Instead he found himself mid-contract, frozen out at Stamford Bridge so on minimum money with nowhere to go except outwith the Football League and indeed the other main British Leagues, where his Chelsea contact was still enforceable. So, left with no choice, outwith is just where Jackson went, at first in England in lower leagues for pay-per-game payments at Ashton and then Margate and then to France, where his English contract had no validity. And the point of all this is twofold, first that, even though there was a players' union, the Professional Footballers' Association, found in 1907 in Manchester and still there, it could do nothing for him and, second, this was not the first time the wage-cap and restrictive contracts had reared their ugly, restrictive heads. For that and we have to step back thirty years further still and in doing so also uncover the real beginnings of footballing unionism, of, if you like, the first Bosmans.  

I think it is a known known that modern players-salaries are result of broadcasting money. In fact until the arrival essentially of television the previous income-model for football, indeed all professionalised games, struggled. It was knife-edge between money out and paying-punters through the turnstiles, had been so since the inception of business-run sport and for which ground expansion was only a short-term panacea. In 1888 it had been raison d'etre for the proposal of and foundation by William McGregor of the Football League. For his Aston Villa and other clubs the previous model of Cup and friendlies was failing. The Cup worked. The friendlies didn't; too little public interest, too many cancellations. Regular, enforceable games were required. The League was seen as the solution and for a while it was, hence it has become the initial model for most sports.    

But even the Football League found that after a honeymoon period income less expenditure, or at least return-on-investment was not what had been envisaged and just a half a decade after inception in 1893 at the initiation of Derby County the "executive" response was already cut costs, the wage-cap being specifically the iteration when it came to the footballers themselves. Until then the players' market had been more or less a free-for-all with raw material , the footballer, initially engaged on a more or less game-by-game basis. Longer-term, informal contracts then evolved as then did long-term, more formal ones, with the players themselves negotiating their best deals. At the very top of the scale they could be earning £10 a week. The Derby proposal was for a maximum of £4, in addition to which was the equally egregious one for a "retain-and-transfer" system to restrict the movement of players between clubs, i.e. the introduction of the rule that eventually did for Alex Jackson.    

Now, with your knowledge of the cost-of-living in 1897-98 you might consider £10 a week a lot of money but remember that the English Football League was the first but by then not the only professional league. The SFA had "approved" professionalism in Scotland in 1893, although it had existed for several years before that. Moreover, the football played by Scots within and outwith Scotland had proved so superior to that South of the Border over the best part of a quarter of a century that the demand for Scottish players had been and was not limited to the Scottish clubs. In 1896 Sunderland had twenty-five Scots on its books, Liverpool eighteen, Everton sixteen, Burnley fourteen and even Derby twelve. That same year in English football there were at least two hundred and fifty Scots players, each of had had to be enticed South away from the Scottish game, many with families, and had to be remunerated accordingly. It is hardly then surprising that the prospect of a potential cut of 50% in income was not looked upon with unalloyed joy by the foreign itinerants or that there was a reaction.  

Thus in February 1898 a number of prominent players, and others, the magic number of two hundred and fifty in all, got together to form the Association Footballers' Union (AFU), which from the beginning went far beyond just wages. A key policy was that players should have an involvement in any negotiations regarding their possible transfer (rather than being excluded from talks between the clubs concerned)[Alex Jackson eat your heart out]. Furthermore, simultaneously a parallel organisation of the same name had been set up in Scotland and in March 1898 the two amalgamated to form the National Association Football Players' Union (NAFPU). It too sought reform of contracts but also set up a provident fund for members, who fell on hard times. A union fundraising match between English and Scottish players was even staged that April, approved by both the FA and SFA but notably held in Scotland at Ibrox. 

The founders and leading lights of the Scottish AFU were, of course, Scots. From Scotland's leading sports historian, the inestimable Andy Mitchell, we know that its slogan was "Defence not Defiance", Scottish indeed international watch-words for all time, and its management committee consisted of the Dan Doyle of Celtic, William Baird of St. Bernard's, James Gillespie of Third Lanark, Jimmy Raeside then of Clyde and Jimmy Millar of Rangers, all current or future Scottish internationals. But what is not recognised is that much of the executive of the English version was also Scots.