That there was for many years a distinction between the football played in Scotland and in England is without doubt. It was, in part at least, confirmed by the remark made the Scottish captain, Jimmy McMullan, at thirty-three a player, who had begun his senior career before The Great War, just after leading his team to the 1-5 Wembley Wizards victory. He said: 

I want to emphasise that all our forwards are inherently clever. ... But I wish to say that the English tactics were wrong. The Saxon wing-halves paid more attention to the wingers than the inside forwards – therefore the latter were given a lot of space. It is a common thing in England to let wing halves, and not fullbacks, mark the wingers. It doesn’t pay and I don’t know why they pursue it. 

But the irony of the situation is that the same Wizard’s match had seen the first ever employment by the Scottish national team of a centre-back. For the only cap he was to receive all six feet two and thirteen to fourteen stone of Tom Bradshaw had been placed between the full-backs to do a job on Dixie Dean and had succeeded beyond all expectation. The Everton forward did not get a sniff.

Bradshaw had been playing that centre-back role in a 3:2:5 with success since he had come down to Bury from Coatbridge in 1922. His English club achieve promotion from the Second to the First Division the next season. But he was a something of a rarity. Some teams used 2:3:5 with the No. 5, had shirts been numbered then, a defensive centre-half, whilst others imported, amongst the 200 or so Scots in the English leagues, the misnomered “Scottish attacking centre-half (SACH)” in a 2:2:1 or a variation. Highly successful Huddersfield used essentially both with the attacking role played by a dropped-back inside forward.

However, whilst clubs tinkered, national teams, with Scotland dominant, had remained more conservative. That is until 1927 at Hampden when both major countries tried something different. Scotland played a six-foot two right-half at attacking centre-half, but presumably to do not one but two jobs; be both a pivot and again to counter then new-boy, Dean. It didn’t work. England had started with a holding centre-half, who was also six foot two and despite an injury to him and others had won 1-2. Dean scored both. The Bradshaw rethink under new SFA Chairman, Bob Campbell, was the response. 

But neither he, Bradshaw, nor it would stick. The following year Davie Meiklejohn was in harness, remained so for two more seasons and be a very different beast. He was 5ft 7ins in height and eleven stone in weight. For his only senior club, Rangers, he played both right-half and centre-half and was no stranger to a goal. Through his career he scored on average every ten games and in doing so might have been thought to hark back to earlier times. The SACH had come in in 1888 with James Kelly of Renton, soon to transfer his loyalty to newly founded Celtic, his family remaining major influencers at the club until almost modern times. But it did not really become successfully embedded until 1896 and the inclusion of Anglos, players plying their trade in England, for selection. The first and for three seasons until he blotted his copy-book was Aston Villa’s James Cowan. His goals to games ratio was of the same order as Meiklejohn’s, as was that of Cowan’s successor Alex Raisbeck, whilst that of the next in line, Charlie Thomson, was considerably better still at one in six, whilst he was still in Scotland. 

And here is the curiosity. When he, Thomson, moved to England in 1908 the ratio dropped like a stone and immediately post-war would remain at much the same level with successors, Walter Cringan and Davie Morris, both Scots-based at Celtic and Raith respectively. There seems to be three possible explanations. The first is that already pre-War in England and by then even in Scotland tactics had changed and the SACH had become more defensive, an SADCH, this as the game more generally had also, verified in due course by the change in 1925 of the off-side law. The second, and not to the exclusion of the first, is that opposing teams had better learned to tie the SACH down, which, if true, only enhances Meiklejohn’s prowess. And the third is a combination of the both.

However, when Meiklejohn in 1931 stepped back from the SACH role, he would prove to be to all intents and purposes the last of a line both for the Govan club, as it dominated the Scottish game, and internationally. Allan Craig of Motherwell was his immediate replacement. He was a defensive centre-half at 5ft 10ins, twelve stone and scoring at one in a hundred games. His eventual more permanent replacement to 1938 was James Simpson, once more from Ibrox, who stood at six feet, weighed twelve stone and was a centre-back, who netted a little more often at on average once in fifty but nothing to write home about. Moreover, post-Second War the incumbent was to be Willie Woodburn, same club, same height, same weight, same role, hardly a goal. Only in 1939 was there perhaps a hint of a way back to the old way as at just turned twenty-eight and in his prime Bobby Baxter of Middlesbrough, with a goals to game ratio exactly mid-Meiklejohn’s and Cowan’s, had in 1939 pulled on the Scotland shirt for the three consecutive matches before hostilities swept both its and his chances away. 

But, of course, that was not to be nor is the end of the story. In 1950 Uruguay would win the the World Cup, Hungary would defeat England and then Scotland in 1953 and 1955 respectively, Brazil would win World Cups in 1958 and 1962, The Netherlands would shine in the 1970s and Spain in the 2000s, all with their implanted versions of the Auld Style. It had slipped through our fingers but thankfully not theirs.