Bill Hern recently had the pleasure of a visit to Corinthian Casuals’ stadium, the King George’s Arena in Tolworth, where he met up with an old friend Llew Walker. Llew is the author of A Straggling Life, the biography of Andrew Watson. Born in British Guiana (now Guyana) in 1856, Watson became the first Black international when he appeared for Scotland in 1881. He not only played, but captained his country in a 6-1 victory over England. It’s a sobering thought that it would be another 98 years before England fielded its first Black full international, Viv Anderson.
Watson doesn’t appear in Football’s Black Pioneers for the simple reason that he never played in the English League. Nevertheless, he remains an icon of Black football history. He played for Corinthians in the early 1880s (Corinthians and Casuals were separate entities until they merged in 1939) and was an influential figure both north and south of the border in the game’s formative years. He definitely deserves to be known as a ‘pioneer’.
A Straggling Life is a great book, meticulously researched and well worth a read if you want to know more about Andrew Watson.
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