1.
Hamilton Crescent
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Hamilton Crescent is a cricket ground located in the Partick area of Glasgow, Scotland. It is the home of the West of Scotland Cricket Club, Hamilton Crescent hosted the first ever international football match, played between Scotland and England. The game was played on 30 November 1872, ended in a goalless draw, further international matches were held here in 1874 and 1876, before being moved to Hampden Park. The Scottish Cup Final of 1877 was also held at Hamilton Crescent
2.
Partick
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Partick is an area of Glasgow on the north bank of the River Clyde, just across from Govan. To the west lies Whiteinch and to the east, Hillhead, Partick was a Police burgh from 1852 until 1912 when it was incorporated into the city. Partick is the area of the city most connected with the Highlands, some ATMs in the area display Gaelic. The modern name derives from the ancient Cumbric Peartoc and this was adopted into Scottish Gaelic as Peartaig, giving modern Gaelic Pearraig or Pàrtaig. Older anglicised forms include Perdyc and Perthick, Partick, of old Perdyec, from the Gaelic aper dhu ec, meaning the place at the confluence or mouth of the dark river. Although Partick remained a village until the middle of the 18th century, the Kings of Strathclyde had a residence there, and in 1136 David I granted the lands of Perdyc to the see of Glasgow. The Bishops of Glasgow had a seat in Partick. It was later the site of Partick Castle, a home of George Hutcheson. It is historically divided into three areas, south of Dumbarton Road, north of Dumbarton Road and the Partick Hill grand villas. Being within the sphere of influence of the University of Glasgow, traditional industries for the area were shipbuilding and the huge Meadowside Granary employed many residents also. The main street in Partick, Dumbarton Road, has a number of services for residents to use, Partick Burgh Hall is a venue located within Partick. It regularly holds community events and is owned and managed by Culture & Sport Glasgow, the hall was originally built in 1872 and has multiple rooms. The hall is staffed in order to accommodate events and to handle security, private events are also held in the hall. Partick Community Council is an organization which exists in the area to deal with issues within the community and it is the oldest community group in Partick and consists of around twenty elected members. The boundary of this runs from Byres Road to Crow Road. The council is funded by Glasgow City Council by way of an annual grant, examples of activities of the Community Council include, Neighbourhood Watch coordination. Partick Thistle Football Club were formed in the area in 1876, Partick railway station is a trunk station serving as an interchange between the local rail, Glasgow Subway and local bus systems. As well as being the fifth busiest train station in Scotland and it replaced the former Partickhill railway station in 1979
3.
Scotland national football team
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The Scotland national football team represents Scotland in international football and is controlled by the Scottish Football Association. It competes in the two professional tournaments, the FIFA World Cup and the UEFA European Championship. Scotland, as a constituent country of the United Kingdom, is not a member of the International Olympic Committee, the majority of Scotlands home matches are played at the national stadium, Hampden Park. Scotland is the joint oldest national team in the world, alongside England. Scotland has a rivalry with England, whom they played annually from 1872 until 1989. The teams have met six times since then, most recently in November 2016. Scotland have qualified for the FIFA World Cup on eight occasions and the UEFA European Championship twice, the team have achieved some noteworthy results, such as beating the 1966 FIFA World Cup winners England 3–2 at Wembley Stadium in 1967. Archie Gemmill scored what has been described as one of the greatest World Cup goals ever in a 3–2 win during the 1978 World Cup against the Netherlands, in their qualifying group for UEFA Euro 2008, Scotland defeated 2006 World Cup runners-up France 1–0 in both fixtures. Scotland supporters are known as the Tartan Army. The Scottish Football Association operates a roll of honour for every player who has more than 50 appearances for Scotland. Kenny Dalglish holds the record for Scotland appearances, having played 102 times between 1971 and 1986, Dalglish scored 30 goals for Scotland and shares the record for most goals scored with Denis Law. Scotland and England are the oldest national teams in the world. Teams representing the two sides first competed at the Oval in five matches between 1870 and 1872, the two countries contested the first official international football match, at Hamilton Crescent in Partick, Scotland, on 30 November 1872. The match ended in a goalless draw, all eleven players who represented Scotland that day played for Glasgow amateur club Queens Park. Over the next forty years, Scotland played matches exclusively against the other three Home Nations—England, Wales and Ireland, the British Home Championship began in 1883, making these games competitive. The encounters against England were particularly fierce and a rivalry quickly developed, Scotland lost just two of their first 43 international matches. It was not until a 2–0 home defeat by Ireland in 1903 that Scotland lost a match to an other than England. This run of success meant that Scotland would have topped the Elo ratings
4.
England national football team
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The England national football team represents England in international football and is controlled by The Football Association, the governing body for football in England. England are one of the two oldest national teams in football, alongside Scotland, whom played in the worlds first international football match in 1872. Englands home ground is Wembley Stadium, London, and the current manager is Gareth Southgate, England contest the FIFA World Cup and UEFA European Championship, which alternate biennially. In contesting for the World Cup seventeen times over the past sixty four years, England won the 1966 World Cup, when they hosted the finals, the England national football team is the joint-oldest in the world, it was formed at the same time as Scotland. A representative match between England and Scotland was played on 5 March 1870, having been organised by the Football Association, a return fixture was organised by representatives of Scottish football teams on 30 November 1872. Over the next forty years, England played exclusively with the other three Home Nations—Scotland, Wales and Ireland—in the British Home Championship, to begin with, England had no permanent home stadium. They joined FIFA in 1906 and played their first ever games against countries other than the Home Nations on a tour of Central Europe in 1908, Wembley Stadium was opened in 1923 and became their home ground. The relationship between England and FIFA became strained, and this resulted in their departure from FIFA in 1928 and their first ever defeat on home soil to a foreign team was a 0–2 loss to the Republic of Ireland, on 21 September 1949 at Goodison Park. A 6–3 loss in 1953 to Hungary, was their defeat by a foreign team at Wembley. In the return match in Budapest, Hungary won 7–1 and this still stands as Englands worst ever defeat. After the game, a bewildered Syd Owen said, it was like playing men from outer space, in the 1954 FIFA World Cup, England reached the quarter-finals for the first time, and lost 4–2 to reigning champions Uruguay. Although Walter Winterbottom was appointed as Englands first ever manager in 1946. In UEFA Euro 1968, the reached the semi-finals for the first time. England qualified for the 1970 FIFA World Cup in Mexico as reigning champions, and reached the quarter-finals, England had been 2–0 up, but were eventually beaten 3–2 after extra time. They failed in qualification for the 1974, leading to Ramseys dismissal, under Ron Greenwood, they managed to qualify for the 1982 FIFA World Cup in Spain, despite not losing a game, they were eliminated in the second group stage. Despite losing to Italy in the third place play-off, the members of the England team were given bronze medals identical to the Italians’, the England team of 1990 were welcomed home as heroes and thousands of people lined the streets, for a spectacular open-top bus parade. However, the team did not win any matches in UEFA Euro 1992, drawing with tournament winners Denmark, the 1990s saw four England managers, each in the role for a relatively brief period. Graham Taylor was Robsons successor, but resigned after England failed to qualify for the 1994 FIFA World Cup, at UEFA Euro 1996, held in England, Terry Venables led England, equalling their best performance at a European Championship, reaching the semi-finals as they did in 1968
5.
Scotland
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Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and covers the northern third of the island of Great Britain. It shares a border with England to the south, and is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east. In addition to the mainland, the country is made up of more than 790 islands, including the Northern Isles, the Kingdom of Scotland emerged as an independent sovereign state in the Early Middle Ages and continued to exist until 1707. By inheritance in 1603, James VI, King of Scots, became King of England and King of Ireland, Scotland subsequently entered into a political union with the Kingdom of England on 1 May 1707 to create the new Kingdom of Great Britain. The union also created a new Parliament of Great Britain, which succeeded both the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of England. Within Scotland, the monarchy of the United Kingdom has continued to use a variety of styles, titles, the legal system within Scotland has also remained separate from those of England and Wales and Northern Ireland, Scotland constitutes a distinct jurisdiction in both public and private law. Glasgow, Scotlands largest city, was one of the worlds leading industrial cities. Other major urban areas are Aberdeen and Dundee, Scottish waters consist of a large sector of the North Atlantic and the North Sea, containing the largest oil reserves in the European Union. This has given Aberdeen, the third-largest city in Scotland, the title of Europes oil capital, following a referendum in 1997, a Scottish Parliament was re-established, in the form of a devolved unicameral legislature comprising 129 members, having authority over many areas of domestic policy. Scotland is represented in the UK Parliament by 59 MPs and in the European Parliament by 6 MEPs, Scotland is also a member nation of the British–Irish Council, and the British–Irish Parliamentary Assembly. Scotland comes from Scoti, the Latin name for the Gaels, the Late Latin word Scotia was initially used to refer to Ireland. By the 11th century at the latest, Scotia was being used to refer to Scotland north of the River Forth, alongside Albania or Albany, the use of the words Scots and Scotland to encompass all of what is now Scotland became common in the Late Middle Ages. Repeated glaciations, which covered the land mass of modern Scotland. It is believed the first post-glacial groups of hunter-gatherers arrived in Scotland around 12,800 years ago, the groups of settlers began building the first known permanent houses on Scottish soil around 9,500 years ago, and the first villages around 6,000 years ago. The well-preserved village of Skara Brae on the mainland of Orkney dates from this period and it contains the remains of an early Bronze Age ruler laid out on white quartz pebbles and birch bark. It was also discovered for the first time that early Bronze Age people placed flowers in their graves, in the winter of 1850, a severe storm hit Scotland, causing widespread damage and over 200 deaths. In the Bay of Skaill, the storm stripped the earth from a large irregular knoll, when the storm cleared, local villagers found the outline of a village, consisting of a number of small houses without roofs. William Watt of Skaill, the laird, began an amateur excavation of the site, but after uncovering four houses
6.
England
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England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west, the Irish Sea lies northwest of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east, the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain in its centre and south, and includes over 100 smaller islands such as the Isles of Scilly, and the Isle of Wight. England became a state in the 10th century, and since the Age of Discovery. The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the worlds first industrialised nation, Englands terrain mostly comprises low hills and plains, especially in central and southern England. However, there are uplands in the north and in the southwest, the capital is London, which is the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland through another Act of Union to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain, the name England is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means land of the Angles. The Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages, the Angles came from the Angeln peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea. The earliest recorded use of the term, as Engla londe, is in the ninth century translation into Old English of Bedes Ecclesiastical History of the English People. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its spelling was first used in 1538. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, the etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars, it has been suggested that it derives from the shape of the Angeln peninsula, an angular shape. An alternative name for England is Albion, the name Albion originally referred to the entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the Aristotelian Corpus, specifically the 4th century BC De Mundo, in it are two very large islands called Britannia, these are Albion and Ierne. But modern scholarly consensus ascribes De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, the word Albion or insula Albionum has two possible origins. Albion is now applied to England in a poetic capacity. Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England, Lloegr, the earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximately 780,000 years ago. The oldest proto-human bones discovered in England date from 500,000 years ago, Modern humans are known to have inhabited the area during the Upper Paleolithic period, though permanent settlements were only established within the last 6,000 years
7.
Referee (association football)
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In association football, the referee is the person responsible for enforcing the Laws of the Game during the course of a match. At higher levels of play the referee may also be assisted by an official who supervises the teams technical areas. Referees remuneration for their services varies between leagues, Referees are licensed and trained by the same national organisations that are members of FIFA. Each national organisation recommends its top officials to FIFA to have the honour of being included on the FIFA International Referees List. International games between national teams require FIFA officials, otherwise, the local national organisation determines the manner of training, ranking and advancement of officials from the youngest youth games through professional matches. The referees powers and duties are described by Law 5 of the Laws of the Game, as per Law 9 of the game, if during the game the ball hits the referee there is no stoppage in play. However the officials would be expected to position themselves such that this would be unlikely to occur. Modern day referees and their assistants wear a uniform consisting of a jersey, badge, shorts and socks, since then, most referees have worn either yellow or black, but the colours and styles adopted by individual associations vary greatly. For international contests under the supervision of FIFA, Adidas uniforms are worn because Adidas is the current sponsor, FIFA allows referees to wear five colours, black, red, yellow, green and blue. Along with the jersey, referees are required to wear shorts, black socks. The badge, which displays the referees license level and year of validity, is affixed to the left chest pocket. All referees carry a whistle, a watch, penalty cards, a wallet with pen and paper. Most are encouraged to have more than one of each on them in case they drop a whistle or a pen runs out, often, referees utilize two watches so that they can use one to calculate time lost for stoppages for the purposes of added time. In matches with goal-line technology, the referee will have on their person a device to receive the systems alerts, Referees use a whistle to help in match control. The whistle is sometimes needed to stop, start or restart play but should not be used for all stoppages, fIFAs Laws of the Game document gives guidance as to when the whistle should and should not be used. Overuse of the whistle is discouraged since, as stated in the Laws, the whistle is an important tool for the referee along with verbal, body and eye communication. Before the introduction of the whistle, referees indicated their decisions by waving a white handkerchief, the whistles that were first adopted by referees were made by Joseph Hudson at Mills Munitions in Birmingham, England. The Acme Whistle Company first began to mass-produce pea whistles in the 1870s for the Metropolitan Police Force, Referees in football are first described by Richard Mulcaster in 1581
8.
Association football
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Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball. It is played by 250 million players in over 200 countries and dependencies making it the worlds most popular sport, the game is played on a rectangular field with a goal at each end. The object of the game is to score by getting the ball into the opposing goal, players are not allowed to touch the ball with their hands or arms while it is in play, unless they are goalkeepers. Other players mainly use their feet to strike or pass the ball, the team that scores the most goals by the end of the match wins. If the score is level at the end of the game, the Laws of the Game were originally codified in England by The Football Association in 1863. Association football is governed internationally by the International Federation of Association Football, the first written reference to the inflated ball used in the game was in the mid-14th century, Þe heued fro þe body went, Als it were a foteballe. The Online Etymology Dictionary states that the word soccer was split off in 1863, according to Partha Mazumdar, the term soccer originated in England, first appearing in the 1880s as an Oxford -er abbreviation of the word association. Within the English-speaking world, association football is now usually called football in the United Kingdom and mainly soccer in Canada and the United States. People in Australia, Ireland, South Africa and New Zealand use either or both terms, although national associations in Australia and New Zealand now primarily use football for the formal name. According to FIFA, the Chinese competitive game cuju is the earliest form of football for which there is scientific evidence, cuju players could use any part of the body apart from hands and the intent was kicking a ball through an opening into a net. It was remarkably similar to football, though similarities to rugby occurred. During the Han Dynasty, cuju games were standardised and rules were established, phaininda and episkyros were Greek ball games. An image of an episkyros player depicted in low relief on a vase at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens appears on the UEFA European Championship Cup, athenaeus, writing in 228 AD, referenced the Roman ball game harpastum. Phaininda, episkyros and harpastum were played involving hands and violence and they all appear to have resembled rugby football, wrestling and volleyball more than what is recognizable as modern football. As with pre-codified mob football, the antecedent of all football codes. Non-competitive games included kemari in Japan, chuk-guk in Korea and woggabaliri in Australia, Association football in itself does not have a classical history. Notwithstanding any similarities to other games played around the world FIFA have recognised that no historical connection exists with any game played in antiquity outside Europe. The modern rules of football are based on the mid-19th century efforts to standardise the widely varying forms of football played in the public schools of England
9.
West of Scotland Cricket Club
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The West of Scotland Cricket Club is a cricket club based in Glasgow, Scotland. The clubs home ground is Hamilton Crescent, located in the Partick area of Glasgows West End. West of Scotland, traditionally, are one of the working class clubs in Glasgow and on a summers day there can be quite a jovial, rowdy. West can boast a host of players who have both played at the ground and for the club. Recently two of these have been famous Scottish internationalists, the opening batsman Douglas Lockhart and bowler John Blain, one of the businessmen present was Colonel David Carrick Buchanan who became the first President of the Club and who continued in this role until his death in 1903. Sir David was devoted to the sport of cricket and was patron of a number of clubs, the name, West of Scotland Cricket Club was coined by one John McNeill who was very ambitious for the Club, and who envisaged it becoming the MCC of Scotland. All-England Elevens were invited to the Club and other matches of a similar nature arranged, tours of England were also undertaken and it was during the first match of one such Tour in July 1885 that a West cricketer achieved a world record which stood for 12 years. The match was against Priory Park C. C. during which Mr. J. S. Carrick batted for two days, achieving a score of 419 not out. In 1891, Dr. W. G. Grace brought a team to Partick, by 1922 the Club had a membership of over 500, seating accommodation for 3,500 and a turnstile at every entrance. A reconstructed pavilion was opened in April 1923 by the then President, Mr. Peter Dawson, following damage sustained during World War II extensive repairs were made to both the pavilion and ground which included the acquisition of turf from Renfrew Golf Course. Between 1965 and 1970 Scotland played matches at Hamilton Crescent against New Zealand, in July 19893,500 spectators watched Scotland play Australia. Following this, Scotland also played Essex and Kent at Hamilton Crescent, Ireland, Gibraltar v. Portugal, England Cricket Board XI v. Scotland, France v. Greece and Holland v. Denmark. The Indoor School was opened in February 1957 and was the first of its kind in Scotland and it has produced an array of youngsters who have come through the ranks and now play an impressive level of cricket. Moneeb Iqbal now plays at Durham and made his first class debut in 2006, in this game Iqbal took a stunning catch on the deep square leg boundary and it has been said that Iqbal is a favourite of the then Durham captain Michael Hussey. Another product of the coveted West Youth system is Craig Wright, Wright left West of Scotland for Carlton CC due to work commitments. He has now moved back west to the controversial Greenock CC all-stars, official site www. wdcu-cricket. net - WDCU Site History of West of Scotland
