History revised for black football star

The first black footballer was playing in British cup matches and international fixtures 11 years earlier than thought, it has been discovered.

Scottish Football Museum staff at Hampden discovered Andrew Watson, born in Guyana in 1857, played in Glasgow in 1874 and went on to represent Scotland against England and Wales.

That was more than a decade before Arthur Wharton, the man originally thought to be the first black footballer, took to the field for Preston North End.

Team photographs of Queen's Park, the oldest association club in Scotland, had long featured a black footballer. Now the discovery of a newspaper interview with a former East Stirling football club director, written in the 1920s, has confirmed Watson was the world's first black player.