“Social physical exercise?” Football, industrial paternalism, and professionalism in west Dunbartonshire, Scotland, c. 1870–1900.

This article examines the interrelationship of sport, community and industry in west Dunbartonshire during the period 1870–1900. During the early years of the Scottish Football Association (SFA)– the 1870s and 1880s – the county's main football clubs were amongst the SFA's most dominant, regularly challenging Glasgow's major clubs for supremacy in the Scottish Cup. These clubs were part of an industrial landscape, based as they were in shipbuilding and textile communities significantly comprised of Irish and Highland Scottish migrant populations. Local industrialists acted as patrons out of a paternalistic desire to mould the message of football. Their attempts were nevertheless undermined by the existence of professionalism in the game, which in turn encouraged an alternate method of social mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]