Publications - Game For Game's Sake

Game For Game's Sake
By The Spider
January 1 2003

"The Game For The Game's Sake" by Bob Crampsey (1967)

The Club's Latin motto,"Ludere Causa Ludendi" translates literally as "to play for the sake of playing". It provided the title of Bob Crampsey's excellent book to commemorate the Club's Centenary,"The Game For The Game's Sake".

To celebrate their centenary, the Club had commissioned their most famous supporter (his brother Frank was the Club's ever present goalkeeper during their 1955-56 B Division Championship success) to write an account of the 1867-1967 period.

It came in a standard hardback issue; this time with a dust jacket showing an aerial photo of the stadium packed to capacity. Unlike the 1920 book, when the Club's support was sufficiently large to justify such a publication, by 1967 home attendances had dropped below the 1000 mark so the Committee appreciated the need to approach a wider audience and hired Douglas Publicity Ltd. of Glasgow to market the book on their behalf.

Crampsey's style of writing is quite unique and readers tend to either love or loathe the alternating mixture between the verbose and the conversational. There is no doubting that, for those with the intelligence to match this Brain of Britain, it is an excellent read and very much suited to the bowler hat brigade of bankers and accountants who followed the Club's fortunes at that time. Stick it before your average tabloid newspaper reader nowadays though and it might be something of a struggle!

The book divides into four sections, each of approximately quarter of a century as follows:

SECTION ONE

Prologue

A Number Of Gentlemen Met

Early Days And Early Scots Opponents

Queen's Park Cross The Tweed

Queen's Park And The Scottish Football Association

The First And Second Hampden Parks

Showing The Flag

Queen's Park And The Showing Of Professionalism

SECTION TWO

Prologue

Queen's Park In The League 1900-1919

The Making Of Third Hampden

Queen's Park In The Scottish Cup 1890-1914

Queen's Park In Local Competitions

Queen's Park And Europe

SECTION THREE

Prologue

Queen's Park In The League 1919-24

Queen's Park In The League 1924-29

Queen's Park In Cup Football In The Twenties

Hampden Park Between The Wars

Tours And Amateur Internationals In The Twenties

Queen's Park In The League 1930-35

Queen's Park In The League 1935-39

Queen's Park In The Thirties On Cup Business

Queen's Park In The Thirties. Their Country's Keeper

Queen's Park In The Second World War 1939-45

SECTION FOUR

Prologue

Queen's Park In The League 1945-50

Queen's Park In The League 1950-55

Queen's Park In The Cup 1945-55

Queen's Park In Internationals And Foreign Affairs 1945-55

Hampden Park Since The War

Queen's Park In The League 1955-58

Queen's Park In The League 1958-66

Queen's Park In The Cup 1955-66

Queen's Park 1955-66, International and Inter-Continental

Now And In Time To Come

Centennial Summer

There were also seven splendidly researched appendices at the end and there were a few double-sided pages with photographs throughout the book. Such is the standard of writing throughout, it is difficult to select one chapter above all others so, instead, your attention is drawn to the subtitles which accompanied each season with classics like "Blessed are they who do not expect much, for they shall not be disappointed" and "The story of a battered bowler hat".

Obviously, the book is long out of print but a great deal of patience and a £50 note may reward those who search long and hard enough. Again, for those for whom that sum of money is outwith their reach, the Glasgow Room of the Mitchell Library would be an appropriate place to while away the hours.