Thomas Angus Moffat (15 May 1948 – 11 February 2015) was a Scottish footballer, a right winger, who played in England, Scotland, the United States and Canada between 1964 and 1983, Moffat made nearly 200 career league appearances. Born in Lanarkshire, Scotland, he joined Southampton as an amateur in May 1964 and then played for Motherwell, Falkirk and Dumbarton. While playing for Motherwell he was the first player in Scottish football to score a goal after coming on as a substitute.
He also played in the NASL for Detroit Cougars, Toronto Metros, Detroit Express and the Washington Diplomats. In 1976, he played in Canada in their NSL with Windsor Stars for two seasons. After retiring from playing he coached with an Ontario amateur team, AC Roma in the 1980s, then Windsor Wheels, stepping up to the NSL. In 1989, Moffatt, along with Brian Tinnion, founded the Detroit Rockets. Moffat died in Canada on 11 February 2015.
On the 15th of April 1889, Wales were due to play against Scotland in Wrexham in an international match. Jim Trainer, the Wales goalkeeper didn’t turn up for the game, leading the Welsh team to have to find a goalkeeper from somewhere. A local amateur footballer named Alf Pugh volunteered to play in goal for the Welsh, doing so for around twenty minutes until Sam Gillam arrived at the ground.
Gillam was a goalkeeper who had experience playing for numerous clubs around England and Wales, including a brief stint at Bolton Wanderers in the Football League. He replaced Pugh, becoming the first person to be used as a substitute in the modern meaning of the word in international football.
Remarkably, in-game substitutions weren’t introduced to any aspect of the game for another sixty-five years and even then it was only in some qualifying matches ahead of the 1954 FIFA World Cup.
The first ever player to be substituted in the manner that we understand that word to mean was Richard Gottinger, who came on to replace Horst Eckel in a match between West Germany and Saarland. The notion of a substitute being allowed in most football leagues came about four years later, at which point outfield players could be replaced by one player that was on the bench. Prior to that, if a team suffered an injury then the injured player would either need to carry on or else the team that they played for would be reduced in numbers for the remainder of the match.
The Football Association in England, which has never been an organisation that likes to rush decisions, refused to allow substitutes until the 1965-1966 season. When the idea of introducing substitutes was first brought into the British game the FA decided that they needed to keep as tight a leash on it as possible. As a consequence, they only allowed teams to have one player that could be brought on and even then it needed to be as a replacement for an injured player. That remained the case for two seasons, but it soon became clear that managers were bending the rules to their own advantage.
Don Revie, the Leeds United manager at the time, was well-known for encouraging his players to feign injury in order to make a change so that he could influence the way that the game was going. Perhaps that’s why the Football Association amended the rules ahead of the 1967-1968 season to allow substitutions to be made for tactical reasons, too.
History was made in English football on the 21st of August in 1965 when Keith Peacock became the first player to come onto the field of play as a sub. It was eleven minutes into Charlton Athletic’s game against Bolton Wanderers when Mike Rose, the Charlton goalkeeper, was injured and needed to be replaced. Here he is.......below
On exactly the same day, Bobby Knox also made history by being the first substitute to score a goal. He did so for his side Barrow in their game against Wrexham, possibly helping the likes of Revie to realise the impact that substitutes could have in more ways than just replacing an injured player. Knox would have another claim to fame attached to him later in the season. He came on as a substitute goalkeeper during Barrow’s game against Doncaster Rovers, going on to save a penalty and being the first sub to achieve this.
Some football clubs adapted to the idea of using substitutes quicker than others. We all know about Don Revie’s dubious use of the "medium", though he was by no means the only manager to employ such dodgy tactics. Yet that wasn’t typical of the rest of the league, with most managers only making changes when their players were actually injured.
Across the entirety of the 1965-1966 season West Bromwich Albion, for example, played forty-two league games but only used their substitute in seven of them. By the 1967-1968 season, when tactical subs were allowed, West Brom’s use of them increased to around half of their matches. This was preceded by the introduction of subs to FA Cup matches and the Scottish leagues in the 1966-1967 season.
https://www.football-stadiums.co.uk/articles/substitutions-in-football/
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