A regular challenge in researching the early footballers is that published information can be wrong: a name might be spelled wrongly in an old book, and that is how it remains for ever more, without being subject to further scrutiny. One such example which I stumbled across recently was that of MJ Eadie Fraser, who won five caps for Scotland between 1880 and 1883, scoring four goals in the process. At Queen's Park (pictured above) he won two Scottish Cup medals and was club secretary in 1882/83. According to the Queen's Park history (1920): Scotland never had a better forward than Eadie Fraser, known to everybody as the "Graceful Eadie". His movements were perfect. His popularity was extraordinary. On the field and off it he was a thorough gentleman, and never descended to those tricks which tend to bring the game into disrepute.
Malcolm John Eadie Fraser was born in Goderich, Ontario, on 4 March 1860, the third and youngest son of Rev John Fraser and Sarah Ann Lawrie, who also had three daughters. His father, a native of Grantown-on-Spey, trained for the ministry in Canada with the Presbyterian Church, and the boy was probably named after Dr John Eadie, professor of biblical literature, who was a leading Presbyterian. The family returned to Scotland in 1862 when his father was admitted as a probationer by the church, and in time was appointed as the first minister of the new Cumberland Street UP church in Glasgow's Gorbals.
Young Eadie became a good footballer and was just the right kind of player for the pre-eminent club in Scotland, Queen's Park, talented and gentlemanly. However, at the peak of his powers, just before his 24th birthday he left Scotland to take up a job in West Africa (I have yet to ascertain what and where). The following year, in 1885, he became ill and to escape the climate became the sole passenger on the cargo ship Ardmore travelling to Australia. Within days of docking at Sydney, however, Eadie Fraser died in the city's Prince Alfred Hospital on 8 January 1886.
He was buried in the vast Rookwood Cemetery, but the story does not quite end there. Later in 1886, some Australian friends launched a memorial fund [link] to erect a suitable headstone to a great footballer. Unfortunately, it seems not enough money was raised, as in May 1887 a meeting of the Southern British Football Association reported "The Chairman, Rev A Miller, referred to the proposal to erect a headstone at the grave of Eadie Fraser, the Queen’s Park club to defray the cost of the railing. No action was, however, taken in the matter."
A final quirk to the story is that one of Eadie Fraser's Scotland team-mates in 1880 was Andrew Watson, famously the first black international player. It has been reported (but I have not found confirmation) that Watson also died in Sydney in 1902. Could it be that Watson and Fraser are both buried in the same cemetery - reunited on the other side of the world?