England's Football Association celebrates the 150th anniversary of its inaugural meeting today but they should really have invited a couple of Scots to the party.

Other than contributing a bit of revelry to proceedings it would also have been historically accurate since Caledonian accents helped articulate a discussion in 1863 about bringing uniformity to the playing rules of football. Of the 15 men representing their clubs and schools to meet at the Freemason's Tavern in London that day, two came from Scotland.

Recent research by historian Andy Mitchell has uncovered the identities of the London-based Scots among the game's pioneers: William J. Macintosh, who had represented Kensington School, and William H. Gordon of Blackheath Propriety School. Both had attended Edinburgh Academy, a notable footballing school, during the latter half of the 1850s.

The fact that both men had connections to Edinburgh should not come as too much of a surprise. The city was acted as a staging area for the development of football as an organised recreation. The earliest known club was established in the city in 1824 by John Hope, a student attending the local university. By 1851, Edinburgh University had its own club and in January that year they played the regimental team of the 93rd Highlanders for a "gold medal". The beautifully engraved medallion, depicting a scene from the game, is perhaps the earliest example of a football trophy to be found anywhere in the world. It resides in the collection of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders Museum, signifying the success of the "sojers" in that historic match.

Football had been given its marching orders and Hope would issue rules in 1854 and encouraged the youth of Edinburgh "in the same shop or establishment" to form clubs. The rules advocated a kicking rather than handling game but by the time they were being promoted among Edinburgh's working class, the Rugby school version of football was being established within private schools around the city. Macintosh and Gordon, as Edinburgh Academy Old Boys, were therefore schooled in a variation of the rugby code.

Bringing uniformity to the rules would be difficult for a nascent FA, then. During one early meeting, supporters of the Rugby school code could not be reconciled with the removal of "hacking" from the Laws of the Game and duly withdrew. It was their baw and they did not want to play any more.

FA membership would remain at a modest level and, albeit with one or two notable exceptions, it was primarily a metropolitan rather than national association. Rules would remain localised, too, and when Queen's Park, Glasgow's first Association club, was formed in 1867, the FA's Laws of the Game were widely referred to as the "London rules". In the north of England "Sheffield rules" was popular and "Rugby rules" were favoured by clubs on both sides of the border. For all the attempts at uniformity, clubs during the 1860s tended just to suit themselves.

The FA's fortunes would improve greatly under the direction of Charles W. Alcock, though. Considered to be one of the great football administrators of the 19th century, Alcock became secretary of the FA in 1870 and was instrumental in setting up both the FA Cup and establishing unofficial football internationals between 1870 and 1872 which involved London-based players representing England and Scotland.

The first official international match, played at the West of Scotland Cricket Ground on St Andrews Day 1872, would have a dramatic impact on the growth of the game in Scotland. Within a few months of organising the match, Queen's Park would institute the Scottish Football Association, create the Scottish Cup and send a Scotland team to London for a return match. The popularity of the game was growing and the FA sought to flex its muscles - demanding that it be accepted as overlords of emerging Associations. The SFA thumbed its nose at the order.

This Anglo-Scottish dispute was exacerbated by a divergence in the Laws of the Game and by the late 1870s the rules governing offside decisions and throw-ins had become areas of contention between Scotland and England. Nowadays they have become areas of dispute for everybody else, too.

It would take a conference held in Manchester in 1882 for a compromise to be reached and four years later, the associations of the four home nations established the International Football Association Board which has been solely responsible for the Laws of the Game ever since.

The SFA had some advantages during its dispute with its English counterpart. Success on the pitch emboldened the position of Scottish administrators and the country's innovative brand of short passing proved a hit, transforming the style of the wider Association game and leading to victories of 7-2 (1878), 6-1 (1881) and 5-1 (1882) against England. These were considered signs of progress following a hard-fought win over the Auld Enemy at Bannockburn (1314).

There was by now a market for talented players, but Scottish footballers were not bundled into the bargain bin. Earning the moniker "Scotch Professors" among clubs in England, the Scottish players who travelled south became box-office attractions. James Joseph Lang moved to Sheffield Wednesday in 1876 and is believed to be the first professional player, even though the payment of players was illegal. In 1885 a floodgate was opened, though, when professionalism was legalised in England and the double-winning Preston North End "Invincibles" of 1889 regularly fielded seven Scots in their line-up, while Liverpool's first team - formed in 1892 - consisted entirely of Scots and earned the nickname "Team of the Macs".

Scots had the ball at their feet and were intent on running with it, Scottish administrators encouraging the growth of football throughout the UK. There was even a notable presence at the very heart of the FA in the shape of Lord Arthur Kinnaird, a Scottish peer and veteran of nine FA Cup finals between 1873 and 1883. He won five but there was a greater victory to come in his role as administrator - playing a pivotal role in convincing a breakaway "British FA" in the north of England to return to the FA. He won them over by convincing the FA hierarchy to back professionalism.

His compatriots would also assume leading roles in the first act of English league football. William McGregor, a Perthshire draper and now better known as the "Father of the Football League", would also influence Aston Villa's decision to adopt the Scottish Lion Rampant for the club crest. McGregor worked as chairman of the Football League and chairman of the FA, too.

In 1886, David Danskin, a mechanical engineer from Fife, founded Dial Square FC - better known today as Arsenal - and a Scottish school teacher, David Allan, established Sunderland AFC in 1879. John Cameron and John Bell, a pair of Scotland players, would also help set up a Players' Union in 1897.