Hawks and Glasgow Accies head for Rome on Friday to play Capitolina who currently lie top of Seria A.

Although touring is a reasonably new experience for Hawks- Ireland 2002,South Africa 2003 and France 2005 not so for the bold Glasgow Accies.

Accies first toured in 1870 when they became the first "football" team to cross the border playing Liverpool and Manchester at XX aside.They drew with Liverpool and beat Manchester whereon the Manchester captain recorded "we were particularly struck by the extremely good temper displayed by your team.I can assume it was very different to our Liverpool and Rochdale F.C. matches and much more enjoyable."

Accies followed this up in 1873 going over to Ireland where they beat North of Ireland

1878 saw Glasgow Accies becoming the first Scottish club to play in London when they met Blackheath in an historic match.

In March 1882 a combined team of Glasgow and Edinburgh Academicals under the guise of "Scottish Academicals" played against Manchester and Oxford University..The English newspapers were so impressed that they even suggested that they seek a fixture against England but the Scottish Football Union soon scotched that idea of cross border competition --not a lot has changed .

In November 1910 Accies played both London Scottish and Cambridge University in London

In the inter war years Accies regularly toured England and Ireland.playing the likes of Instonians at Ravenhill

In the post war period tours to England continued and Accies spread their wings playing in Berlin 1990,Hong Kong 1996,Bermuda 1996 and America twice the last time being in in 2002 in North Carolina they also toured Zimbabwe in 2000

This article was originally posted on 12-Mar-2006, 11:58 by Hugh Barrow.
Last updated by Hugh Barrow on 12-Mar-2006, 23:16.