The world's first black footballer has been discovered - playing for Scotland in the 1880's.

Curators at the Scottish Football Museum at Hampden made the historic find about Andrew Watson, who was born in Guyana in 1857.

He started playing football in Glasgow in 1874, then played for Queen's Park and won three caps for Scotland.

It disproves the commonly held assumption that Arthur Wharton of Preston North End was the first black player. Watson pre-dates this by 11 years.

Experts said it should be no surprise, only that it took so long to discover.

Ged O'Brien, director of the museum, said: "For years, I had looked at our pictures of Watson in his Queen's Park and Scotland strips but never had the facts to back up the evidence of my own eyes."

The breakthrough came when a fellow researcher told Mr O'Brien of an interview in the Falkirk Mail describing a Queen's Park game and referring to Watson as `a coloured gentleman'.

Mr O'Brien said: "I find it surprising, but possibly indicative of the time, that we have only found one mention of his colour and that is an account dictated in the twentieth century.

"It's possible that Glaswegians were so blase about the mercantile tradition that a black person was not a remotely surprising thing in the city at the time."

Guyana was a British colony at that time, populated by both African and East Indians and it is likely that Watson's mother would have been of one or other descent.

It is unknown how or why Watson moved to Glasgow, but he first appears in the records in 1874 as a player for Maxwell FC and later Parkgrove FC, where he was also match secretary.

After six years playing in Glasgow, he was picked up by Queen's Park, who dominated the Scotland team at that time.

The 1881 census shows Watson living in Afton Crescent, Govan , with his wife Jessie and son Rupert.

His occupation is listed as `warehouseman', his birthplace is confirmed as Georgetown, Guyana, and he was a British subject.

Other records identify him as an engineer. Watson went on to make first team performances for clubs in Liverpool and London.

"Because Watson played in the amateur era, there was no question of him being under contract to Queen's Park," said Mr O'Brien, who is compiling a website on Watson's career.

"The fact that he was asked to play for top quality teams in England means that he must have been a great player. He was even asked to play in a tournament with the Corinthians, a team set up with the sole aim of improving English football and here is Watson playing with the elite of the elite, by invitation. It really is a remarkable story."

However, it was with Queen's Park that Watson played the majority of his football.

In eight years there, he was to play in 36 competitive matches. From this point on, details become somewhat scarce, but curators hope that some of his family may still be in Scotland.