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Robert Christie (footballer)

British curler and association football player (1865-1918)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJan 2, 2026
Entity authorityQ16059433 ↗
Source-derived summary

Robert Main Christie (15 November 1865 – 15 May 1918) was a Scottish amateur footballer who played as an outside forward, most notably for Queen's Park. He later became president of the SFA and represented Scotland at curling.

Club career

An outside forward and left half, Christie began his career with Dunblane and Edinburgh University and won the 1882–83 East of Scotland Shield with the latter club. He joined Queen's Park in September 1883 and in a short, but eventful career with the Spiders, he scored in the 1884 FA Cup Final (becoming the only Scot to score for a Scottish club in an FA Cup Final and until Norman Whiteside 99 years later, the youngest goalscorer in an FA Cup Final) and won the 1885–86 Scottish Cup and two Glasgow Merchants Charity Cups. A serious knee injury forced Christie into an early retirement at age 21 and after a one-off comeback appearance in October 1888, he finished his Queen's Park career with 28 appearances and 15 goals. He made a short comeback with Dunblane and ended his career by helping the club to win the 1888–89 Perthshire Cup.

International career

Christie won one cap for Scotland, in a 1–0 win over England on 15 March 1884.

Administrative career

At the age of 21, Christie was elected to represent Perthshire at the SFA and after his retirement from football, Christie remained with Dunblane as the club's secretary. He became president of the SFA in 1903. Christie also administered Dunblane's first golf club.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Robert Christie (footballer)” is british curler and association football player (1865-1918). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Robert, Christie and footballer, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1865, 1918, 1882, 1883—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1865-11-15. For this dossier, Robert, Christie and footballer is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “british curler and association football player (1865-1918)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16059433. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1865, 1918, 1882 and 1883.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Robert Christie (footballer)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Robert Christie (footballer) primary sources, Robert Christie (footballer) archive and Robert research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Robert Christie (footballer)”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Robert Christie (footballer)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.