Falkirk FC players before World War II

For a while I have been trying to track down every player who played for Falkirk FC up to the Second World War. It is not easy, there was no central registration system before the Scottish League [and that was not very good until recently [just a lot of names...]], but I have made some headway. However I got to the point where I thought I would do some number crunching with what I had, these are some of my findings so far. There are a lot of gaps, but I am working on it.

The main thing to know is that football was a much younger man's match back then, and it would seem it was more so the further back you go [apart from James McPhie all of the youngest players played in the 19th Century, whilst all but four of the oldest played after WWI], this is not altogether unsurprising, before professionalism the club could only pick from those who were not working on a Saturday afternoon, also fitness & life expectancy levels have risen since those years. [Current professional players often continue playing well into their forties].

Another thing [not apparent by these tables] is that although some were born away from this area, the youngest players were mainly locals: except Albert Dixon [born in Dublin, brought up in Grangemouth], David Malcolm [born and brought up in Bathgate] and David Ross [born in Coldingham, Berwickshire, brought up in Falkirk].

In fact before joining the league Falkirk only had seven players born outside of Scotland [Thomas Bellingham born Culmore, Albert Dixon born Dublin, James Conlin born Consett, the brothers Richard & William Peddie born in Sunderland, James Richardson born in Chimbote, Peru and Harry Smith born in Farnham] all except Harry Smith were brought up in Central Scotland.

Of the oldest players the only players born locally were Thomas Townsley [born and brought up in California] & John Drummond [born in Alva, brought up in Falkirk].

Although I have limited this to League & Scottish Cup matches Falkirk played many other matches: I know of two players who challenge Alex Gillespie for the place as youngest, one is definite the other a maybe, James McPhie played in a benefit match v East Stirlingshire on the 27th August 1936 when he was 16 years 2 days, but also a William Lees from Blackbraes seems to have been 15 [he was born in Carnwath, Lanarkshire c1877] when he played in a Stirlingshire Cup match v Grangemouth on October 29th 1892.

Therefore it can be seen that a large demographic shift had taken place from the late 1870s to the 1930s within football [from local talent to talent for hire?]. This is again understandable as the club had to be competitive within the Scottish League. With school etc. it is difficult to see so many players playing below the age of 17 in the future, but there seems nothing to stop players to keep playing as long as they can [records are there to be broken].

All in all this proves nothing, as both the youngest & oldest records have since been broken, Gary Gillespie [16 years 46 days] is now the youngest, John Burridge [44 years 0 days] the oldest.

In the future I hope to find out more information about the rest of the players which may change the tables below, until then …..

NB – It is the same John Drummond in the Youngest & Oldest senior matches lists, but sadly he spent most of the time in between with Rangers.