the one who came in from the cold
In almost one hundred and fifty years of Scottish footballing history he appears to be unique, does Alexander Pollock Donaldson. He is the only footballer for almost one hundred years that English football might have produced for Scotland. Whereas ten or so from John Bain via John Goodall
to
Joe Baker
went the other way Alex Donaldson was the single one who came back into the fold for six caps before and after the First World War, three wins, two draws and a defeat, a partner on the right-wing on three occasions to Alan Morton on the left.
Alex Donaldson was born in Barrhead in 1890, his father, John, born in Busby in 1864 so a contemporary of
Tommy Donohoe
and the Scottish internationals, the Dunbar brothers and, like his father before him, a clerk in a calico works. But John Donaldson died in 1898, Alex and his widowed mother, who was working as a laundress, were living in Neilston in 1901, he aged ten, but at some time after that Alex seems to have drifted south to England, seemingly to Belgrave in Leicester. Why is unclear but his mother, still a widow, was living there in 1939. She would die there in 1941. And it was from there he played as a winger in a number of minor teams including a church, a pub team, Balmoral, and Belgrave in Leicester itself, went for a trial probably aged nineteen with Sheffield United in the 1910-11 but without success. Yet he eventually signed, aged twenty-one, seemingly from the Derbyshire side, Ripley Athletic, by Bolton Wanderers, for which he would play one hundred and thirty-nine games, scoring five times from 1912 to 1922, breaking his knee-cap in February 1921.
In the meantime he was married in Bolton in 1916 to Annie Horrocks, moving to Sunderland for a full season of forty-three games alongside
Charlie Buchan
from 1922 to 1923 before a final season and seven more appearances in the top flight with Manchester City. And it had been whilst on a journey to an international trial for England in January 1914 that it became clear to the English FA that he had in fact been born in Scotland and therefore ineligible. It seems on the face of it extraordinary because, since he had lived in Scotland until at least the age of ten and perhaps more like sixteen he must not just have had much of his footballing education north of the border but also a Scots accent. But then perhaps not. Had he been selected he might well have been playing alongside Jock Simpson, who in spite of the white shirt was pure Falkirk.
Given the revelation of his birth for once the SFA responded swiftly. Perhaps it was a reaction to their failure to persuade
Charlie Buchan
to come on board but within six weeks Donaldson was running out at Celtic Park against Wales, two weeks later against Ireland in Belfast and three weeks later still in the last international before the War at Hampden against England, two draws and a win.
And that with the post-War internationals is about all we know of his life. He and his wife, Annie, did not seem to have any children, an error now corrected by none other than his grandson, Ian Parkinson. In fact they had six as he on retirement from professional football became licensee of the Gardeners' Arms in Bolton. He then opened a sports equipment shop in Chorley between Bolton and Preston and continued to play football locally until he was forty. And he would die in Bolton in 1972 at the age of eighty-two and his wife also in Bolton in 1994, aged ninety-nine, the couple having returned from a second retirement in Blackpool.
At that is it - apart from uniqueness, of course.