Calum MacDonald and Willie Lyon
Another article impossible without Alec O'Henley's book "Forgotten Star")
When I saw it I couldn't help but pick it up and then buy it. It was the book, Forgotten Star, Alex O'Henley's bi-lingual story of Malcolm, "Calum", Malky Macdonald, a son of Glasgow, hence the English, and South Uist, the Gaelic, the
"Dancing Master", one of the great Celtic players of the years immediately pre-World War II and perhaps a great Scotland player, who because of two seasons of injury, Tommy Walker and the war never was. He was the "Dad Nae". The "Cood Nae" was Willie Lyon, the man who kind of replaced Calum in that same Celtic team and might have been Scotland's centre-half of choice but for a wee stroke of fate of a too-often repeated kind.
Malky Macdonald recovered from his replacement at centre-half, as Celtic followed the trend to switch from Scottish attacking centre-half to English-style blocking centre-back, to become inside-forward of real class and play some one hundred and thirty-two league games, scoring thirty-two times, for the Parkhead club. Willie Lyon would play eighteen more matches and score half the number of goals but his tough tacking game and presence resulted almost from his arrival in 1935 in the team captaincy. It was at a time when Rangers' Jimmy Simpson, father of Ronnie, Celtic's 'keeper of the 1960s, was the Scotland centre-half incumbent and captain. In 1935 he was twenty-eight and would keep his place for a further two seasons. But in 1937 he found himself replaced by Sunderland's Robert Johnston, in 1938 by Preston's Tommy Smith, both just a year younger, then young Jimmy Dykes of Hearts and just twenty-two and twenty-seven year old Bobby Baxter of Middlesbrough. Indeed Baxter seemed to have become a fixture in the position when war broke out but it seemed perhaps a little surprising that inter alia Lyons had not had a look in despite touring Canada and the USA in 1939 with an SFA XI, Malky Macdonald touring with him and likewise Jimmy Dykes, and in 1938 having played twice for Scottish Football League XIs.
In the fact the reason it did not happen was simple, if frustrating. Although brought up in Ayrshire, in Irvine, with his shipwright father born in Troon, his mother in Beith and his siblings Scots-born, including his also footballing, younger brother, Tom, in Clydebank, he had been come into this world whilst the family moved briefly away to Birkenhead on Merseyside. Willie Lyon, although by background and upbringing Scots to the core, was English-born and therefore could only play internationally for the Auld Enemy. He was not the first to suffer so and with Stan Cullis in place for England no call came from down there either. Not for the first or last time time potential Scots talent was wasted. It had started with
Stuart MacRae and John Goodall, perhaps also with with his brother,
Archie, in the 1880s. It would end with
Joe Baker, and his brother,
Gerry, in the 1960s with them and several others in between, notably
Jock Simpson before the Great War and
Gordon Milne in the 1960s, plus Willie written off as, shall we say, collaterally damaged.