A long time ago, forty-five years ago in fact, I went out with a girl from Largs. I was there in the town for a short while and it was just the one date. It wasn't a success. In truth she was above my league, certainly at the time. But, even if I have no idea what happened to her and, of course, hope she is well, she left an impression, not least because rumour had it then, a rumour I was too polite to try to verify and absolutely not from her, that she was the sister of Gallagher or Lyle, Lyle I think.
Now this is not the sugar producer, although she was sugar. That was Tait and Lyle. They were the members, as is said when age defines language, of the Scots pop cum pop-rock music combo, in fact for obvious reasons, the duo, Gallagher and Lyle, who, it seems, are still going and whose big hits, as I checked, were Breakaway, Heart On My Sleeve and most pertinently, I Wanna Stay with You.
Now that is all fine and, as the Americans would say, dandy but by now you might, indeed you should be asking what's my point. Frankly there isn't one. Except that every time I see the names Gallagher and Auld juxtaposed the tune of Heart on My Sleeve immediately and stupidly comes to my head, I remember the girl from Largs but sadly not her name and whatever flow I have is interrupted.
So who were Gallagher and Auld? Simply put, with
Barty McGhee,
Jim Brown and
Alex Wood they were, plus manager,
Bob Millar, the other Scots, who took the field for America in that fateful semi-final at the first
World Cup in 1930 but in getting to Montevideo on that July day but in the Uruguayan winter both have their own tales to be told. This is they.
James Gallagher, James Gallagher was born in Kirkintilloch in 1901, the youngest of five children. His mother, Margaret, worked as a nurse. His father, William, died the year after his birth and aged just 37. It must have been hard and might explain why in April 1915 young Jimmy, said to be aged ten but actually thirteen, which explains some variations of age on later, official papers, with his mother and his elder sister left Dunbartonshire for in New York, where his uncle stayed. He came with a Scottish football education at least partly in place and clearly continued it in the New York Scots-Irish community. At eighteen, a half-back, he signed with Tebo Yacht Basin, a local works team, staying for two seasons before two more with J & P Coats in
Pawtucket, there winning the American Soccer league title in 1923.
In 1923 itself he then moved the short distance from Pawtucket across the state line from Rhode Island to the Marksmen in
Fall River, Massachusetts before returning to New York and a brief stint with the Giants. And it was there that his path crossed, if briefly, that of
Bob Millar, then still a player. Millar would remain with the Giants until 1925 but Gallagher would move on both in terms of club and location. He joined the Fleischers Yarn works team in Philadelphia for a year playing alongside, amongst others,
Bart McGhee.
It was at that point that Bob Millar clearly came back in contact. He had moved now as player-coach to yet another sponsored team, Indiana Flooring, which in spite of its name was New York-based and Gallagher joined him not just there for the two seasons of its existence but staying when there was a name-change, to New York Nationals. Indeed Gallagher would continue to stay when Millar, as the merry-go-round span, moved on to manage the Giants, but not the same Giants as previously, then to the US National team, and came a-calling once more. Gallagher, in the the meantime having become,
was selected by Millar, for the American squad for the
1930 World Cup, playing in all the games including the notorious semi-final.
Andy Auld, Andrew Hunter Auld's path to the World Cup was, however, entirely different. He had been born in January 1900, so just six months older than Gallagher, in Stevenston by Saltcoats in Ayrshire, the son of a coal miner. He grew up playing junior football, for local club, Ardeer Thistle, and in Glasgow for Parkhead. And it was from there without ever playing at the senior level that, already married to a girl from Kilwinning and at the age of twenty-four he sailed to Canada and, without football on his mind, crossed the border into the United States on his way to a Gillespie, a small town in rural Illinois that at the time boasted three of the World's largest coal mines. He was going from coal to coal.
In fact the new life in Gillespie for Auld did not work out and within the year he is said to have been on his way back to Scotland by much the same route as he had arrived when he stopped over with family in Buffalo, on the American side of Niagara Falls. There, taking part in a kick-about, he was seen by a scout and persuaded not to continue home but sign for the newly-reformed Clamdiggers in Providence, Rhode Island, the town adjoining Pawtucket. It was 1924.
In fact Providence was to become his permanent home. After four years from 1924 to 1928 with the Clamdiggers from 1928 to 1930 he was an ever-present as it was renamed the Gold Bugs, playing on when the franchise was briefly moved to nearby Fall River in 1931, before returning to play in Pawtucket itself from 1931 to 1933 for the Rangers., over 300 games in all. All of which begs the question where and how he first came to attention of Bob Millar. Their paths never crossed at club level as players on the same team, only as opponents, and then briefly and not directly. Millar as an inside-left would have been marked, under the Scottish system at least, by the right-half not Auld on the left. Under the English it would be the right-back. Nor were they ever in the same team internationally. Millar played in both the 1925 matches against Canada but not in the one in 1926, where Auld scored twice. However, in the team that day were also Tom Florie and George Moorehouse, whom Millar also took to Uruguay with Moorehouse at left-back immediately behind Auld and perhaps providing a recommendation.
However, for whatever the reason there was admiration. Indeed, of all the players on the pitch that day in Montevideo Auld was perhaps the one who had matured best. Although as a young player in Scotland he had not made the grade, he matured in America and there was perhaps an argument that he should have tried again, returning as team-mate, Jim Brown, would do, to an English league career with Manchester United, Brentford and Tottenham. Moreover, Auld in Uruguay had clearly stood out in the two matches of the tournament already played. At left-half, with Gallagher on the right, he was evidently a marked man. Not just the leg of the man between them, centre-half, Ralph Tracey, under the Scottish system that Millar employed the key link between defence and attack, was broken in ten minutes, Monti, the man Tracey would have marked then opening the scoring in twenty minutes but Auld, with under the same system with the job of marking danger-man Scopelli, who from inside-right scored the second in fifty-six minutes, was not only kicked in mouth early in the game and spent the rest of it biting on a handkerchief to staunch the bleeding but had smelling salts deliberately knocked into his eyes. It happened as he lay on the ground being treated, salts in hand, by Jock McColl, the Northern Irish-born but previously Scots-resident US trainer. An Argentine player just happened to brush by.
The USA, just a single goal down at half-time but in the era before substitutes effectively with eight men, a complete and two semi-passengers after Jimmy Douglas, the goalkeeper, was also taken well did well to be just a single goal down at half-time. However, the match finished 6-1, Jim Brown getting the consolation goal in the penultimate minute, and the squad found themselves back on the boat, via a game in Rio de Janeiro, to a soccer scene in an increasing state of collapse. Auld would be able to plough his quiet and still successful furrow for several years more without any additional recognition, at least at national level. Bob Millar would drop out of football altogether to run a New York bar but no doubt having put in word for Gallagher, who, now almost thirty, played for the Giants for the next two seasons. With them he won the ASL once more in 1931 before it too folded, then for a season more he found work with the New York Field Club until it too evaporated, dropped down first into local football and then moved to Cleveland in Ohio. There sponsored football continued for a couple more seasons, allowing Gallagher to be selected by yet another Scot, David Gould, for the 1934 World Cup in Italy; one of only four to figure in both championships, and one with Willie McLean and Walter Dick of three Scots-born squad members, Dick also from Kirkintilloch.
The 1934 US squad would not make it beyond the first round, beaten 7-1 by the hosts, the one being an Italian own-goal and Jimmy Gallagher on return would at the age of thirty-three bring his career to a close, on retirement remaining in Cleveland. In the city suburb of Parma he would marry in 1937, work as a painter and raise a family. And it would be in nearby Cuyahoga that in 1971 he would die and be buried. Andy Auld, meanwhile, would move away to Newark for two final footballing years but after the 1935 season return to work in Providence as a mechanic and with sheet metal, return also to Scotland with his wife Margaret in 1960 for a visit, die still in Providence in 1977 and be buried in nearby Johnston, where Margaret would join him at the age of 95 in 1995 in a American grave as befits one of its footballing notables but one marked with not one but twin thistles.