They could be brothers, even twins. John Simpson and Jimmy Lawrence. That was the first thing that struck me. Yet one was born in 1879 in Glasgow, specifically Partick, played all but three of his four hundred and thirty-five senior games in England, was a goalkeeper and took football to Germany and the other, just as Scots, was and did none of those things.
It is a curious fact that Germany is one of the few countries in Western Europe where football has been little influenced by the British game, certainly between the Wars. It might have had something to do with a number of the coaches working there at the beginning of the Great War having been rounded up and locked up in the Ruhleben Camp outside Berlin for the duration. After that others might have been discouraged but Jimmy clearly was not. In 1925 he arrived in Karlsruhe in the south-west of the country and stayed eight years.
Jimmy Lawrence's 'keeping career had begun locally in Partick, at Athletic not Thistle, but was then something of a slow-burner. He was playing junior football with Glasgow Perthshire, there winning a junior cap, until in 1904, already turning twenty-five and with
Harry Rennie unavailable, he turned out for just three games for Hibernian. It proved to be a turning-point. He was obviously seen by Frank Watt, who was an Edinburgh man and a previous secretary of the Edinburgh Football Association, or by someone close to him because Lawrence was at the beginning of the following season on his way to
Newcastle, the club of which Watt was the Secretary and where the incumbent keeper had suffered a serious injury. And not only did Lawrence go straight into the first team, in a season Newcastle won the league, he never left, at least not as a player, staying for eighteen years and four hundred and thirty-two appearances in what was a quite incredible period for the club with three First Division championships, four FA Cup Finals and one Cup win and a
Charity Shield. He was the goalkeeper for
Andy McCombie,
Peter McWilliam,
Colin Veitch and
Bill McCracken, who saw and coped with two major reforms of the goalkeeper's art, the introduction of the penalty area and in 1911 the 'keeper's confinement to it. And he played once for Scotland, in 1911 against England at Goodison Park in Liverpool and was perhaps unlucky. In a game that even the English papers said Scotland should have won the visitors only equalised in the 88th minute, having had a good goal chalked off incorrectly at the end of the first half and England going ahead in the 18th minute from a rebound from a saved shot, a goal scored by Newcastle team-mate, "Tadger" Stewart, who today would have qualified for the Scots. He had been born in Newcastle. He would go on to play for Rangers. And his father, although officially born in Berwick, had been brought up in Coldstream.
Quite why and how Jimmy Lawrence went to Germany is unclear. True he had come from two unsuccessful managerial seasons at Preston North End, Preston having been relegated. But then he was clearly a good organiser, an ex. president of The Players' Union and it was perhaps was that, which the German club appreciated as he led them to the regional championships of Württemberg/Baden in 1926 and of Baden in 1928, 1929 and 1931, which in turn qualified the club to compete at the next level of the German football championship. And when he left it seems there was little acrimony. Instead, given the date, it looks on the face of it that it might have been been because the the developing political situation. In reality it was probably for health reasons. On his return to Scotland he is said to have become, slightly inexplicably, chairman of Stranraer but may well have not physically but organisationally been running matters on the pitch as well and in office in little more than a year, aged just fifty-five, had died undergoing heart surgery and as a "Football Team Manager".
John "Jock" Simpson was born seven years after Jimmy Lawrence, in December 1885. He was a Falkirk-man through and through except that he wasn't born there. His actual birthplace was Pendleton in Lancashire, not the one more or less ten miles from both Blackburn and Burnley, but by Salford in Manchester, his father, an iron founder, only posted south for business temporarily, returning north of the border within months. And it was this with his parents Falkirk-born and both his brothers, older and younger, too that was to make him an exemplar, a forerunner of Joe and Gerry Baker
Simpson began his career at Laurieston, between Falkirk and Grangemouth, with Laurieston Villa. Then, having had, it is said, a trial with Rangers, he signed for his home-town club, for which over the next six years or so he appeared two hundred and sixty-nine, scoring one hundred and sixteen goals at more than one every two games not from centre-forward but outside- and inside-right. Some believe he is the best footballer ever to play for the club and who could argue. In fact it is something of a surprise that no team from south of the border came in for him earlier, that is until Blackburn Rovers, at the time twelfth in a First Division of twenty, in 1911. Perhaps at just 5ft 6ins tall and 11 stone he was considered too small for the English game.
The facts are that Jock Simpson would make one hundred and fifty-one appearances for his new team over the years to the Great War and score just sixteen goals. It was on the face of it nothing like the Falkirk return but it disguises something quite incredible. He reverted to being a purer winger, supplying his fellow forwards and a team that the previous season had won twelve at home and just one away with his arrival lost not a single home-game and won nine on the road. Such was the difference that the Rovers finished as league champions and by three points, would drop off a little the following season to fifth with too many draws but be back at the top once more in 1914 and this time seven clear.
In 1914 as war broke out Jock Simpson was twenty-eight. By that time he also had eight international caps but not for Scotland. Because of Pendleton it was England. There was no other choice. He had made his debut on 11th February 1911 against Ireland. He played his last on 16 March 1914 against Wales, although but for the hostilities there no doubt would have been more. In between he managed three matches against England, two draws, a win and no losses. But then at least he did not score against us and certainly it did not bar him from coming home. During the Great War he returned to Falkirk. No doubt his wife had input. She was from the town too and they had married there in 1910. And at the end of the war he might have rejoined his home-time team but for illness, once recovered playing locally, briefly for Falkirk reserves, ran a pub in the town, in 1959 died there too on Orchard St. and is buried in town's cemetery. Orchard St. is still there, almost exactly as it was. It deserves a plaque and so does he, not least for the sheer fickleness of fate.