Alex Wood

Jim Brown

James Gentle

Jimmy Gallagher

Bob Millar

Barty McGhee

         Jack Coll

With the World Cup Finals due in Canada, Mexico and the Unites States this coming June and Scotland to be there, it is time for a reminder - that, whilst our country has never got beyond the first round, five of our countrymen have; indeed to the semi-final. The year was 1930, the first ever playing of the competition. The place was Uruguay; at the Centenario in Montevideo, there to this day, still the country's national stadium. The date was 26th July and the opposition was Argentina. Moreover, the coach of the team was a Scot too, another of the players, American-born, was half-Scots, from Glasgow, and half-Spanish and the squad's physio, whilst he had been born in Donegal, had grown up in Glasgow and is one of two of the eight to be buried in the city. His grave, until just now unmarked, is in St. Kentigern's cemetery.

So who were this octet. Three came from the West of Scotland, Andy Auld from Stevenston, where family members still stay. James Brown, with strong and eminent Troon connections, had been born in Kilmarnock, Jimmy Gallagher in Kirkintilloch. And two came from the East. Alex Wood was a Fifer, from Lochgelly, and again with connections to almost football royalty, as had Edinburgh's Barty McGhee And then there was Bob Millar from Paisley, a player of some talent and seemingly a temper and whose elder brother, Harry, had had a long and distinguished career in the Scottish and English games.

So delving deeper, half-back, Andrew Hunter Auld, had been born in April 1900 so was thirty by the time of the game and having fought through and survived much of The Great War, for four seasons from nineteen had played junior football locally and then in Glasgow, whilst also working as a miner. That was before in 1923 he made the move still to hew coal but across The Pond, in Gillespie in Illinois. But he didn't settle, not least because he had married Margaret Hamilton from Kilwinning in Kilwinning in 1920, and she had remained in Scotland. In fact he was returning home but doing so via a visit to a sister in Niagara Falls, where he was spotted in a "pick-up" game by a scout from New England and persuaded his future lay there. He moved to Providence in Rhode Island, where over four seasons he played 159 times for the town's Clamdiggers, in 1925, with Margaret on her way to join him, naturalising, in 1926 picking up a first cap against Canada, scoring twice in a 6-2 win, then apparently (and rather incredibly) another one hundred and eighteen times appearances over just two seasons as they were renamed the Gold Bugs, and a further ten in 1931, when briefly they became Fall River, officially a Massachusetts club but which also played in Rhode Island, because it allowed Sunday fixtures and The Bay state did not.

And even then, as Fall River failed, he was not to go far, spending two seasons with neighbouring Pawtucket Rangers, previously owned by and called for Paisley cotton-spinners, J & P Coats, before two final seasons to retirement in Newark in New Jersey. But he clearly had found a home in the Providence area, returning to the area, working with sheet-metal and living out the rest of his life there.

Indeed, he would die still in Providence in 1977 and is buried in nearby Johnstone, in the Highland Memorial Park, also the last resting-place of the Canadian-born, Celtic goalkeeper and Scottish international, Joe Kennaway, who also played with the Providence club, the Gold Bugs and Fall River from 1927 to 1931, and Menstrie's Geordie Robertson, Providence house-painter, with his four Scottish caps won between 1910 and 1913.

Next, albeit simply alphabetically, came James (Jim) Brown, Red or Ginger for the colour of his hair. The youngest of them all he was born in Kilmarnock, his father's home town, in 1908 and with some football in the family. His uncle by marriage was Alex Lambie, Troon-born Partick Thistle centre-back for a decade from 1921 and captain, who notched up well over three hundred appearances in the top-flight. And it was in Troon, where his Glasgow mother grew up, that the young Brown spent his childhood and teens, the first of the Broons fae Troon, but one who did not even play junior football on this side of the water.

When still a child, Jim Brown's mother had been by 1919 effectively abandoned by her husband, his father and it was to look for him that at eighteen Jim Brown crossed the Atlantic in 1927 to South New Jersey. There he found work and, after playing locally, began a meteoric rise. He played at a good "amateur" level in Bayonne for a while but was already in 1928 picked, still in New Jersey, by the professional Newark Skeeters until the end of the season. That is before being recruited to New York, first to the National and then Giants. And it was there his path crossed those of Gallagher, McGhee and Millar, from there he went to Uruguay, returned, in 1931 still in the States, married Mary Ann Cormack, a lassie from Caithness, and after that was in 1932 signed into English football by Manchester United, spotted by the astute Scott Duncan, for two seasons, Brentford for two more and one with Spurs before dropping down to Guildford in the Southern League until retirement in 1941 at the age of thirty-three.

At that point Brown returned to Troon until 1949 before crossing once more to the United States, settling in Connecticut, where he went on to coach. But later he would return to New Jersey, and it was there in 1994 that he died at the age of eighty-five to buried not locally but in Troon's cemetery, to be joined there three years later by Mary Ann.

James Joseph Gallagher was another, who came from mining stock, in his case immigrant Irish, who had settled in Kirkintilloch. However, just the year after Jimmy's birth in 1901 Jimmy's father would die, his mother struggling on for a further fifteen years before making the decision to take the family to the United States. Young James was fourteen, although reported elsewhere as twelve, perhaps for reasons of footballing longevity, so already with a good grounding in the Scottish game. They settled in New York, which is where Jimmy started his football career at nineteen with Tebo Basin before being recruited again by J & P Coats in Pawtucket and then Fall River.

However, from 1925 he was back in New York at the Giants, in Pennsylvania with Fleischer's Yarn and then in New York once more at the Nationals, from when he sailed for Montevideo, remaining in the Big Apple until 1933. But at that point, with soccer on the Eastern Seaboard imploding he moved to Cleveland, Ohio, there joining Slavia from where he was also in the US squad for the 1934 World Cup in Italy.

And it was still in Cleveland that he would in 1937 marry Marie, Coughlin, with whom he would have two daughters, work as a painter and then an inspector in a bearings-factory and live out the rest of his life. His passing would be in 1971 aged seventy with his wife outliving him by sixteen years. Both are buried in the city's Holy Cross Cemetery.

Like Jim Brown Alex Lothian Wood after the World Cup and having played in Chicago and Detroit would also have a considerable career in English football, ending in 1938-9 with Chelmsford City mid-table in the Southern League but with a start in 1933 at Leicester. And there Wood had an important entry. In 1905 William Lothian Wood, his father, had married Jeanie Duncan in Auchterderran in Fife. They would have two children before in 1921 deciding to leave neighbouring Lochgelly for Gary in Indiana, essentially a suburb of the Windy City. Alex was fourteen but already well imbued with Scottish football both on- and off-field. Before leaving for America he had even won a schoolboy cap.

But by then his maternal uncle, John, had already moved from to Raith Rovers and from Lochgelly United and was about to leave for Leicester, where he would remain for eight years from 1922, become club-captain, be capped at full-level for Scotland, be described as the player who made the East Midland club top-flight, and eventually manage it. Moreover, he joined Leicester with his brother, Tom, who, whilst less successful on the pitch would coach and be associated personally with the next generations of the club's players. His nephew, Wood himself, was one and in the next generation after that under Johnny Duncan there would be a certain Don Revie. In fact Revie and Tom Duncan's daughter, Elsie, would marry in 1949.

Whether Alex Wood came over for the wedding is unclear, because in 1940 he had returned with his Illinois-born wife, Mildred Marshall, (they had married in 1930, her father from Wishaw, her mother from neighbouring Crossford), and son to Gary and it was there that he, a steel-mill supervisor, remained until his death in 1987 at the age of eighty. He is buried in the Graceland Cemetery in nearby Valparaiso, to be joined by Mildred almost two decades later.

And so we come to the fifth of the forgotten quintet, Bart McGhee, a player again with pedigree but this time more direct. Bartholomew Joseph McGhee had been born in Edinburgh in 1899 as had brother Jimmy, two year older. Bart was thus eleven when he arrived in America, Jimmy thirteen. And both would have contact with the Scottish game not just due to their birthplace and ages but because their father was James McGhee, born in Lugar. and a former top player. Whereas Jimmy, an inside forward, would from 1920 go on in the U.S. to have a six year career in top-flight soccer and Bart thirteen years in the same, James, also a forward, had had a dozen years in the Scottish leagues including four at Hibernian, two at Celtic and a cap. Furthermore he then went on to manage at the same level with a year. 1908-9, at Hearts, albeit it did not end well and may have contributed to his decision in 1910 to leave for the USA and, unlike his boys, leave the game behind.

Once across the Atlantic the McGhees settled in Philadelphia, where there was a thriving soccer scene, with which McGhees' father seems, despite his credentials, not to have become involved. He worked as a carpet-weaver until retirement with his death in the city in 1941. Moreover, the boys also remained largely in Pennsylvania. Jimmy's playing career was mostly with the Field Club. He married, again in the city, worked there and died there in 1948. And Bart, whilst he moved between Philly and New York during his playing days on the left-wing, too married in the former, settled there as a clerk and in 1979 passed away in Norristown just to the north with no grave known.

But no good team is possible without a good coach, and that, as well as having been a fine, if temperamental player, was what Bob Millar proved to be. He had been born in Paisley into a footballing family. His brother, Henry, a centre-forward, began a twelve year career in 1891 that took in hometown Abercorn and St. Mirren, then Preston, four years at Bury, then Reading, Sheffield Wednesday, Queen's Park Rangers and then back to Kilbarchan. Bob Millar's birth was in 1889 and spent two seasons, 1909-11, at Love St. before, just past his twenty-first birthday taking himself off to America, once more to Philadelphia. And from there he, an inside-left, spent the next seventeen years moving between clubs in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, where he married in 1915, New York and Rhode Island before ending his on-field days as player-manager at New York Giants before fully managing.

So it can be seen that the team Millar gathered around his for the World Cup was largely drown from players that he knew from playing with and against. They were clearly gathered with a positional, even tactical, plan in mind, one which almost succeeded by winning a place in the final. The semi-final match has always been contentious, with the Argentine opposition immediately accused of intimidation and deliberate brutality, which was at least negated in the final by victory for the refined play of the Uruguayans. As to Millar the Montevideo adventure seemed enough for him. He appears to have stepped back from football completely to run a bar, settling on Staten Island, where he died in 1967, aged seventy-six, is said to be buried in once more in Philadelphia but grave once more apparently unknown.

And penultimately there is a return to Jock Coll and the much-repeated story of that semi-final in 1930 and the spilled chloroform. It may be true or not but of that the Irish-Scotsman was kept busy that day as the Argentines went about their business of "if it moves, kick it" there is no doubt. By the end of the game the "Americans" were left with eight and half of them standing, some severe injuries and several teeth lost.

As to Coll himself, apart from that on-field incident his was otherwise a story of a job well-done. Born in 1893 he had come to Scotland with his family as a child. A boiler-maker to trade he was from aged of nineteen also a trainer of athletes, boxers as well as footballers. Clyde F.C. is mentioned. He had worked in Glasgow, in 1923 made the move to the burgeoning US soccer scene and there trained in New York, St. Louis and Chicago before returning for seven seasons with Brooklyn Wanderers, during which time he married Glasgow-girl, Mary Jane McWilliams. And it was Brooklyn where he was in 1930, appointed to the US team not, as sometimes implied, just to carry the water bottle. Thus it is he who is then credited with keeping the American team more than just fit during the journey to Montevideo so contributing to the successes of the early round.

John Coll then seems to have lived out the rest of his life still in New York. He would have no children, with he or and/or Madge, as Mary Jane was also known, returning to Scotland, to Glasgow periodically. And it was on a trip in 1947 at the age of just fifty-three he suffered a heart-attack and died to be buried locally (St. Kentigern's, section 11, lair 111. no gravestone, no marker) with she going back to the U.S. and dying back in Queen's in 1966.

St Kentigern's Cemetery Plan