When the Great War was declared the response from footballers was phenomenal, perhaps foolishly jingoistic and too often fatal. Almost three hundred and fifty not just fought but also lost their lives, more than the equivalent of all the teams in Scottish Divisions One and Two. And to choose one as representative might be argued to be invidious, a life is a life, but as contrasting examples perhaps Jimmy Conlin and Tom Jackson stand out, if only marginally by dint purely of their international caps.
Private Thomas Alexander Jackson was born in November 1878 in Thornliebank. He died on the Western Front just a month short of his thirty-ninth birthday in 1916 whilst serving with the 11th Battalion of the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders. He was the only son of Alexander and Isabella Barr Jackson. He had five sisters. He worked as a clerk, beginning his footballing career with Thornliebank itself, transferring to St. Mirren in 1896 to play at full-back until 1909. And in 1904, having 1902 represented the Scottish League against its Irish equivalent, he had played the first of his six full Scotland caps, three that year, one the following and two more in 1907. He began against Wales, finished against Ireland and, replacing
Andy McCombie, featured once against England in 1904 in a 0-1 loss at Celtic Park.
Jackson retired from football in 1911 after spells after St. Mirren, it is said with Bathgate and St. Johnstone, although Johnstone by Paisley seems more likely than Perth. Indeed, had it been Johnstone he could well have taken the field with
Archie Mclean, who in 1912 would take the Scottish game to
Sao Paulo in Brazil. And after playing he returned to live with his widowed mother and sisters and to working now as a legal clerk before joining the army.
Private James Conlin's footballing career took an altogether different path to Jackson's. He was three years younger and began his footballing career in 1900 with Falkirk for a season, whilst labouring in an ironworks; seventeen appearances in two seasons. A 5 ft 5 ins left winger, described as "fast and tricky", he then spent three years with Albion Rovers. Both teams were then outwith the Scottish League. In fact Conlin would make a large contribution to getting the Rovers into the Second Division in 1903, the year he married in Scotland. And then he would be snapped amidst some furore. He was tapped up by Bradford City in the English Second Division, moving in 1904 south for effectively £150, £100 transfer fee and a £50 fine levied by a joint committee of the English and Scottish FAs.
At Bradford he played sixty-one times and scored five times in two seasons, in the second of which he became the club's first international. On 7th April 1906 he took the field at Hampden Park in front of a world record crowd of almost 103,000 in a 2-1 defeat of England.
Alex Raisbeck was the Scottish centre-half.
Peter McWilliam was to his left. But Jimmy Conlin was on the losing side. Although brought up in Coatbridge and learning all his football there or thereabouts he had been born in 1881 in Consett in Co. Durham, before his Scots, steelworking father returned home with Jimmy's English-born mother. In fact, all of Jimmy's siblings were born in Scotland but none showed the same footballing prowess.
It was to be Conlin's only international appearance. He had followed Sunderland's George Bridgett. He was succeeded by Everton's Harold Hardman. Both played for First Division clubs and that is precisely where Conlin would next be plying his trade. After the international he was recruited by a Manchester City that had just been promoted. In its first season it just stayed up, finishing seventeenth of twenty. In its second, 1907-8, it was third, behind only Manchester United and
Aston Villa. Conlin scored six times. In its third it was relegated, in its fourth would be promoted as champions and in its fifth, 1910-11, seventeenth once more, which is when, after an impressive one hundred and sixty-one games over five seasons and just before his thirtieth birthday, he moved on.
He dropped down a division. In fact he went to the club, which had finished last of all in England's two divisions, Birmingham City, where, with him playing a limited twenty-one times ostensibly because of injury, his new team nevertheless hauled itself back up to sixteen. But by then perhaps his problems with the drink had already set in. They certainly continued when he returned to Scotland and Airdrieonians, for whom he appeared twenty-seven times, with whom the Lanarkshire Cup was won but where again he stayed just a season, 1912-13, before turning out for Broxburn United .
It was there that he was when war broke out, enlisting almost immediately, joining The Highland Light Infantry. And it was with them that in 1917 he was killed at Passchendaele on 23rd June. He was one of four holders of full English caps to die in action. Jackson was also one of four. Two Irish internationals were to be killed similarly and four Welshmen, including, of course,
Bobby Atherton, who, although he was born close to the Menai Straits, because he had grown up in Edinburgh had learned his football the Scottish way, played for Hearts and Hibs and had a Scots accent strong enough to fool the Celtic defence and set up the winning Hibernian goal in the infamous 1902 Scottish Cup Final.