Glenbuck Cherrypickers F.C.

Last updated
Glenbuck Cherrypickers
Full nameGlenbuck Cherrypickers Football Club
Founded1870s (as Glenbuck Athletic)
Dissolved1932
GroundBurnside Park
Glenbuck
LeagueSouth Ayrshire Junior League
1921–26, 1930–31

Glenbuck Cherrypickers Football Club was a football team in the village of Glenbuck in Ayrshire, a district of Scotland.

Contents

The Glenbuck Cherrypickers were notable for the high number of professional footballers that they produced, despite only existing for around fifty years. Between their creation in the early 1870s, and their demise in 1931, the team produced some fifty professional footballers. This is despite their home – the mining village of Glenbuck – having a population of around 1,000.

Club history

The club started its existence in the early 1870s as Glenbuck Athletic, founded by Edward and William Bone, with a strip of white jersey and black shorts. The name "Cherrypickers" is of obscure origin, beginning as a nickname in the first years of the 20th century, but may have derived from local men from Glenbuck or Muirkirk serving in the 11th Hussars (The "Cherry Pickers") in the Boer War. Another possible source was the fact that almost all of the men associated with the club, players and officials, worked in the local pits where one of the jobs was sorting the good coal from stones and other material as it passed on a conveyor belt. The lumps of good coal had to be picked out and the workers who performed that task were known as cherry-pickers.

The club won the first three Ayrshire Junior Cup competitions in 1889–90, 1890–91 and 1891–92.

The club's last entire season was 1930–31, [1] [2] and it folded following the closure of the town's coal pit, which was almost the sole source of local employment. The town of Glenbuck itself was abandoned thereafter, and no longer exists.

International honours

Seven players from Glenbuck were chosen to play at an international level for Scotland: Willie Muir (vs Ireland in 1907); Sandy Brown (vs England in 1902 and 1904); George Halley (Scottish League vs Football League in 1910); Johnny Crosbie (vs Wales in 1920 and England in 1922); Bob Shankly (vs Republic of Ireland in 1938); Bill Shankly (capped thirteen times between 1938 and 1943). Alex McConnell was selected in a squad in 1897 to play against England, but signed for an English team, Everton, two days later; at the time, this made him ineligible to represent Scotland.[ citation needed ]

Notable players

The club is associated with Bill Shankly, although it closed before he played a game for the Cherrypickers' 1st XI. Shankly went on to captain Scotland in 1942, and is best known as the manager of Liverpool. All four of Shankly's older brothers appeared for Glenbuck, and each went on to play professional football in Scotland or England. One, Bob Shankly, also managed at a professional level at several clubs, including Dundee, whom he took to the semi-finals of the European Cup in 1962–63.

Sandy Tait and Sandy Brown both played for Glenbuck before going on to play for Tottenham Hotspur, with whom they won the English FA Cup in 1901.

The five Knox brothers – Hugh, Alec, Tom, William and Peter – played together extremely successfully as a team in five-a-side tournaments. Their most successful season saw them win all but one of the 41 tournaments that they entered. The usual prize in these tournaments was a barometer or a clock, and they amassed so many that they would often simply hand them to friends on the touchline as gifts rather than carry them home.

Bob Blyth, uncle to the Shankly brothers played for Rangers, Preston North End and Portsmouth, before becoming manager of Portsmouth in 1901, guiding them to the 1901–02 Southern League title.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Auchinleck Talbot F.C.</span> Association football club in East Ayrshire, Scotland

Auchinleck Talbot Football Club is a Scottish football club based in Auchinleck, East Ayrshire. They currently play in the West of Scotland League Premier Division.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bill Shankly</span> Scottish footballer and manager (1913–1981)

William Shankly was a Scottish football player and manager who is best known for his time as manager of Liverpool. Shankly brought success to Liverpool, gaining promotion to the First Division and winning three League Championships and the UEFA Cup. He laid foundations on which his successors Bob Paisley and Joe Fagan were able to build by winning seven league titles and four European Cups in the ten seasons after Shankly retired in 1974. A charismatic, iconic figure at the club, his oratory stirred the emotions of the fanbase. In 2019, 60 years after Shankly arrived at Liverpool, Tony Evans of The Independent wrote, "Shankly created the idea of Liverpool, transforming the football club by emphasising the importance of the Kop and making supporters feel like participants".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scottish Junior Football Association</span> Scottish sporting body, founded 1886

The Scottish Junior Football Association (SJFA) is an affiliated national association of the Scottish Football Association and is the governing body for the junior grade of football in Scotland. The term "junior" refers to the level of football played, not the age of the players. The closest equivalent terminology would be non-League football in England, the difference being that junior football in Scotland was not similarly integrated into its football league system until 2021.

The Scottish Junior Football Association, West Region was one of three regions of the SJFA which organised its own distinct league and cup competitions. The SJFA used to be split into six regions, but in 2002 they decided to reform into three to try to ensure more games between the top clubs and hence increase their revenues. The region covered an area from Girvan in South Ayrshire to Denny in Central Scotland.

Robert Fleming Blyth Shankly was a Scottish professional football player and manager. He was an elder brother of Bill Shankly, the former Liverpool manager.

Glenbuck is a small, remote village in East Ayrshire. It is nestled in the hills 3 miles (5 km) east of Muirkirk, East Ayrshire, Scotland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Douglas, South Lanarkshire</span> Human settlement in Scotland

Douglas is a village in South Lanarkshire, Scotland. It is located on the south bank of the Douglas Water and on the A70 road that links Ayr, on the West coast of Scotland, to Edinburgh on the East, around 12 miles south west of Lanark. The placename is of Gaelic origin, derived from the Old Gaelic dub and glais, meaning "dark stream", in reference to the Douglas Water. The Douglas family took this name when their ancestors settled here in the 12th century.

Robert Fleming Blyth was a Scottish footballer and manager for Portsmouth from 1901 to 1904.

John Crosbie was a Scottish professional footballer who played as an inside forward in the Scottish Football League for Ayr United and made more than 400 appearances in the Football League for Birmingham. He was capped twice for the Scotland national football team.

Broxburn United Football Club was a football club based at Sports Park in Broxburn, West Lothian in Scotland. The club was formed by the amalgamation of the town's two senior clubs Broxburn and Broxburn Athletic in 1912, and was a member of the Scottish Football League from 1921 until 1926.

Beith Football Club were a football club based at Bellsdale Park in Beith, Scotland. The club were members of the Scottish Football League from 1923 to 1926.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sandy Brown (footballer, born 1877)</span> Scottish footballer

Alexander White Brown was a Scottish footballer.

Cronberry Eglinton Football Club was a football team based in the now tiny hamlet of Cronberry in East Ayrshire, Scotland.

James Nisbet was a Scottish footballer who played as a right winger.

A cherry picker is a platform for lifting someone to work at a high level.

Alexander Shankly was a Scottish professional footballer who played in the Scottish League for Ayr United and Nithsdale Wanderers as an inside left.

James Blyth Shankly was a Scottish professional footballer who is best remembered for his prolific goalscoring as a centre forward in the Football League for Southend United and Barrow. He also played English league football for Coventry City, Halifax Town, Sheffield United and Carlisle United.

John Dunlop Shankly was a Scottish professional footballer who played as a forward in the Scottish League and the Football League.

The Ayrshire Junior Football League, known as the Western Junior League from 1919 until 1968, was a football league competition operated in Ayrshire under the Scottish Junior Football Association which operated until a merger in 2002.

Thomas Law Brown was a Scottish footballer who played for clubs including Heart of Midlothian, Millwall, Charlton Athletic and Leyton Orient, as a wing half. In a career interrupted by World War II, he had been selected for the Scottish League XI within his first season as a professional at Hearts aged 17, and played for Scotland in three unofficial wartime international matches, two of them while still a teenager. After the war, he moved to English football, playing only for clubs in east London.

References

Sources

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.