McAlpine Jim Image 3 Millwall 1920

Description

Dalziel, Lanarkshire born left half Jim McAlpine began his football career with Craigneuk Heatherbell in 1906 and played for Dalziel Rovers in 1907, Vale of Clyde in 1908 and Strathclyde in 1909, from where he was signed by Southern League club Southampton in May 1911 along with team mate Andrew Gibson, and was considered to be one of new manager George Swift’s better signings. Swift was Southampton’s first appointment as manager and promptly embarked on a spending spree, signing eleven players in six weeks.

Playing alongside the ever-dependable Bert Lee, he became a virtual ever-present up to the suspension of football in 1915. According to Holley & Chalk’s “The Alphabet of the Saints”, McAlpine was “rather small for a left half, (but) made up for his lack of stature with a determined and forceful temperament that made him a firm favourite with The Saints; crowd, scoring twice in 132 matches before the onset of the First World War forced the suspension of peacetime football.

During the War he remained on Saints’ books, but joined local shipbuilders Harland and Wolff and turned out for their works football team, often against The Saints. He briefly returned to his native Scotland, playing for Kilmarnock, making his Scottish League debut against Ayr United on Christmas Day 1915, playing twice more after New Year,  and Wishaw Thistle later in 1916, but after the War he was still on the books of Southampton before signing for fellow Southern League club Millwall in July 1919.

He played a season of Southern League football for Millwall before they joined The Football League in the summer of 1920, and he made his Football League debut in their inaugural League match that August, playing 18 matches that season before a move to Gillingham in July 1921. A near ever present in his first season at Priestfield, missing only two matches, he lost his place in the autumn of 1922 and retired at the end of the season having played 51 times for The Gills.