Hall Alex Image 2 Sunderland 1937

Description

East Calder, Lothian born left back Alex Hall began his football career with East Calder Swifts in 1925 and played for Oakbank Amateurs in 1926 and Wallyford Bluebell in 1927 before joining Scottish League club Dunfermline Athletic in 1928. Such was the impression he made at East End Park that after barely a season playing for The Pars he was signed by First Division club Sunderland for £750 in April 1929, making his Football League debut at Sheffield United the following month.

He was a fringe player until he established himself in the first eleven from October 1934, helping Sunderland to finish runners up in the League Championship in 1934-35 and then winning the League Championship with them in 1935-36. He was also a member of Sunderland’s victorious 1937 FA Cup Final team that beat Preston North End 3-1 in the Final at Wembley. He missed only one match in the final peacetime season before the Second World War’s outbreak forced the abandonment of peacetime football in September 1939, by when he had scored once, in a 3-0 win over Leeds United in March 1935, in 238 appearances for The Wearsiders.

After the Second World War he joined Hibernian in 1945, for whom he had played in wartime football throughout the conflict, making only 3 official appearances for Hibs after the War to add to 244 wartime matches for them, before his retirement in 1947. He joined Hibs’ coaching staff in October 1945 and later coached Silema Wanderers in Malta from 1950.