Lyon Willie Image 2 Glasgow Celtic 1936

Description

Birkenhead, Cheshire born centre half Willie Lyon began his football career with Clydebank Juniors and Kirkintilloch Rob Roy from where he signed for Scottish League amateur club Queen’s Park in 1933, scoring 3 goals in 56 matches for The Spiders before being transferred to Glasgow Celtic in April 1935. While at Queen’s Park he was described as “an outstandingly good player, cool and purposeful in defence, and with the flair for opening the way to an attack.”

He won the Scottish League Championship with Celtic in 1936 and 1938, the Scottish Cup in 1937, when they beat Aberdeen in front of 147,000 spectators and played in their 1938 Empire Exhibition Trophy win  when they beat Sunderland, Hearts and Everton in the final to life the trophy. He also won a Glasgow Cup and three Glasgow Charity Cups. Unable to play for Scotland because of his English birth, Lyon was a member of a Scottish FA Touring XI squad which visited Canada and the US in 1939. He had also played twice for the Scottish League XI in 1938.

His Celtic career was then cut short by the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 and he made a further 24 appearances for Celtic in wartime competition in addition to his 17 goals in 163 matches prior to the conflict. Lyon served in The Scots Guards during the War, rising to the rank of major and sustaining a leg injury in 1944 which ended his football career. He was awarded the Military Cross.

His younger brother Tom Lyon played for Albion Rovers, Airdrieonians, Blackpool and Chesterfield before the War, as a guest for Celtic during the conflict, and after the War for both Chesterfield and New Brighton.