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Updated: May 4, 2025
I must not forget Willie Millins, who was one of the neatest dribblers of his day. He has given up football now. Getting a clear start, many an exciting and clever run he made for the Red Cross. I heard my master say that in a match for the Association Cup between his club and the Cedargrove, he once made a goal after dribbling the ball almost the entire length of the field.
Poor Smith, he caught a severe cold one evening, and eventually succumbed to a painful malady. The Cedargrove were at one time hard to beat. In fact, in the early history of the Scottish Football Association Challenge Cup, they pressed my master's club hard for the trophy, and were only vanquished after three games by one goal to none.
A few of the Pilgrims took kindly to the Association rules, and while that season lasted two of the leading forwards joined the Cedargrove, and turned out capital players. Another joined the Druids, and became a famous goalkeeper, even going as far as playing for his country in the International match, and the fourth turned out a leading man in the Holyrood Crescent.
In after life, however, my master found several foemen worthy of his steel amongst backs and half-backs in the Flying Blues, the Crowers, the Cedargrove, Red Cross, and North Western, and he sometimes came off second best. It is all very well to say that there were "great men in those days."
The outcome of this hastily-formed notion was that a sort of Nomadic team, calling themselves the Western Pilgrims, was formed, and three or four matches, and good ones, too, were played between them and the Conquerors and also the Cedargrove.
A few of the Red Cross and Cedargrove forwards sometimes gave him a fright, and in one match with the Leven Crowers he was fairly outwitted by Boyd and Ned M'Donald in a cup tie. I fought hard in that memorable battle myself, and never got such a saturation with water and mud in my career; but we were beaten.
He was greatly lamented, and his handsome figure is missed from the football field. John's death reminds me of a young and promising forward named Smith, who used to play on the left wing of the Cedargrove in company with a smart companion named Seward. Young Smith was a very enthusiastic football player, and missed few, if any, practice games.
Poor lad, I met him twice in one season in matches with the Cedargrove, and it took all my master knew to prevent him from getting clean past the Conquerors' backs and scoring. Talking about Fred, I remember that player, in company with Johnny M'Phedran and James Wilton, going for big Thomas, who was then the Conquerors' captain, and played at half-back.
It was a lucky thing for them when they migrated from the north and established themselves in the old ground vacated by the Cedargrove. Had it not been for that lucky arrangement, they might have wasted their football lives in obscurity, and gone down to Association posterity "unhonoured and unsung." Their success was as remarkable as it was swift and decisive.
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