Although he was brought up in Inverness, on The Crown, on Argyle St. just a few doors down from Peter McWilliam, Andy McCombie was born in 1876 off the High Street in Dingwall, his father's home village being nearby Conon. He was a Ross-shire man, a Gaelic-speaker, and like McWilliam would be a stalwart of the great Newcastle of the 1900s. 

And, whilst it all started on the Pfeffer, took in, again like McWilliam, Inverness Thistle and finished on the Tyne, McCombie on retirement from playing in 1910 becoming a coach at St. James's Park and dying in 1952 in North Shields, his time "down South" in fact began on Wearside. McCombie, a right-back, from 1898 played six seasons and over a hundred and fifty times for Sunderland, a club that at the time was prone to financial irregularities and McCombie and it fell out over money. He took them to the FA, won and transferred himself and his skill twelve miles north.