John McMenemy
John McMenemy was for three seasons from the age of nineteen at Celtic but a peripheral player. But on moving to Motherwell from he became a stalwart of perhaps the club's best-ever team, with over two hundred and fifty appearances, a Scottish Cup win and the 1932 Scottish League Championship over eight years. He was the eldest child of Jimmy McMenamin, who with just short of five hundred games over eighteen seasons was one of Celtic second generation of great players. John's younger brother, Harry, was also, as an FA Cup winner in 1932 with Newcastle, a player of some note, all three as inside-forwards. However, whilst the father managed twelve caps, his two boys had managed just one call-up each, in 1933 and for the same game. And the call-ups were still more bizarre. Harry, selected first, was injured, losing his, as it turned out, only chance of international recognition. His replacement was none other than John, who played.
By some sources John McMenemy's birth is given as 1908. But in reality it had been in 1906 in Rutherglen in Glasgow and, like his father, first registered as McMenamin. At the time the astoundingly long on-pitch career of his father, then aged twenty-six, was very much on the wax, with the family moving across the Clyde to Camlachie to be close to Parkhead and by 1921 adjusting the surname definitely to McMenemy. In fact, when John took his first steps in the senior game his father had only been retired from it for two years. But it was that move to Fir Park in 1928 that ignited the younger man's playing years.
There for five seasons he formed a prolific partnership with Willie McFadyean. It would end in 1939, when both transferred, with John's time on-pitch effectively brought to an end by the outbreak of war. Then during the war he worked in aircraft production. In the meantime, recorded as a "Wine and Spirits Traveller", in 1940 again in Camlachie he had married Maymie (Mary Margaret) McBrearty. They were to have two girls, one during and the second post-War, when John seems to have worked for his father in the family pub and finally, his father dying in 1965, as a clerk. He himself would die in 1983 at the age of seventy-six, possibly whilst living overlooking the first Hampden, with Margaret passing in 1990. And he would be buried in Linn Cemetery, there to be joined by his wife and also by one of his daughters.
Birth Locator:
1906 - 18, Greenhill Rd., Rutherglen
Residence Locations:
1911 - 284, Dalmarnock St., Camlachie, Glasgow
1921 - 284, Dalmarnock St., Camlachie, Glasgow
1940 - 249, Whitehill St., Glasgow
1941 - Pollok
1947 - Cathcart
1983 - (11, Kingsley Ave., Glasgow)
Death Locator:
1983 - Royal Infirmary, Glasgow
Burial Locator:
Back to Cathcart Cemetery and Linn Crematorium,
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