NOTE: The gravestone of Robbie McCormick (see below) has been declared to be in a "dangerous condition". That it remains so is a disgrace on the part of our national footballing establishment and the operators/responsible organisation of and for the West Kilbride Cemetery, North Ayrshire Council; one which can easily be corrected by a relatively small amount of money from the former and some restorative cooperation between the both.
Robert McCormick
Robert McCormick had a shortish football career, brought to an end by a badly broken leg in the first season he had gone South. He was born in 1864 in Paisley, the first child of an Irish, Sawyer father with his mother from Johnstone. He grew up a fine athlete, with both middle distance stamina and speed. And he used it well on the football field as a quick, inside forward with from 1884 home-town Abercorn.
He would spend five seasons with Paisley's then other team, representing Renfrewshire in 1886 and in 1888 winning a first cap. And there might have been more but for the start that same year of the Football League in England and Stoke coming in for him.
However, it was just twelve games in at his new club and against Burnley on a heavy pitch that he suffered the break with the result his career South of the border was over. He was only twenty-five, had in Paisley just married Edinburgh-born Margaret Bisland and, when even a come-back North of the border with his old club proved impossible, had no choice but to return to his work before football as a potter. He and Margaret would settle back in Paisley once more, he working firstly as a Sanitary Potter and then as a Sub-Postmaster.
The couple seem not to have had any children and at some point in the decade after 1911 to have left Paisley for West Kilbride on the Ayrshire coast. There Robert worked initially as a Sewing Machine Agent but by the time of his death in 1928 at the age of sixty-three he is recorded as a gardener. Margaret would outlive him by a decade, passing away in the village in 1937 with both of them buried in the local, West Kilbride cemetery.
Birth Locator:
1864 - 21, Newton St., Paisley
Residence Locations:
1871 - 70, Broomlands, St., Paisley
1881 - 2, Ferguslie Walk, Paisley
1891 - (2, Ferguslie Walk, Paisley)
1901 - 39 1/2, Broomlands, Paisley
1911 - 1, Ferguslie Walk, Paisley
1921-28 - 28, Halfway St., West Kilbride, Ayrshire
Death Locator:
1928 - 28, Halfway St., West Kilbride, Ayrshire
Grave Locator:
West Kilbride Cemetery, Ayrshire
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