Willie Russell, William Fraser Russell, was born in Glasgow in 1897, not as elsewhere reported in Falkirk in 1901. The actual road, Risk St., is no longer but was just north of Glasgow Green. His mother was from Stirling, his father Glasgwegian, an insurance superintendent, the same profession that Willie would eventually follow but not before he, an inside-right, had, after junior football with Benburb, spent five years in the Airdrieonians famous forward-line of the 1920s with Hughie Gallacher and Bob McPhail and six more at Preston North End. And in his final seasons in Scotland he would also be awarded two caps.