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| Geordie Wilson |
 George Wilson was probably born in Scotland, although his place and date of birth remain unknown to us. * The forward joined George Easton's Thistle for a trial in January, 1904, whilst an Irvine Meadow XI player. He made his only appearance on Saturday, 30th January, 1904, in a 2-1 friendly win at home to Renton. There were no goals for Geordie in his one-off appearance for Thistle. His club-list included Irvine Meadow XI and Partick Thistle. We don't know where or when Geordie died. *
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 Thistle were fairly running through the Irvine Meadow Wilsons in January 1904. James and Robert (reportedly brothers) had already featured in a benefit match a few weeks earlier before Geordie, a right sided forward, got a try out in a low-key friendly at home to Renton. It was said that he did not make a very auspicious debut and was marked out of the game by Renton's left-back, Lindsay. Geordie clearly did all of this best work with Irvine Meadow XI, who were very succesful at the time, winning a number of trophies. Before season 1903-04 was out, Geordie would have another winners medal in his collection; they reached the Ayrshire Cup final which was to be played at Rugby Park on April 2, 1904. However, the weather was so bad that Meadow, their opponents Ardeer Thistle, and the Ayrshire Junior FA all agreed to play the game as a friendly instead. When the final was eventually played competitively at Rugby Park in Kilmarnock, it finished in a 1-1 draw, with Cairney scoring the Meadow goal. Meadow might have scored another had it not been for Robert Wilson (who, as previously mentioned, had also played at Thistle) being tackled by a wee dog that had run onto the park! The Meadow forward was in the act of shooting for goal when the wee dug knocked the ball away from his toe before being sent flying by the surprised Meadow player. Meadow lifted the cup at the third attempt, winning the replay by 2-1 but not without a long drawn out battle. James Wilson (yet another who tried for Thistle!) put Meadow ahead in the first half, but Ardeer equalised and 30 minutes of extra time were required. However, there was no further scoring. After a hastily arranged conference it was decided to play another 30 minutes of extra time with the intention of finding a winner. Meadow scored the deciding goal and the Ayrshire Cup was theirs for the third time, having previously won it in 1898/99 and 1900/01. |
| (WS/JK/DR) |
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Historian's note: It should be noted that there's no contemporary evidence for the 'Geordie' moniker and that we've done so only to avoid the name clash with our other George Wilson, possibly the very first time we've done such a thing on the Archive. Whilst it's not ideal - we normally strive hard to represent these things properly - it saves a lot of bothersome extra work. The SR (1-Feb-1904) stated that this G. Wilson was the brother of (future internationalist) Andy Wilson (ex Irvine Meadow) who was at Sheffield Wednesday at the time. Andy did come from a line of footballing brothers, but that included David, James and Alex, with no George that we know of. It could be he was rather a half-brother or cousin, and we shall endeavour to find out at some stage.