Nipper Ramsay - The Thistle Archive

Nipper Ramsay

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Nipper Ramsay

• Nipper Ramsay, c1912 (FF)

Andrew Ramsay (commonly styled as "Nipper") was born on Friday, 7th September, 1888, in Townhill, Fife.

The forward appeared as a trialist for George Easton's Thistle in March, 1913, whilst an Inverkeithing United player.

Aged 24, he made his only appearance on Tuesday, 4th March, 1913, in a 3-1 defeat at home to Kilmarnock in the Glasgow & District Mid-Week League.

There were no goals for Nipper in his one-off appearance for Thistle.

His club-list included Townhill United, Dunfermline Violet, Dunfermline Athletic, Inverkeithing United and Partick Thistle.

Nipper died on Friday, 27th July, 1945, in Townhill, Fife, aged 56.

Inverkeithing United's inside right will have come to the attention of the Thistle management when he - along with his teammate Willie Birrell - appeared at Firhill for 1-0 win over Muirkirk to finally settle a long-running Scottish Junior Cup Quarter Final tie. In fact, it was just 3 days later - the 4th March 1913 - when he appeared for a low-key Tuesday afternoon fixture at Firhill, Thistle losing to Kilmarnock by 3 goals to 1 in front of just 600 in the poorly supported Glasgow & District Mid-Week League. The performance of both trialists was critiqued in the Daily Record the following day:

All the junior critics are agreed that Birrell, the Inverkeithing centre-half, and his clubmate Ramsay who footed it at inside-right in a Scottish Junior Cup tie on the same field last Saturday, are first-class players. They may be clever juniors but as the old song has it — "they've got a long way to go" before they are fit to step higher. Ramsay is cleverness itself. I have seldom seen a boy of his years gifted with such a fine conception of the inside game, but he is far too light yet to hold up his end with profit to his team among men. That isn't his fault of course. For a bit, I thought that Birrell would make his mark. But he took too much out of himself in the first half on the sticky ground; or perhaps it was the double journey from the Rosyth Naval Base in twice as many days that proved too much for him. At any rate he fizzled out after the interval and ultimately retired.

There was no deal for either player after the trial, but both returned to Firhill some 10 weeks later to contest the Scottish Junior Cup final. 15,000 were there on 24th May 1913; Inverkeithing United 1 Dunipace Juniors 0. It was a tremendous achievement for the Fifers to “claim the blue riband in their first season of juniorism”. And what a season they had, gunning for a cup treble. The Cowdenbeath Junior Cup was also annexed, but they had to settle for silver in the Fifeshire Junior Cup.
 
The son of Robert Ramsay (coal miner hewer) and Magdalene Ramsay (née Adamson), Andrew was a Townhill man for life. The "Nipper" moniker was strongly carried in contemporary reports throughout his playing days, from his mid-teens to mid-twenties, as far as we've found. We'd imagine it's most likely to do with his playing style. He was a key player for his local juvenile team, Townhill United, and, in April 1906, guested for Dunfermline Violet in a 1-1 friendly draw with Dundee Violet, which looks like his first taster at the junior grade, with the Dundee Evening Telegraph (12/4/1906) commenting that he played a particularly fine game. Townhill United turned junior themselves just a couple of months later. A little bit of digging reveals that "Nipper" Ramsay was capped by the East of the Scotland against the Border Seniors around 1907, but had to wait six seasons for a junior Scotland trial, although he never did win that international cap.

Nipper seems to have been loyal to Townhill United, but flirted with a big move to Dunfermline Athletic of the Northern League in the latter portion of season 1908-09. He was down to play in the league against Montrose on boxing day 1908, but subsequent reports show that he never made the appearance for some reason. We have, however, one confirmed appearance for the Pars, turning out at East End Park on 3 April 1909 in a 2-1 friendly defeat against Falkirk 'A', when he made a favourable impression according to the Scottish Referee (5/4/1909).

In 1913, his nickname seemed to fool the Daily Record that he was a youngster when he tried for Thistle but, as we know from reports, he was one of the elder players (relatively speaking) in Inverkeithing's young cup winning eleven. Nipper can claim the very unusual, probably even unique, distinction of having played in the Scottish Juvenile Cup final (for Townhill United) against Dunipace, and for later playing in the Scottish Junior Cup final for Inverkeithing United against the same opposition! The 27-year-old, describing himself as a grocer to trade, enlisted for the Black Watch in 1916, his address at that time being Store Row, Townhill, as it was in the 1911 census. We're delighted to report that Nipper survived the war. He passed away in his mid-50s in his clearly beloved Townhill village in the summer of 1945 and was laid to rest at Dunfermline Cemetery.

On account of his service during WWI, Nipper is included in our feature piece, The Partick Thistle returned →.
 

(WS/ANB/AFK/POH/FF)

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