Willie Maley

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Willie Maley bigraphy, stories - Scottish footballer and manager

Willie Maley : biography

25 April 1868 – 2 April 1958

William "Willie" Patrick Maley (25 April 1868 – 2 April 1958) was a Scottish football coach and former player, the first manager of Celtic Football Club, and one of the most successful managers in Scottish football history. During his managerial tenure Maley led Celtic to thirty major trophies in forty-three consecutive years as manager.

Playing career

It was on a visit to the Maley home in Cathcart in December 1887 to invite his brother Tom Maley to join Celtic that Brother Walfrid and the rest of the Celtic deputation first met Willie Maley (Tom was out courting his wife-to-be), and their casual invitation to Willie to also come along was perhaps the most important in Celtic’s history.

In 1888, he was signed by the fledgling Celtic and became one of the club’s first players as a midfielder. In 1896, he made a single appearance for Manchester City in a Second Division match against Loughborough.

Due to spending a considerable amount of his childhood in Scotland, he also played for the Scottish national team, earning two caps in 1893 against England and Ireland. Maley also represented the Scottish League.http://www.londonhearts.com/SFL/players/williammaley.html

Early life

Maley was born in Newry Barracks, where his father was a soldier in the British Army; his family moved to Scotland when he was young. As a young man, Maley was much more involved in athletics than in football, although he had played a few games for Cathcart Hazelbank Juniors in 1886 and had played with Third Lanark from later that year.

Manager of Celtic

In 1897, the board of Celtic directors appointed Willie Maley, at just 29 years of age, as Secretary-Manager – the first manager – of Celtic. He won the League Championship for the club in his first full season as manager. Mr Maley never worked with his players in training, he watched games from the directors’ box and never indulged in team talks or spoke to his players at half-time or post-match.Mr Maley would not even announce the team: players learned if they were in or out through reading the line-up in the newspaper.

Celtic had been a buying club in their opening decade, spending heavily to bring professionals to the club. Maley decided to scrap that and rely almost entirely on recruiting youngsters fresh from junior football. Maley created a young team who won six consecutive league titles in a row between 1905 and 1910 and won the first Scottish League and Scottish Cup doubles. They were the best team in Glasgow, and the six-in-a-row record remained unbroken until the 1960s. The stars of that side included right-back Alec McNair ("the Icicle"); inside-right Jimmy McMenemy ("Napoleon"); and the centre-forward Jimmy Quinn.

As his six-in-a-row team began to age, Maley set about the task of building a younger team. This younger side, which included Patsy Gallacher and the apparently ‘ageless’ McMenemy, would win four league titles in succession between 1914 and 1917 and set what is still the UK record for an unbeaten run in professional football: 62 games (49 won, 13 drawn), from 13 November 1915 until 21 April 1917.

That side would go on to win two more titles, in 1919 and 1922. Celtic continued to gather trophies throughout the 1920s and in the mid-1930s Maley built his third great team, featuring Jimmy Delaney and Jimmy McGrory. This side won the league title in 1936 and 1938 and the Scottish Cup in 1937. By then, Maley was approaching 70.

The Maley years ended in a less than happy fashion. With Celtic at the bottom of the table, after a meeting with the board of directors in February 1940, Mr Maley finally ‘retired’. Willie Maley is the longest serving manager in Celtic’s history. In his 43 years as manager, he won 16 Scottish First Division titles, 14 Scottish Cups, 14 Glasgow Cups and 19 Glasgow Charity Cups.

Individual Honours

On 15 November 2009 he was inducted into the Scottish Football Hall of Fame. The Scotsman, 16 November 2009

Cultural references

His Celtic career is detailed in song, Willie Maley by Mr David Cameron, one of the most popular Celtic songs amongst fans.

Managerial Honours

Celtic (1897-1940)

  • Scottish First Division

Winners (16):

1897-98, 1904-05, 1905-06, 1906-07, 1907-08, 1908-09, 1909-10, 1913-14, 1914-15, 1915-16, 1916-17, 1918-19, 1921-22, 1925-26, 1935-36, 1937-38

  • Scottish Cup

Winners (14):

1898-99, 1899-1900, 1903-04, 1906-07, 1907-08, 1910-11, 1911-12, 1913-14, 1922-23, 1924-25, 1926-27, 1930-31, 1932-33, 1936-37

  • Glasgow Cup

Winners (14):

1904-05, 1905–06, 1906–07, 1907–08, 1909–10, 1915–16, 1916–17, 1919–20, 1920–21, 1926–27, 1927–28, 1928–29, 1930–31, 1938–39

  • Empire Exhibition Cup

Winners (1):

1938*

(*): Competition staged only once to commemorate the Empire Exhibition, Scotland 1938.