James "Jimmy" Delaney
The Delaneys have developed into a three generation, footballing dynasty. John Kennedy of Celtic and Scotland is part of it. But it began with the birth in 1914 in Cleland of James aka "Jimmy", the son of Irish immigrants, his father a coal-miner. And Jimmy Delaney would be more than something of a home-bird. Whilst in 1939 he would marry Annie McCormack in Ireland in County Cork, his children, the eldest boy also a notable, professional player, would be born in the Lanarkshire village and he would himself die there at the age of seventy-five in 1989.
Jimmy Delaney would learn the game locally, starting, an outright-right, with Cleland St. Mary's but just before his twentieth birthday joining Celtic where he was to remain for the next dozen years, albeit including the war. And pre-war those years would produce two League wins, in 1936 and 1938, the Cup taken in the season between and see the winning from 1935 of the first nine of what would become a total of fifteen caps.
However, of the remaining six international appearances just one would be from Parkhead. After a post-war disagreement between club and player over his value, Delaney by then already thirty-two, he went South, signed to Manchester United by Matt Busby and remaining at Old Trafford for a further four seasons, including winning the FA Cup in 1948. Nor would that be the end of what would be a playing career spanning twenty-two campaigns. In 1950 he returned to Scotland for a season at Aberdeen and four more with Falkirk before taking his skills to Ireland, to Derry in the north, there staying just a single year but this time winning the Irish Cup, and then a final six months as player-manager in the south for Cork Athletic, with which, having been two goals up in the FAI Cup Final, he would have to make do with just a runners-up medal.
Jimmy would be forty-two when he after just short of four hundred recorded starts finally hung up the boots, his son just three years from setting out on his own fifteen seasons and almost three hundred game career.
And from then on he and Annie seemed simply to have until their deaths settled back into local life. She would die in 1980 aged seventy to be buried in Cambusnethan Cemetery. And Jimmy would join her there nine years later, his death at home on Omoa Road literally just yards from where he had been born.
Birth Locator:
1914 - 159, Omoa Road, Cleland, Lanarkshire
Residence Locations:
1921 - Smellies Land, Omoa Road, Cleland
1944 - 12a, Main Street, Cleland
1989 - Fir Place, Cleland, Lanarkshire
Death Locator:
1989 - Fir Place, Cleland, Lanarkshire
Grave Locator:
Cambusnethan Cemetery, Cambusnethan,, Lanarkshire
Back to The Ravenscraig Ring
or the SFHG Home page
© Copyright 2022-2025. All rights reserved/Todos los derechos reservados.
Any use of material created by the SFHG for this web-site will be subject to an agreed donation or donations to an SFHG appeal/Cualquier uso del material creado por SFHG para este sitio web estará sujeto a una donación acordada o donaciones a una apelación de SFHG.
We need your consent to load the translations
We use a third-party service to translate the website content that may collect data about your activity. Please review the details in the privacy policy and accept the service to view the translations.