The following post was kindly submitted to us by Gordon McCreath, who is a keen Ayrshire junior football historian.
The wide-eyed 12-year-old Meadow fan reached his hands up as Bobby Carroll held out his trophy for the schoolboy to hold. It was the morning of the 1959 Scottish Junior Cup final and the players were having a pre-match breakfast with some of their fans in the Caledonian Hall. Later they would set off for Hampden Park to face Shettleston. Young Robert Smallwood swallowed down the last of his toast and egg as he took hold of the gleaming Empire News Junior Player of the Year trophy, which had been presented to Bobby Carroll the night before.
Careful not to drop it, young Robert cuddled the shining figure for a few minutes before reluctantly handing it back.
‘I was there with my grampa for breakfast with the Cup Final team before heading to Hampden on the team bus,’ Robert recalled. ‘But more exciting for me was that Bobby had his Player of the Year trophy with him – and he let me hold it. I’ve never ever forgotten that.’
Robert had also been taken along by his grandfather, John, the previous evening to The George Cinema in Bank Street where Provost George Donaldson senior had presented Bobby Carroll with the trophy. Carroll’s speed and goal-scoring ability had made him the standout candidate with the readership of the now-defunct Empire News which had put up the prize. By the end of the season, he had smashed in a remarkable 75 goals.
Robert and his grandfather travelled to Glasgow with the team and joined a crowd of 65,211 in the stadium. With only eight minutes played and the score at 0-0, Shettleston were awarded a penalty kick, but Ian Prentice, the Meadow goalkeeper, saved it with his legs. It was a costly miss for Shettleston. When the referee awarded Meadow a penalty for a foul on Bobby Carroll, Jackie Morrison stepped up and crashed a low shot into the bottom corner of the net. Meadow had the chance to go further ahead when a Bobby Carroll shot was handled by a defender and the referee gave another penalty. Once again Jackie Morrison placed the ball on the spot and hit a crisp low shot to the goalkeeper’s left. Shettleston’s last-minute goal came too late to change the destination of the cup.
That evening, Robert and his grandfather were back in Irvine High Street to see the players dancing and waving and showing off the Scottish Cup from the upper deck of the open-topped bus as it eased along the crowded street towards the Townshouse. Robert, who was a keen footballer, probably dreamed that someday he would be one of those celebrating Meadow players.
Five years later, that dream became reality. Robert, by now a strapping 17-year-old centre-forward, signed for Meadow after playing in the second half of a trial match against Kilmarnock. He made his competitive debut in 1964/65 against Ardeer Recreation in a 5-3 win. And what a start he made! Like a good centre-forward, he scored and followed that with another goal against Neilston in the next game. A highlight of his Meadow career was a goal in well under ten seconds against Winton Rovers. Robert remembers it as sharply as if it were yesterday, ‘I kicked off, passed to the inside-right, ran past their centre-half, the ball was played through, took one touch and shot into the goalie’s left hand bottom corner. I was quite fast back then.’
Robert’s best game in a Meadow shirt came against Kilbirnie Ladeside when he scored a hat-trick and also set up the fifth goal for Benny Murney in a 6-1 win. It was even more impressive when we note that the goalkeeper was Ernie McGarr who went on to play for Aberdeen and Scotland.
The very next weekend, Robert was brought back down to earth with a thump when he was dropped from the team for a Scottish Cup match. The young striker was devastated. ‘I lost interest when I was dropped for the Scottish Cup match at Broxburn after scoring that hat-trick the week before. I honestly don’t remember too much about it apart from being told I was dropped by Bob Alexander.’ Robert left Meadow at the end of the season and went on to play for Dalry Thistle and Dreghorn Juniors. Eventually he gave up football so that he could concentrate on his golf.
Over 50 years later in 2018, Robert Smallwood, now a well-respected man in Irvine, made a point of visiting the Meadow Exhibition in the Townshouse. He was present when Bobby Carroll’s widow, Ann, and her son Gary dropped in to see the memorabilia on display. And what a surprise Robert got when Ann produced Bobby’s Player of the Year trophy and said she would like it to be included in the exhibition. When she held out the trophy for Robert to hold again the years tumbled away and for a short while he became that wide-eyed schoolboy once more.