Barney Battles, Jr.

Bernard "Barney" Joseph Battles Jr. (12 October 1905 – 15 November 1979) was a footballer who played as a striker for Boston Soccer Club and Heart of Midlothian. A dual-internationalist, he represented both Scotland and the United States at full international level.

Family and early life Battles was the son of former Scotland internationalist Barney Battles Sr., who played for and won honors with both Celtic and Hearts, amongst others, in the 1890s and 1900s. Battles Sr contracted pneumonia and died aged 30, before the birth of his son, who was named in his memory. The monies taken from the stand at the 1905 Scotland v Ireland match at Celtic Park were donated by host club Celtic to the grieving Battles family in tribute to their former player.

Battles Jr was raised in the Edinburgh area, where he attended the city's Holy Cross RC Academy, and developed his footballing skills in the city's inter-school competitions. While he was still a teenager his mother decided to emigrate to the United States, and Battles and an elder sister accompanied her across the Atlantic.

Career

In the United States On his arrival in the U.S., Battles began playing for the Boston Celtics, a Sullivan Square team. While playing for the Celtics, he caught the attention of a scout from the Boston Soccer Club. Although not enjoying the popular status of baseball, soccer (as the sport was known) was buoyant in 1920s America, boosted by a ready supply of talent from the country's numerous immigrant communities and significant corporate investment from industrial giants such as the Bethlehem Steel Corporation. Aged 19, Battles was offered a contract with the newly founded Boston Soccer Club, playing in the American Soccer League (ASL). The club recruited extensively from British football and among his teammates were fellow Scots Johnny Ballantyne and Alex McNab, while former Rangers player Tommy Muirhead was appointed player-manager.

Battles maintained a consistent level of form over the next three seasons, scoring in double figures in the 1926 and 1928 ASL campaigns and helping the Wonder Workers regain the Lewis Cup in 1927. The Boston side won the ASL title in 1928, however, at the season's conclusion, a dispute between league officials and the United States Soccer Federation destabilised the Wonder Workers and most other ASL clubs. This so-called "Soccer War", combined with the beginnings of the Great Depression, led to severe financial difficulties for the club and Battles was one of several players to leave, opting to return to the land of his birth. More remarkably, the first of these exhibition games drew a crowd of 18,000, primarily to see the new recruit in action. He scored on his competitive debut, in a 3–1 defeat of Queens Park at Hampden Park, and followed that up by scoring twice in his next game and notching a hat-trick on his third Hearts appearance. Including the five goals Battles scored while representing the Scottish League against the Irish League (in an 8–2 win),

Retirement and later life After his playing retirement, Battles worked as a physiotherapist before in the 1950s becoming a successful sports journalist with firstly the Glasgow Evening Times then the Edinburgh Evening Dispatch. He died aged 74, in November 1979, and is buried in Edinburgh's Mount Vernon cemetery.