footballer
A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby le ...
.
Life and career
Devine was born in
Lochore
Lochore is a former mining village in Fife, Scotland. It takes its name from the nearby Loch Ore.
It is largely joined to the adjacent villages of Ballingry to the north and Crosshill to the south.
Education
Most of the children in Lochore go to ...
,
Fife
Fife (, ; gd, Fìobha, ; sco, Fife) is a council area, historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area of Scotland. It is situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with inland boundaries with Perth and Kinross (i ...
Falkirk
Falkirk ( gd, An Eaglais Bhreac, sco, Fawkirk) is a large town in the Central Lowlands of Scotland, historically within the county of Stirlingshire. It lies in the Forth Valley, northwest of Edinburgh and northeast of Glasgow.
Falkirk had a ...
that he came to prominence, scoring 13 goals in 25 appearances in 1909–10. This earned him an international cap for
Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...
, against
Wales
Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...
on 5 March 1910. Devine scored the only goal in a 1–0 win for Scotland, but he never played for the national side again. He also made one appearance for the Scottish League XI in that season, in a 3–2 win against the English
Football League XI The English Football League XI was a representative side of the Football League. The team regularly played against the Scottish Football League XI and other national league select teams between 1891 and 1976.
For a long period the annual fixture b ...
.
In April 1910 he moved south of the border to
Bradford City
Bradford City Association Football Club is an English professional football club in Bradford, West Yorkshire. The team competes in League Two, the fourth tier of the English football league system and are currently managed by Mark Hughes.
Th ...
, and was part of the side that won the
1911 FA Cup Final
The 1911 FA Cup Final was the 40th FA Cup final. It was contested by Bradford City and Newcastle United. The first game resulted in a goalless draw at Crystal Palace. A single goal scored by Jimmy Speirs for Bradford won the replay at Old Traffor ...
against
Newcastle United
Newcastle United Football Club is an English professional football club, based in Newcastle upon Tyne, that plays in the Premier League – the top flight of English football. The club was founded in 1892 by the merger of Newcastle East End ...
. He stayed at Bradford for nearly three years before joining Woolwich Arsenal for an Arsenal club record transfer fee of £1,300. He made his debut for Arsenal against Chelsea on 15 February 1913, and was part of the team that were relegated from the
Football League First Division
The Football League First Division was a division of the Football League in England from 1888 until 2004. It was the top division in the English football league system from the season 1888–89 until 1991–92, a century in which the First ...
in 1912–13. He started the 1913–14 season as a regular, and scored the winner in Arsenal's first match at Highbury, a 2–1 victory over Leicester Fosse on 6 September 1913.
However, later that same season Devine was forced out of the side by
Wally Hardinge
Harold Thomas William Hardinge (25 February 1886 – 8 May 1965),
Shelbourne, where he was a member of the Irish Gold Cup-winning team in 1915. He returned to Scotland and played for Cowdenbeath, Lochgelly United, and Dunfermline Athletic. After retiring he worked as a
miner
A miner is a person who extracts ore, coal, chalk, clay, or other minerals from the earth through mining. There are two senses in which the term is used. In its narrowest sense, a miner is someone who works at the rock face; cutting, blasting, ...