Born: 30 December 1873

Born in: Renton, Dunbartonshire

Died: 25 May 1899

Other clubs: Renton Wanderers (1889-90), Renton (1890-92), Manchester City (1894-97), Ashton North End (1897-98)

Signed from: Renton

Joined Liverpool: June 1892

Debut: 03 Sep 1892

Final appearance: 27 Oct 1894

Debut goal: 03 Sep 1892

Last goal: 01 Jan 1894

Contract until: December 1894

Honours: Lancashire league 1892/93; Second Division 1893/94

League: Apps / Goals: 30 / 3

All Competitions: Apps / Goals: 56 / 7

Player Profile

Centre-half McBride was a regular member of the Liverpool team that won the Lancashire league in the club's first-ever season and the second division championship in the 1893/94 season. He was thus described: "McBride makes up by science what he loses by height. He is fearless and bold, and but a stripling." The Scotsman was a regular in the 1893/94 season in which Liverpool won the Second Division. McBride only played five more times the following season as the team finished bottom of the table with 22 points and then losing the decisive Test Match to Bury. McBride moved to Manchester City in the Second Division and finished second to champions Liverpool in 1895/96, just missing out on promotion. He spent a couple of more seasons with City before joining neighbours, Ashton North End, in the Lancashire league. 

Willie Maley, who was Celtic‘s manager for no less than 43 years, told an amusing story about then Renton players and future Liverpool teammates; McBride and Andrew Hannah, in the Evening Times in 1954. The first League international game between England and Scotland took place on 11 April 1892 on Pike's Lane in Bolton with the English equalising 2-2 in the last minute. Hannah and McBride were in the Scottish side along with Maley, who lived to be 90 years old and was in 1954 the sole survivor of this clash. “The Scottish players‘ reward for that game was 10s each with a cap and jersey,“ Maley recollected. “On the way home in the usual large saloon carriage, McBride of Renton F.C., a young lad of 17, tired out fell sound asleep – and Hannah, his club captain, relieved him of the golden half sovereign he told us he was taking home “to his mither". When morning came McBride found his gold coin had miraculously turned into a silver sixpence to the astonishment of this “laddie“, who was possibly the youngest of internationalists of my experience. Hannah, of course, later “replaced“ the gold coin.“ McBride died suddenly in his home in Manchester on 25 May 1899, only 25 years of age.