Footballer with Dunfermline and Dundee
Born: September 12, 1933
Died: January 2, 2018
FELIX McCairney Reilly, who has died aged 84, was a footballer who holds a special place in the history of Dunfermline Athletic. When the then 23-year-old Reilly was selected for the Scotland Under-23 team which drew with England at Ibrox on February 2, 1957, he was the first Pars player to be selected for a Scotland team since the great Andrew N Wilson in 1920. When the match was broadcast live by BBC, he was also the first Dunfermline player to strut his stuff on TV.
Born into a Lanarkshire mining family, the young Felix left school to work at Bedley colliery, playing juvenile football with Cardowan United, before moving into the junior ranks, first with Rosyth, then with Shotts Bon Accord. He had first attracted Dunfermline's attention playing with Rosyth, but was with Bon Accord when Dunfermline signed him, with a bit of help from Felix's mother.
Accrington Stanley also fancied the teenager, but, although they had made him a better offer, his mother told Felix: “You're too young to move to England”, and he signed for Dunfermline, then a Second Division side, managed by Bobby Ancell.
Ancell converted the young winger into an inside forward and it was there he flourished in the Dunfermline team which won promotion to the top flight in 1955. Once there, Dunfermline struggled. Ancell had left for Motherwell and Reilly did not have the same relationship with new boss Andy Dickson; however, in spite of the team flirting with relegation in their first season in the top flight, and being relegated at the end of the second, Reilly's form was impressive enough for him to win that coveted Under-23 honour.
At the end of the 1956-57 season, with Dunfermline going down, he was handed a First Division lifeline with a move to Dundee; sadly for him, this proved to be a disaster, as he spent more time in the Dens Park treatment table than on the field.
Marriage to Rosina – at 10am on a match-day Saturday, so he could play in the afternoon – And a move to East Fife, in a deal which took Jimmy Bonthrone to Dens, cheered him up, but, the switch to Methil turned sour for Felix and he considered a move to Canada, to Toronto White Eagles, a mainly Polish team. The offer was good, the reality different and he made his peace with East Fife and returned, before a fall-out with the management precipitated a move to Yorkshire, to Bradford Park Avenue, the club for which his elder brother Terry had played some years previously.
Park Avenue manager Walter Galbraith, later to manage Hibs, liked to have Scots in his team and Reilly found himself one of up to eight Scots in the starting 11 any Saturday. He helped Park Avenue to promotion from Division Four in 1961, before moving to Crewe Alexandria.
He then began a spell in Cheshire non-league football, as a player then player-manager with Winsford United, where success got him a move to Altrincham, then, with future Manchester City chairman Peter Swales one of three millionaires on the board, one of the richest non-league clubs in England.
From there he moved on to his final managerial post, at Northwich Victoria, leaving football in 1971 to open a greengrocer and off-licence in Winsford, which he ran until retiring back to Comrie in Perthshire, where he died.
Reilly had a pawky, self-depreciating sense of humour, which comes across well in a Youtube interview which he gave to the Dunfermline Athletic Heritage Trust shortly before his death.
He is survived by Rosina (they would have been married 60 years next month) and by his daughters Mary and Agnes and their families.
MATT VALLANCE
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here