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Name: George Elmore Date of Birth: 1880 Place of Birth: Northwich, England Nationality: English Position: Inside/Outside Forward Signed: April 1912 from Partick Thistle Departed: Enlisted for WWI in December 1914 Debut: 17/08/1912 v Morton (2-3) Final Match: 08/04/1914 v Third Lanark (0-1) Apps: 70 Goals: 20 Honours: None
George Elmore was born sometime in 1880 in the Witton district of Northwich in England, and from an early age displayed signs of outstanding footballing ability, mainly due to his quick feet and dribbling skill making him a perfect winger for the Victorian game. After spells at local sides Witton Villa & Albion, Northwich Victoria, and Altrincham as he combined football with working down the local salt mines, Elmore signed for then football giant West Bromwich Albion for £10 in early 1903 after rejecting Manchester United following a successful trial the previous month.
Despite scoring on his league debut for the Baggies in February of that year, Elmore managed only four appearances for the Hawthorns based club and was sold to Bristol Rovers at the end of the season for £40, but a broken leg threatened to end his career in 1904, and the skillful forward returned to Altrincham the following year where he eventually rediscovered the old magic he had been famous for during his first spell at the club. Over the next few years Elmore scored almost a hundred goals in the regional Manchester leagues, before re-joining the professional ranks in 1907 when he signed for second division Glossop.
Elmore in his Altrncham days
Fourteen goals in thirty four league appearances was a decent return at the now defunct club, but the forward was transferred to Blackpool in 1909, and the following season Elmore’s travelling boots took him to Glasgow when he signed for Partick Thistle scoring twenty four times in sixty five matches at Maryhill, before moving the short distance west to Paisley in the summer of 1912.
This was a difficult time on the park for Saints who struggled for several years, but Elmore shone in his new surroundings and was one of the highlights of this period. After scoring on his debut against Morton on the opening day of the 1912/13 season at Cappielow in a 3-2 defeat, as well as the next two matches as Saints beat Kilmarnock and Queens Park in a decent start to the campaign, Elmore finished the season as second top scorer with thirteen goals in all competitions.
Perhaps the biggest influence Elmore had however that season was the impact on central forward Ted Magner, a club record £300 signing from Everton earlier in the year who managed seventeen league goals as he finally had decent service, but still Saints finished a disappointing twelfth out of eighteen clubs at the end of the 1912/13 season.
The following season things got worse however, and Saints finished bottom out of twenty clubs despite a decent start where they won six of the first twelve matches but only managed two more victories in the remaining twenty-six league fixtures.
Although Saints reached the semi-final of the Scottish Cup, this league form was so bad the Paisley Police had to protect the players on numerous occasions leaving the park at Love Street as angry Saints supporters threw rocks and bricks at the players, different times indeed. Elmore however continued to impress, and was top scorer at the club during the 1913/14 season finding the net eight times in the league, therefore it was a surprise when the forward lost his place in the first team for the start of the 1914/15 season as Saints attempted to address the slump in form evident throughout the past few years.
George Elmore in action at Love Street during the 5-1 Scottish Cup victory over Inverness on the 24th January 1914.
If events on the park had been bad, that was nothing compared to what was happening in mainland Europe, and in late July 1914 World War I started following the assassination of the Heir to the Austria-Hungarian Empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, by Gavrilo Princip the previous month, who was a Bosnian-Serb seeking to free Bosnia-Herzegovina from imperial rule.
With Elmore out of the Saints side and effectively idle in Paisley, he returned to his hometown of Northwich for Christmas 1914 and decided to enlist with the Royal Scots 15th Battalion as fighting intensified on the continent. Despite Saints holding his registration, Elmore was now free to “guest” for other clubs as he was in the military, and played briefly for Witton Albion when still at home, before returning to Scotland in 1915 as his regiment was based at Edinburgh, and appeared for both St Bernard’s and Broxburn Athletic during his military training.
Elmore was soon on mainland Europe however as his Battalion joined the frontline action at Le Harve in January 1916, and at the age of just thirty six, George was killed in action on the brutal first day of the Battle of the Somme on the 1st July 1917, when the Lance Corporal was one of 60,000 men killed or injured as the British Army suffered their heaviest ever losses on a single day of battle. He had never married, and both his parents were dead.
George’s remains are buried in France with his fellow fallen soldiers and he is commemorated on the Thiepval Monument, based not far from where the Somme battlefield took place as well as on two monuments in his hometown of Northwich.
The Thiepval Monument at the Somme
Below are images from the Northwich Parish Memorial
