Story of former player Angus Beattie
Lisburn Distillery would like to extend their gratitude to Javier Terenti (pictured) from Seville (Spain) who contacted the club via email last week to bring us some new information on a former player from our history – Angus Beattie, whose story is a really fascinating one.
Scotsman Angus played around a dozen times for Distillery at centre-forward in 1884/85 including playing in every round of the Irish Cup triumph of that season, indeed Beattie and Thomas Sinclair were Distillery’s first ‘foreign imports’.
After leaving Belfast, he moved to Barrow-in-Furness, where he was a key figure in the formation of what seems a primitive Barrow AFC.
Then, in 1889, it now transpires that he moved to Bilbao to work in the Spanish city’s famous shipbuilding industry. Once in Bilbao, he played football for the Athletic Club of that shipbuilding, which some historians consider to provide the origins of Athletic Bilbao. It was then when he won a medal, while playing football between 1890 and 1893 in Spain. That medal would be for winning the oldest trophy in the history of Spanish football.
Ahead of the recent Spanish Copa del Rey final between Athletic Bilbao and Barcelona, a Bilbao newspaper published this story about Angus last Saturday. Here ‘s the link to that report although please note it is in Spanish so you will need to use a translation tool such as google translate to obtain it in English.
Thanks once again to Javier for getting in touch!
 |
 |
 |
 |
