Howie David Image 1 Bradford Park Avenue 1922

Description

Galston, Ayrshire born inside left and later centre half David Howie played for Galston Athletic in 1905 and signed for Kilmarnock in 1906, making his Scottish League debut in a defeat at St Mirren in September that year, playing five seasons at Rugby Park where he scored 33 goals in 150 appearances before joining Second Division club Bradford Park Avenue in May 1911. He made his Football League debut at Birmingham in September 1911 and soon became a mainstay of the team, moving to play mainly at centre half from October 1913, enjoying promotion to the First Division with Bradford in 1914 as Second Division runners up, albeit his career was soon thereafter interrupted by the onset of the First World War that forced the suspension of peacetime football in May 1915.

During the War he again sporadically played for Kilmarnock scoring 3 goals in 15 appearances, mainly in 1918-19. After the War he returned to Bradford and missed only one match in their first peacetime campaign of 1919-20, he was also part of the Bradford Park Avenue teams that were successively relegated in 1921 and 1922 but continued to feature regularly until the end of the 1923-24 season, with his final match coming in January 1925 when already 38 years old.

His only FA Cup goal was the winner in a giant killing win over Sheffield Wednesday in February 1913. He played 329 games for Bradford over the next 14 seasons, scoring 22 goals before retiring in 1925, having also managed the team from February 1925 to the end of the season after the departure of Peter O’Rourke.

His older brother Jimmy Howie played for among others Kilmarnock, Newcastle United and Scotland, and later managed Queen’s Park Rangers and Middlesbrough.