Malcolm Henderson Player Profile

Biography

Malcolm Henderson was a young big strapping 6 foot athletic Australian whose arrival at Kilbowie in 1967 came with an interesting story. A famous old Kilmarnock player of the 1950’s Willie ‘Puskas’ Harvey, had emigrated to Australia to play out his last days as a footballer. In the 1960’s a lot of Australian Football Teams advertised for players to come and join them. Willie Harvey joined Sydney Prague and saw Malcolm Henderson play and told him he thought he could make it in the Scottish game and if he was interested he could get him a trial at Kilmarnock. Malcolm jumped at the chance, came to Scotland and played a number of trial games at Kilmarnock. At that time the Kilmarnock manager was Malky MacDonald who had stood in as Scotland’s temporary manager in 1966 and their trainer was Walter MacCrae who was also the Scotland International Trainer, and who would also end up managing Kilmarnock. At this point in the story a number of strange, spooky coincidences should be pointed out. Willie ‘Puskas’ Harvey who recommended Malcolm to Kilmarnock was born in CLYDEBANK, Malcolm’s Mum and Dad were Scottish and his Mum was born in CLYDEBANK. Malcolm was travelling to Kilmarnock by bus every week from CLYDEBANK. It worked out that Kilmarnock had their full quota of players for the season and didn’t want to pay a signing on fee for Malcolm. Mr MacDonald phoned Jack Steedman and Clydebank had their man.

Malcolm’s stay at Clydebank was just under a year, he was a good fullback who was confident on the ball and could pick a pass rather than lumping it up the park. When he first began playing for Clydebank he had a few friends watching him who told him that a scout from Celtic had asked which one is ‘Henderson’, if Mr Steedman had known that, Malcolm would not have been allowed to leave Kilbowie. His most memorable games would have been the three Scottish Cup games against Queen of the South which ended with Clydebank losing the third game 1-0 at neutral Firhill.
Malcolm had a chance to score at Kilbowie but was robbed by a last ditch tackle. He also took part in the infamous battle of Bayview when Clydebank lost 6-0 to East Fife, conceded a penalty and had their trialist goalkeeper carried off.

Malcolm left Clydebank when one of his teammates from Australia was coming back home to Wrexham to play for Chester and invited Malcolm to join him. Malcolm eventually ended back in Australia and played football until he was 40.