The Globe-Times – Bethlehem
Tuesday, May 20, 1930
A Swing Along Athletic Row

Whitey McDonald is Back
Remember Whitey McDonald, the blond-thatched halfback, who several seasons ago scintillated for the Bethlehem Steel soccer club? Shortly after Whitey severed his affiliation with the Bethlehem team he went abroad. Now he is paying his first return visit to the states since then. On Sunday afternoon McDonald will be in New York City. The occasions is the opening game of an American tour for the Glasgow Rangers, Scottish Cup and league champions, and Whitey is coming back as a member of this famed soccer organization. Several have been the soccer exponents who migrated to this country, remained here several season and then returned to England to make the grade with the best clubs in existence. But McDonald, it is believed, is the only payer to cut his eye teeth on this side of the Atlantic and then go abroad to realize the great ambition entertained by every young soccer aspirant. Dogged determination and persistence in his efforts to make good brought their reward for when McDonald sailed with the Glasgow Rangers on a previous tour he was not a regular. Not by a jugful. His status with the club was that of a reserve with the opportunity of “getting a trial.” He waited long for the chance but when it came he made the most of the opportunity and now enjoys the distinction of playing with one of the greatest and smartest soccer clubs in the world.

Home to Talk Turkey
The hesitancy of Willie Reid, Irish halfback of the Bethlehem soccer team, to return to this country and honor his obligation to the local club at he start of the season recently ended, may be attributed to a report current since he left that as soon as he arrived in Londonderry he would talk turkey with the Newcastle United management. Perhaps Willie had the same opportunity when he was home on a visit last summer and perhaps he did talk business and received terms that made him think twice before turning them down to return to the states to play out his contract with Bethlehem. Reid, it is understood, is still the property of Glentoran in the Irish League so far as his European career is concerned. Glentoran, gossip informs, is ready to sell him. If not mistaken, the soccer rules in the British Isles assures a player at least a third of his purchase price on his return home. Many players in the British Isles are said to get as high as 50 percent of the purchase price for they have the privilege of refusing to join another team and often obtain a higher percentage in order to have them change their minds and make a good deal. Reid had been in this country long enough to develop some of the business methods and hard bargains driven here in professional sports to obtain the best end of a deal in which finance is involved.


Bethlehem Steel Soccer Club
1929-1930