​James Gillespie passed away in Bearsden, near Clydebank, in 1932 at the relatively young age of 64. Apart from a six-year period, he spent his life living in his home city. Those six years away from Glasgow were spent playing football in Sunderland, most of them as a key member of what became known as “The Team of All Talents”.His family had moved to the Gorbals from Beith, and he was born in 1868, one of seven siblings. He started work as a message boy and was playing for junior side Glasgow Green Star, who reached the final of the prestigious Glasgow Junior Cup in 1888. His performances for Green Star, and in that final, led to him being signed by Clyde.Whilst still not a league team, the “Bully Wee” were a force in Scottish football and could often match and beat bigger league teams, which is where their nickname came from. League football would come, but by the time it did James “Jimmy” Gillespie had decided to try his luck down south and joined a veritable exodus of Scottish players over the border.The game in Scotland had developed and grown in popularity amongst working-class people. The football played had also evolved differently to the game in England during these early years. The Scottish game placed far more emphasis on passing, formations and ball work, producing skilful, sharp and clever exponents of “the beautiful game”.The powers driving the game in England recognised this, and so the raiding parties over the border began again. Instead of sheep and cattle, it was footballers who became the bounty.It is a fact that Sunderland’s legendary manager, Tom Watson, was a great admirer of Scottish players and undertook a number of highly successful scouting missions north of the border to recruit the very best.Jimmy had probably already played the best part of three seasons for Clyde when he made the decision to join the exodus of Scottish talent. It was not to Tom Watson’s Sunderland that Gillespie first moved, but rather their recently formed rivals, Sunderland Albion, whom he joined in March 1891.Sunderland Albion had been formed in 1888 by Sunderland’s original founder, James Allan. Unhappy with how his brainchild was being run, and reportedly frustrated by the influx of players from outside the region, Allan resigned as treasurer to form a new club playing at Sunderland’s original ground, Blue House Field at Hendon.Allan took a number of players, along with former Sunderland president Alderman Potts, with him, further straining relations between the two clubs. John Rae, Jimmy Hannah and long-time goalkeeper William Kirtley were just some of the Sunderland players to join Albion.Intriguingly, another player to make the move from Sunderland to Sunderland Albion was John Scott Gillespie. Signed from Greenock Morton in April 1890, he is often confused with Jimmy Gillespie. Although their Sunderland careers were chalk and cheese, it is worth remembering that the Gillespie who scored a hat-trick against Aston Villa