Joe McIntosh was an outstanding Scottish-developed defenceman who had a playing career which spanned 25 years at the highest level of the sport in the UK, representing Great Britain at four World Championships before going on to coach the national team.
Joe was a key contributor to the winning of major honours with five different senior clubs over the course of a sterling career – commencing with Falkirk Lions’ Play-Off triumph in 1954 and ending with Fife Flyers’ ‘Grand Slam’ season of 1976-77, encompassing Championships along the way with Edinburgh Royals, Dundee Rockets and Crans-sur-Sierre of Switzerland.
He holds a record which is a fitting testimony to his fitness, commitment to the sport and ability: he is the oldest forward or defenceman ever to have appeared for Great Britain in international competition, being aged 40 years and 161 days at the commencement of the 1973 World Championship ‘C’ Pool tournament in Holland. (Only two goaltenders have played for GB at an older age: fellow Hall of Famers ‘Peter’ Patton, aged 49 at the 1926 European Championships and Glynn Thomas, two months short of his 41st birthday at the 1976 World Championship ‘C’ Pool.)
Joseph Martin McIntosh was born in Grangemouth, Scotland on 29 September 1932 and educated at Grangemouth High School. Joe started skating at nearby Falkirk Ice Rink as a 9-year-old in 1941, but it was the inspiration of another Grangemouth native and future Hall of Fame defenceman, Bill Sneddon, that caused Joe to take up hockey in 1945.
At the end of Joe’s first practice, an unimpressed coach McCuaig told all the aspiring hockey players not to bother coming back. He had, however, noticed Joe’s skating ability and told his brother that Joe was the best skater in the group. As a result, Joe’s brother took him back the following Sunday, to be met by McCuaig who said that he thought he’d told him not to come back, to which Joe replied: ‘How else can I get to play hockey?’
Joe got to play, and under the influence of both McCuaig and Hap Finch, the Canadian goaltender of the senior Lions who helped with the coaching of the Falkirk youngsters, he progressed through the midget and juvenile ranks into the junior Falkirk Cubs, stepping up to the semi-pro Falkirk Lions during 1952-53, aged 20. He also made his international debut the same season, helping Scotland to two wins over England at Glasgow and Ayr.
The guidance he received from Bill Sneddon and Hap Finch were what moulded Joe into a top defenceman, but he is also grateful to Falkirk’s Canadian coach and rink manager George McNeil (another Hall of Fame member) for the encouragement he gave to local talent. Although hockey was only played at Falkirk between 1938 and 1956, a plethora of locally-developed players went on to make a significant contribution to the sport in the UK. Three of Joe’s contemporaries who started out at Falkirk are also in the Hall of Fame: Johnny Carlyle, Bill Sneddon and ‘Red’ Imrie. All three were, like Joe, GB internationalists, as were a further three Falkirk products in Tommy Paton, Andy Williams and Roy Reid. By way of comparison, Ayr – a similar in size town – has produced nine players for the GB team to Falkirk’s seven; yet hockey in Ayr had the advantage of an additional 50-plus years’ continuation since the sport’s demise in Falkirk.
After Lions’ successful annexation of the Anderson Trophy, as Scottish Play-Off Winners, in April 1954, Joe headed to Switzerland to take up the role of player-coach with lower league side Crans-sur-Sierre, arranged by Falkirk’s Canadian forward, Sid Arnold.
As the only import on the team, Joe coached Crans to the championship – and was even introduced to screen legend Charlie Chaplin, who had a ski chalet at Crans-sur-Sierre. (Joe regrets that he didn’t have his camera to capture the meeting, but still remembers Chaplin’s words to him: “Are you the Scottish boy who’s coaching the Crans hockey team?”)
On completion of the shorter Swiss season, Joe was asked by Edinburgh Royals’ coach Sandy Archer to join the Murrayfield side for the final weeks of the 1954-55 season of the inaugural British League.
Compiled by David Gordon.
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