George McNeil (ice hockey)

McNeil played baseball in the semi-professional Yorkshire League, 1937, and Yorkshire-Lancashire League, 1938 and 1939, in the United Kingdom. He played regularly for the Yorkshire County representative side [3] including against the USA Test Series side in 1938.

He started the 1937 season with Scarborough Seagulls [4] but when they folded in August concluded the season at Hull [5]. For the 1938 season he played third base for Leeds Oaks who he had joined as coach and captain. In August 1938, at just 24 years of age, he represented the Great Britain national baseball team as player-manager in a Test Series against the United States national baseball team preparing for the 1940 Olympic Games. The British team which did consist largely of Canadians playing baseball professionally in the UK, won the Series by 4 games to 1. Subsequently, English entrepeneur and sports sponsor, John Moores, presented a trophy for the winners, the competition and Trophy becoming known as the Baseball World Cup[6]. In the 1939 season, he captained Halifax in retaining the Yorkshire-Lancashire League Championship.

McNeil played for the Richmond Hawks, Brighton Tigers and Earls Court Rangers in the English National League and for the Dundee Tigers in the Scottish National League prior to the Second world war. He may be best remembered as a coach for the Tigers between 1946 and 1949 and for the Falkirk Lions between 1949 and 1954 when he retired. He was inducted to the British Ice Hockey Hall of Fame in 1956.[7]