David Pryde was a Scottish

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 association football player.

Born in Newtongrange

Newtongrange

Newtongrange is a former mining village in Midlothian, Scotland. Known in local dialect as Nitten, or Nitten by the Bing ,it became Scotland's largest mining village in the 1890s, with the sinking of the Lady Victoria Colliery and a shaft over 1600 feet deep...

, Pryde started out as an amateur at Margate

Margate F.C.

Margate Football Club is an English football team based in the seaside resort of Margate, Kent, currently playing in the Isthmian League Premier Division. The club was known for a number of years during the 1980s as Thanet United....

, before being signed by Margate's "parent" club, Arsenal

Arsenal F.C.

Arsenal Football Club is a professional English Premier League football club based in North London. One of the most successful clubs in English football, it has won 13 First Division and Premier League titles and 10 FA Cups...

, in May 1935. He was immediately loaned back out to Margate for another two seasons, before returning to Arsenal and taking his place in the club's reserve side as wing half

Wing half

In association football, the position of wing half or wing half back) was popularly used in the late nineteenth and first half of the 20th centuries...

. He made his first-team debut in a First Division

Football League First Division

The First Division was a division of The Football League between 1888 and 2004 and the highest division in English football until the creation of the Premier League in 1992. The secondary tier in English football has since become known as the Championship....

 match against Sunderland

Sunderland A.F.C.

Sunderland Association Football Club is an English association football club based in Sunderland, Tyne and Wear who currently play in the Premier League...

 on February 4, 1939, a game Arsenal won 2-0. He went on to make four appearances that season

1938-39 in English football

The 1938–39 season was the 64th season of competitive football in England.-Honours:Notes = Number in parentheses is the times that club has won that honour...

, but like many footballers of his generation, his career was interrupted by World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

.

During the War he served with the Royal Air Force

Royal Air Force

The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...

 in India and Burma, while occasionally playing wartime matches for Arsenal (making 23 appearances in total, which are not officially counted). By the time official football had resumed in 1946-47

1946-47 in English football

The 1946–47 season was the 67th season of competitive football in England.-Overview:The 1946–47 season was the first to feature a full football programme since the 1938–39 campaign. Eighty-eight teams competed over four divisions. Liverpool went top of the First Division with a 2–1 away win over...

, Pryde was 32, and he left Arsenal in October 1946 with just four pre-war league appearances to his name. He moved to Torquay United

Torquay United F.C.

Torquay United Football Club, nicknamed the Gulls, are an English association football club based in the tourist resort town of Torquay, Devon. They played in the Conference National in 2008–09, but were promoted to Football League Two after a 2–0 win over Cambridge United on 17 May 2009 at Wembley...

and spent four seasons there, making 64 league appearances, before retiring in 1950. He died in 1987.