119 years ago an enterprising Lancashire football man assembled a diverse American team for a transatlantic tour to Scotland, Ireland, England and Wales in 1891. The research underscores how soccer football development in North America was connected across the Atlantic.
(Written and researched by Michael Kielty for distribution through Twitter as part of the Common Read Project for a Digital Storytelling course I teach. I would appreciate any additional information, errata identification, corrections or contributions by email: info@commonread.com)
'The international match between the above countries takes place at Ballynafeigh today, when a good game may be expected. The recent successes of the visitors with English clubs has proved they have come into form, and will require a lot of play to beat them'. (Belfast Newsletter, 12 Sep 1891)
The photograph that accompanies this article was found in the vaults of National Stadium, Windsor Park, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Titled 'Canada v Ireland - Canadian Team - 1891', it is one of the earliest photographic images of association (soccer) football in Ireland. At that time, Ireland played international football games in the 'British International Championship' against Scotland, England and Wales and an international game against 'Canada' was advertised as an international fixture. This was the second of two tours by a team called 'Canada'. The first was in 1888 and this the second in 1891.
The Lancashire Men Behind the Tour
The 1891 scheme to replicate a successful 1888 Canadian soccer tour to the British Isles was initially the brainchild of three men, and was in gestation from at least July 1890. James Ellis was born in Accrington, England on June 2nd, 1864 where he saw the growth of the association game first hand. After studying law in England, he immigrated to Canada in 1885, instigating and playing for one of the first soccer football teams in Ottawa; the YMCA Ramblers FC.
With an entrepreneurial spirit, strong work ethic and a business mind (he worked as vice-president of the Independent Coal Company Limited between games) Ellis was both instigator and secretary of the newly-formed (and short-lived), Eastern Association Conference governing soccer football fixtures and the day-to-day affairs of a nascent association football scene in the district. The Ottawa Journal of the 15th of Oct 1889 chronicled Ellis's involvement: 'an Eastern Association has been formed. the clubs at present are Grand Truck of Montreal, Valleyfields, Cornwalls and YMCA Ramblers of Ottawa. Mr. J. E. Ellis, of Ottawa is the secretary pro tem.' He was not the only Englishman playing football in the district - the team of the Grand Trunk of Montreal was reported to be 'an exceptionally strong team, especially in the half-backs and .........includes some Lancashire men'.
An Ottawa editorial snapshot of him in 1906 remarks that 'twenty years ago Mr Ellis came to this country and has since resided in Ottawa..... without any of the extraneous aids that usually bring a man to the front.........the man who brings tact, energy and intellect to the management of their affairs and serves the city faithfully'. These characteristics that Ellis brought to bear in being thrice-elected Alderman and twice Mayor of Ottawa, were to prove useful in organising a transatlantic football tour in 1891.
John James Bentley, Chairman of Bolton Wanderers FC was the prime mover on that side of the Atlantic. Bentley, an early devotee of professionalism, secured favourable financial terms, a full fixture list and the agreement of all home nations' associations. It is not inconceivable, that Ellis and Bentley were familiar with each other - born four years and ten miles apart and involved with the 'cottonopolis' soccer football scene in the early 1880s, both young men with ambitions and a great future ahead of them. John Bentley, was born the son of a Chapeltown grocer, was captain of Turton FC in the 1870s and, in 1888 was the person who allocated clubs to the new football League.
How and ever, Ellis and Bentley concluded money was to be made in another tour of a 'Canada' team, given the exploding popularity of the game in the United Kingdom and in the north of Ireland by 1891. As Ellis remarked after the our: 'The tourists are greatly Indebted to Mr J J Bentley for his valuable aid in arranging the fixtures and the admirable way in which be arranged them. Without him the tour must have been a disastrous failure.'
Initially, on the Canadian-side was Dr. David Forsyth, a former player, and by now Secretary of the Western Association of Canada, as well as James Albert Ellis. Either put-off by the naked commercial aims of the venture or for personal reasons, by the time the team would set off from New York in August 1891, James Ellis would be the sole entrepreneur on the Canadian side. (Ellis and Forsyth were socially and ideologically different and had crossed swords (or letters) over a contentious 1889-90 match between the Eastern and Western conferences). It was reported that: 'The Eastern Association sent a team to Toronto to play the Toronto and Western Associations. Owing to dissension amongst the eastern clubs, its team was by no means the best. It met an ignominious defeat by 9 to 0. That was the end of the Eastern Association'. It seems Forsyth was the initial arranger (with Bentley) of the fixture-list of which thirty were arranged pre-arrival and twenty-eight on arrival in the British Isles.
1891 - Tour Ambitions
This was to be a far more ambitious tour than a previous 1888 'Canada' tour, taking in 58 games in all four 'home-nations' over twenty weeks, nearly three games a week. Confident in the arrangements, the travelling party of all-Canadian players was announced to the The Guardian newspaper in February 1891, with the economic viability of the venture, a key unabashed priority: 'All the Canadians are thorough amateurs, but they do not want to be out of pocket this time, as they were last.' In an attempt to shore up confidence and build publicity for the tour the newspapers such as the Dundee-based Courier and Argus published the financial arrangements for the tour:
'the Canadians will get half the gross gate, if that be more than the guarantee with a total income expected of £1840.' Expenses were listed as: 'Return steamship passages to/from Glasgow and New York for fifteen players and a manager: £250. Hotel, travelling and other incidental expenses of 16 men at £3 a week for 20 weeks: £960.'
For perspective, the income expected in 2020 sterling currency would be circa £244,463 with an expected profit of £80,194.
Football in the UK had changed since 1888: the English Football League was in its third-year, professionalism was part of the game and standards had improved. Riding the crest of a wave of football popularity, Ellis and Bentley believed that the tour would prove unique and popular with the footballing public willing to see men from 'the colonies' playing the association game. As one contemporary noted:
some queer ideas have been dispelled as to the colour, and language and manners of the inhabitants of Canada as shown by its representatives on the football team.
The 'Canada' of '91 were also different outfit to the 'Canada' of '88. Though very fit and athletic, they less specialised in association football. With a heavier schedule (playing two years of football in half a season), this was going to be an uphill task. And not all of the visitors were actually Canadians: there was a makeshift quality to the tourists - albeit with three holdovers from the '88 team.
1888 - The Canada team in Ireland
September 1st, 1888, Belfast, Ireland: As mentioned, the 1891 team was not the first association football team from Canada to play in Ireland. Three years earlier in 1888, a Canada team had come, saw and conquered despite the confidence of the local experts - the assembled Belfast football supporters had expected that 'the Co. Antrim team would give the visitors a friendly lesson and at the same time treat them with all the courtesy and mercy due to strangers'. They scored 14 goals, conceding seven, playing four games, winning three (against a Co. Antrim XI, Clarence FC, Distillery FC) and drawing the fourth with YMCA. This was an a remarkable beginning to their twenty-three game tour over two months.
Continuing their tour, they won five more games, drawing five and the venture was deemed a footballing success. The amateurs of Canada, all arts or medical students, more than held their own against prestigious opponents such as Sheffield, Sunderland FC and Middlesborough Ironapolis FC.
For instance, in October 1888, against Blackburn Rovers they led 1-0 at halftime before collapsing in the second half, losing 1-4 in front of an estimated 30,000 spectators. On that Blackburn Rovers team was one Fergus Suter, a subject of the 2020 Netflix drama 'The English Game'. Suter, himself - born in 1857 in Glasgow to a Glaswegian father and an Irish-mother (Catherine Cooke) from Bangor, Co. Down - before migrating to the mill-town of Darwen, played for the local Darwen FC team in Lancashire, England - an early example of mobility in footballers as they pursued a living across seas or borders. (Suter's older brother, Edward Suter was also a footballer of note, playing firstly with Partick and then with Darwen FC while his younger brother, Jarvis (Jerry) Suter, was a player on the Patrick PC team).
By the time of the launch of the English Football League, in September 1888, Suter was making few appearances for Blackburn Rovers, mostly in friendlies. One of those friendlies - earlier in the year, on February 25th 1888, was in the country of his mother (and brother, Edward's) birth - Ireland - in a 6-2 victory over Cliftonville FC, played in Belfast.
Of his Irishness, Suter's parents lived in the cotton-mill town of Bangor when they married in 1852 in the local Presbyterian Church. Catherine's father - Edward Cooke - was a coastguard at Orlock Point. The Suter's seemed to flit between Bangor and Glasgow and, by 1857, they had left for Glasgow for good, where Fergus was born that year. Scotland was a regular Irish migrant pathway to work and a more prosperous life and, as we will later see the starting point for footballers from Scotland (and Lancashire) to North America.
For the Suter's family lineage and heritage, my thanks to Andy Mitchell whose Scottish Sports History website chronicles Scottish soccer football history. Andy points out that, at the time, Fergus Suter, who was never capped by Scotland, would not have been eligible to play for Ireland (though his brother Edward would have been).
The Canada/Ireland Connections
Although 1888 was the first year to feature a visiting soccer football team, earlier that year, in June, Belfast and Dublin saw a Toronto Lacrosse Club in action while in September that year, a reciprocal journey was made by the Irish lacrosse team to Canada. In fact, Canadians (and, in 1883, a lacrosse team from New York), had been regularly visiting Ireland since 1876, with an Irish tour to North America in 1883 as well as 1888. The Canadian lacrosse tour of 1883 was part of a state-sponsored assisted immigration initiative, with lacrosse team members acting as agents; Canadian newspapers and pamphlets being distributed at games promising paid passage and land on arrival in the Dominion of Canada.
The 1883 advertisements for assisted immigration to Canada mentioned Lord Dufferin, then Governor General of Canada - coincidentally from Clandeboye in County Down, just outside Belfast. Lord Dufferin had, as an Oxford undergraduate, raised money for the distressed victims of starvation after experiencing first-hand the ravages of The Great Hunger in a visit to Skibereen, Co. Cork in Ireland. In response to a 1878-80 crop failure in the West of Ireland, he was involved, now as Governor General of Canada, in supporting the assisted-emigration scheme.
Those Irish lacrosse teams themselves had a seminal soccer history connection - William McWha and Jack Sinclair from the Knock FC team of 1879, and were both members of the Knock Lacrosse team who converted to the association football code in 1879. John Clugston of Cliftonville FC, goalkeeper for the Co. Antrim XI in 1888 was also a lacrosse player. The two Knock FC men played in the first ever match between two Irish football clubs (Knock FC v Cliftonville FC) and in Ireland's first international game in 1882. All three and were duel football and lacrosse internationals with Sinclair himself touring Canada as an Irish international lacrosse player.
The 'father' of lacrosse in Canada, William George Beers, noted that the Irish players practice at football influenced how they played lacrosse:
'another more important point in the practice of the Irish team is their avoidance of the studied and premeditated use of the shoulders and body in checking. Evidently, this practice was a surprise to our friends, and though first-rate football men, they have been taught by Mr J. Sinclair to develop all possible skill with the stick, and to avoid coming into deliberate contact, if possible'.
This poly-sport talent was not unusual in those days and the 1891 'Canada' and 'Ireland' teams as we will see: the Canadian team had its fair share of sporting talent in rugby, baseball, ice hockey, football and lacrosse, while Irish football international player, Johnny Gibb, pictured here with the ball at Ormeau Grounds in Belfast in 1888 versus the Toronto Lacrosse Club, played in the 1891 international Ireland/Canada football game.
Tour Scheming & Planning
Whether it was personal economic reasons or not, by June 1891 arrangement took a turn for the worst as, one by one, the picked Canadian players started to withdraw for one reason or another. H.J. Crawford of the Spring 1891 Canadian champions - Hurons of Seaforth had to withdraw 'on account of his school duties, he being master of the collegiate institute here'. But all was not lost.
Americans rescue Canada
With Canadian football players in short supply, and his fellow Canadian entrepreneurs getting cold feet, the enterprising James Ellis was fortuitously on hand to watch the touring 'New England' team from south of the border play four games in Canada - beating the Hurons easily by four goals to one and winning two of their other games and drawing one. With approval from the Western Association sub-committee, approaches to the New England players was made, 'and after a great amount of labor, and many difficulties a team was secured'. One of those originally offered a place on the team was Irishman, Barney Fagan, who earned a Scottish Cup winners medal with Hibernian FC in 1888 but he had to decline 'on account of his business'. (Barney had opened the Star Music Hall in County Street, Fall River earlier that year).
In Fall River, as far back as April 1889 there was talk or questions about a tour - 'When are the Rovers going to England? The Rovers friends are confident that they could cope with any of the British clubs......a couple of days rest from their work in the mills ......and.....in proper condition it is claimed the rovers need not be afraid to meet the Preston North Ends, the Aston Villas or the West Bromwich Albions'. Fall River was the undoubted home of the best teams in the USA in this period: between 1888 and 1892 teams from Fall River won the cup five times in succession. Fall River Rovers won it in both 1888 and 1889.
Barney Fagan, however, was more circumspect, having experienced football on both sides of the Atlantic, believing the amateur New England players would struggle against the professional teams in Britain. [Barney Fagan is the first player (and first Irish player) to win the Scottish (with Hibernian FC in 1887)] and American Cup (in 1889 with Fall River Rovers and in 1890 with Fall River East Ends). He was also on the losing Newark Almas side that lost in the American Cup Final to Fall River Rovers in 1888.
Canada/New England Football Rivalry
The New Englanders and Canadians were not exactly strangers in football terms: Canadian teams had played annually in Fall River, Mass. against a New England XI as far back as November 1887. Another Lancashire-born footballer from Chorley, William Whittle, considered the 'father' of football in Fall River as the founder of the 1880-initiated East Ends team, starred in a hard fought nil-all draw that seminal year of cross-border football.
Whittle was a regular visitor back to Lancashire in the 1880s and had brought back uniforms and regulation footballs which aided its adoption in Fall River. This was deemed a victory and celebrated as such: this was the 'international' Canadian team who had beaten the best of New Jersey on Thanksgiving Day. In style, however the teams were noticeably different: one reporter noting that the Canadians were more 'scientific' while the New Englanders 'relied on strength and an ability to rush the ball through whatever the opposition might be'.
Nor was the Fall River removed from the growth of football in the old country. Taking into account the possibility of players embellishing their football background, the list is a significant indication of the continuity of soccer football development at a pivotal time in England and in the USA. The teams mentioned represent a significant array of Victorian-era clubs of note in the heyday of the Lancashire and Scottish competitions in the 1880s. For instance, 1889 American Cup winner Richard Harwood played with Queens Stars FC and Audley FC before arrival in the USA to play firstly with the Conanicuts, the Fall River Olympics and Fall River Rovers. Charles Duff from the same team was of Scottish origin - playing with Hamiliton Academicals. The 1891 American Cup-winning Fall River East Ends side contained Edwin Korzenski 'an old timer and a good one, having played with the Great Lever Olympics of Bolton'.
The 1890 cup-winners Fall River Olympic reportedly claimed six footballers with overeseas experience in their ranks: Abraham Pilling, through born in the USA, who claimed to have played with Bolton Wanderers in 1889, James Clarkson who played with Audley Wanderers and Parks Road of Blackburn, John Finlan who also played with Audley Wanderers and Thomas Slater who is reported as playing with the first eleven of Darwen FC playing in a semi-final of the FA Cup. Thomas 'Nobbin' Ingham had played, according to reports, with Burnley Wanderers. In addition, from Scotland, John Stuart was reputed to have played with Dunfermline FC. The squad also included John Randall of the Rosindales in Lancashire while Leigh, another squad player, played with Hyde before arriving in the USA. While it is difficult to ascertain all the football claims, we can see no evidence, for example, of a Mr Slater playing for Darwen FC, let alone in their only FA Cup semi-final in 1880-81.
The 1891 final pitted Fall River East Ends against Brooklyn Longfellows from New York who themselves had a Gaelic and soccer footballer -Charlie Gorevin from Sligo - and of Govan Whitfield and Glasgow Celtic FC in their ranks. Later still, 1894 Fall River Olympics, American Cup winners, had Spencer in the team formerly of Burnley Union Stars FC, Brierfield FC in England and the Cornwall club in Ontario, Canada. A team-mate of his was Thomas Kenney who listed Farnworth Standards and Heywood Central FC as his former clubs. Tommy Whiteside from Irish club Distillery was to travel over and play for 18 months with Pawtucket Free Wanderers.
Five of the players from that first Canada v New England 1887 game would make the journey four years later - three from Canada and, Bobby Bell and Joey Buckley (both of Fall River Rovers) being the Americans. Joining the team - to be now styled as the 'Canadian-American Football Team' - were three more players from Fall River Rovers: Denis 'Denny' Shea, E.J. Gregory and Henry 'Harry' Waring. Representing Pawtucket were James Dalton, Alex Jeffrey and Neil Munro. James 'Jemmy' Whittaker (Fall River Olympic), was the last of the New England contingent.
Buckley, Waring and Bell were as talented as US footballers got in 1888 - they had been on the Fall River Rovers team who beat Almas of New Jersey (5-0) in winning American Cup team in 1888.
Three Canadians, Walter Bowman, Dr. Walter 'Watty' Proudfoot Thomson and Alexander Noble Garrett were holdovers from the 1888 tour. The team met in New York to embark on their journey on the SS Nevada. Thompson (1885) and Bowman (1886) had both represented Canada unofficial international games versus the USA in Clark Field, East Newark and, Bowman being the most experienced, was made captain of the team (in the photograph at the outset of this article is seen in the centre with the football) and he was to be joined by Jack Warbrick and W.E. Buckingham from Toronto Varsity, W.M. Hill from Ottawa and Francis Hope Thibodo from Berlin Rangers and W.S.S. Manson of Toronto Scottish.
Ernie C. Senkler of Osgoode Hall (pictured here in the college's Rugby Football team) and Garrett were to travel at a later date via Dublin disembarking at Queenstown (now Cobh), Co. Cork and travel by train to meet up with the party in Belfast before the first game in Ireland to bring the 'Canadian' total to eight. Senkler and Garrett were very familiar with each other through being members of the Toronto University baseball team, while Senkler also played on Osgoode Hall Rugby team.
Voyage from New York
Eleven days on the Atlantic was spent by the team on the SS Nevada: their destination being Glasgow. This steamer was on its fifth return crossing of the year from New York, bringing emigrants to the USA from all parts of Europe. The SS Nevada was an emigrant-ship and was chosen with frugality in mind - the normal voyage took five or six days and there were ships that were much more comfortable. It was as Ellis recalled later 'not a very large boat and is noted for her safeness than her speed. She was too heavily freighted for this voyage'.
Noteworthy, less that six months later, Annie Moore, a seventeen-year old girl from Co. Cork in Ireland famously stepped from the SS Nevada to become the first arrival to Ellis Island on January 1st 1892.
The football migrants, passed their days pleasantly and 'it did not take long for the Canadians and Americans to assimilate' with Irish-American, Denny Shea and English-American, Jemmy Whittaker the life and soul of the party with 'songs, gags and witticisms' to pass the time.
The Canadian-American party were quite diverse socially and professionally: while the 'Americans' consisted of a barber (Shea), a carpenter (Waring), three mechanics (Munro, Jeffery and Dalton) and two blacksmiths (Whittacker and Buckley) the 'Canadians' listed their occupations as 'Doctor' (Thibodo and Gregory), 'Tailor' ( Hill), two students (Buckingham and Warbrick), a Jeweller (Manson) and as a 'Traveler' (Bowman). Age wise, they were between twenty-four and twenty-seven excepting Dalton and Thibodo who were 32 years of age and Denny Shea being the youngest at 23 years old.
Arrival in Glasgow, Scotland, 17th of August
Having arrived safely on August 17th, and now ensconced in the Imperial Hotel, five days training ensued at Hampden Park, the home of Queens Park FC, before two games against Third Lanark Volunteers of Scottish Football League and Kings Park FC of the Scottish Alliance league. Losing the first game, at Cathkin Park (0-3), the local Scottish journalists noted the team's lack of fitness in the hot weather but their fighting spirit. On the players' performance, the difference in the backs and forwards was noted: 'The Canadian forward are not a very brilliant lot, and have only a rudimentary knowledge of the science of the game. The backs and goalkeeper are, however, distinctly good.'
That spirit was not enough to sustain them in the second game and they 'were a beaten team long before the conclusion of the game' and 'whose want of condition was apparent'. Despite being a goal down at half-time (2-3), it ended in a 2-6 reverse for the visitors. Perhaps the next game, the first, in Ireland would bring them better results.
Arrival in Belfast, Ireland, August 29th, 1891
Local association football followers had reason for some trepidation on the morning of the match between Linfield Athletic FC and the north American visitors, heralded as 'Canada'. Since then, on paper at least Irish football was not held in esteem in the United Kingdom - Ireland had lost all nine of it's internationals since the 1888 visit of the Canadians. The 1890-91 season was to be a pivotal one in the history of Irish (and Linfield) football - the first year of the Irish League and the first of a three-in-a-row League victories for Linfield (then known as Linfield Athletic).
And the international team had improved - beating Wales (6-2) in Belfast and having only lost narrowly (1-2) to Scotland in March of that year, its best set of result to date in the competition. Belfast city itself overtook Dublin as the main population centre in Ireland and with it's shipyards, steam-powered spinning mills, new public parks and grand buildings Belfast had become a metropolis and the capital city as far as association football was concerned. With a new sense of Irish optimism from organisation, training and experience, the Irish were nervously confident. Secondly, the element of surprise was lost and 'Canada' were not going to be taken for granted.
Played at Ulsterville the scene was set: 'The ground has more of an appearance of a first-class cricket crease than a football arena, and the immense crowd which was thickly interspersed with the colourful costumes of the ladies formed a most imposing sight in the sunshine.' 'Canada' started well putting Linfield under pressure but were to concede the first goal from a Hill (Linfield) header, before Jeffery equalised after a left-wing run and cross by Munro from the byline. Canada took the lead before half-time and in doing so making history by scoring the first penalty kick in Irish football - scored again by Jeffery (Dalton is credited in some reports) for handball. This was not greeted without objection from supporters 'who scruple not in making themselves obnoxious by their unwarranted remarks'.
At 2-1 at halftime, it seemed a fair representation of the run of the game. The second half was a more cagey affair before an own-goal by Gregory made it 2-2 before a late push as the two teams were 'jiggered' got the home team to a 3-2 victory - a header from Peacock. Canada pushed to the end but to no avail and in doing so losing their unbeaten Irish record. They had come up against a Linfield Athletic side that were to win the newly-formed Irish League three years in a row at the top of their game. The newspaper reporters chronicle a game either focusing on the quality of football 'their struggle with the Linfield was a tough one, a better or more interesting game has seldom being witnessed' or by marveling at the semi-exotic 'colonists' - 'Individually they are men of fine physique - mostly above the average height, and in one or two instances of stature that might be termed almost gigantic'.
There would be that second game in Belfast - this time a representative one - against Ireland on September 12th. Before that however, there were four matches to play in England versus Sunderland, Middlesborough Ironopolis, Sheffield Wednesday and Bolton Wanderer, winning one, drawing one and losing two.
Ireland (5) v Canada (2)
While the 1888 'Canada' team could be said to be truly all-Canadian with just one (David Forsyth) of the seventeen-players being born outside Canada, the 1891 'Canada' team where to be different: some of the 'Canadians' were named as from the United States of America. And some of the 1891 team were not actually American at all. And not all of the Irish players were born in Ireland either.
Heralded as an 'international' game to the Belfast sporting public it attracted 'not less than between five and six thousand people patronised the match,' In addition, dignitaries, arriving later, who were watching an lacrosse game between Ireland and England across town included Major Spencer Chichester and former Governor-General of Canada - the fantastically named, Frederick Temple Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, of Dufferin and Ava. J A Ellis. later noted that it was : 'in Ireland they know how to dispense hospitality' and had received 'right royal treatment'. Before the game the visitors were housed at the plush Shaftesbury Hotel and were toured to view the several places of interest in the city:
'the Brookfield Linen and Weaving Factory being amongst the principal, several hours being spent in this enormous concern. They then proceeded to Clandeboye Estate, the seat of the Marquis of Dufferin, and after visiting the house and grounds returned to the city. In the evening the Theatre was visited.'
The Canadians preparations were hampered by a rough voyage to Belfast, the entertaining distractions and the constant rain in the days before the game and, on the day of the game by hot weather:
'The weather was beautifully fine. Too warm, in fact, for the exponents of the athletic game, but very enjoyable for the spectators, who turned out in large numbers. The fair sex, whose varied costumes imparted an amount of attractiveness to the gay scene, constituting no small portion of the onlookers'.
Interestingly, two non-Irish born Irishmen took their place on the Irish team - George Forbes and Bob Milne. George Forbes (born in 1869 in Canada) lined out for the Irish side and went on top win three full-caps for Ireland before returning home to Canada sometime before 1900 while Bob Milne (born in Forfar, Scotland in 1870) also played in the Ireland side versus 'Canada'. He previously won the Irish Cup with the Gordon Highlanders regimental side that were based in Belfast. He would, through the five-year residency rule, win 27 Ireland caps in a long career while a Linfield player.
On the visitors side there were non-American 'Canadians' on tour. Neil Munro of 'Canada' was familiar to the Belfast football aficionados: he was a Scottish international player having represented Scotland victoriously against Wales and England in the 1888-89 season, scoring in both games. Munro had arrived on the 4th Jun 1890 in the United States of America listing his occupation as 'laborer' and nationality as 'Scottish', aged 28 years of age. He made his way to Pawtucket and the ex-pat Scottish community and played for the Pawtucket Free Wanderers team.
Also, on the Canada team there was one non-Canadian Canadian in Francis Hope Thibodo from the Berlin Rangers club in Canada who was actually born in Idaho in the USA. He was the son of a colourful French-Acadian explorer, Augustus Thibodo and a grandfather who was French-Canadian Orangeman. He attended Queen’s University at Kingston Ontario from 1893-1894 graduating as a doctor in 1895. He was practicing medicine in Ventura California in the late 1890`s until his demise in May, 1940. He was one of the players named as Canadian, though could be equally said to be from, and of, the USA.
James Whittaker learned his football with Heywood FC in England, also playing with Church FC in Lancashire. A winner of the 1888 American Cup, he would win it again in 1894. According to reports he was 'one of the best half-backs with good judgement' with Fall River Olympics. He was one of two 'Anglo-Americans' in the squad.
James Dalton (Pawtucket Free Wanderers) was in the travelling party on tour but did not play for for Canada versus Ireland. He is sometimes claimed as Irish but, he himself insisted to the Athletic News he was from Clitheroe ('bred and born') and played pre-arrival in the USA with Colne FC in the Lancashire League.
There was an Irish connection on the Canada team. Denis Shea, was not Canadian, but born in America to Irish parents, most likely from the Beara peninsula in West Cork/East Kerry in the very south of Ireland. John Henry Shay and Mary Sullivan, two of the most common family names in Beara followed a well-known migrant pathway from the disappearing mining industry in the south of Ireland to the burgeoning mining community in Upper Michigan before re-migrating to Fall River in Massachusetts - Spindle City, and the plentiful work available in the cotton mills. This was not unusual as research into patterns of migration shows: 'many Beara folk in the early period of emigration ended their journey in Boston and Fall River, Massachusetts, finding work in the textile mills in the latter city, and establishing a distinctive neighborhood.' Denis Shea was a product of this pattern or network of migration - finding fame on the football field for Fall River Rovers in particular.
Playing with the sun in their eyes the Canadians are reported as 'slow and disconnected, and appeared very much beaten up'. The first-half was played in the Canadian half with Shea, the goalkeeper striving 'hard to withstand the ravages and cleared time after time in marvellous fashion.' Although, holding out for the first fifteen minutes, the Canadians had shipped four goals by halftime - 'the visitors seemed now fagged out. and little wonder, as the game had been of an unusually fast description'.
Canada were to win the second-half by two goals to one but, at the interval, to the journalists chagrin, latecomers to the game 'broke over the railings and clambered unto the grand stand, not, of course, to the delight of the occupants of the reserve. This is a state of things evidently due to the bad arrangements, and steps should be taken to prevent a recurrence.' Jeffery scored early in the second half (with Stanfield replying for his hat-trick for Ireland) and Jeffery scored again from a penalty kick for handball:
'this result was received by the spectators in an extraordinary manner, hooting and groaning being the rule. Why this was so it is hard to conceive, as the Canadians deserved the score, and had worked hard enough for it'.
The Canadians pushed to the end but the game fizzled out as much due to the heat as the exertions of both teams. Next day, their time in Ireland finished, the team boarded a steamer to Liverpool to continue their extensive tour. It is noteworthy that the tour organisers saw fit to include Ireland of the 'old-country' - but the organisers were men of ambition and England and Wales awaited. Their record in Ireland in 1891: played two, lost two.
Tour Struggles
Chastened from their games in August and September the team was supplemented by two new arrivals from Canada: Forrester and Thomson joined the team in Manchester about the end of September and October saw the visitors rack up credible results going unbeaten for six games and at the beginning of November a victories over Stoke City and London Caledonians and draws against Millwall Athletic and Royal Arsenal.
Injuries persisted throughout the rest of the tour with up to four games a week being played - sometimes with 'guest' players filling the gaps in the American team Ellis himself playing in a couple of games.
Adding to the tourists struggles, Munroe re-signed for Abercorn FC after being persaded to 'desert' and Whittaker re-joined Heywood FC after a falling out with Ellis over an 'unfortunate incident'. At the end of October and in November Senkler, Garrett, Thibodo and Thompson had to return home to Canada 'on account of business'. These four Canadians a loss to the team and bizarrely a New York newspaper (in full) reported the following escapade at the Hotel Bartholdi:
'A crowd of Madison Square promenaders was earnestly contemplating the northern wall of the Hotel Bartholdi Tuesday. This is what they saw: A gentleman in a red blazer was coming down a rope hand over hand with the agility of a sailor or a South American monkey. He was an athletic young man with a blond mustache and blue eyes, and every movement of his limbs and body indicated strength. The crowd held its breath as the young man descended.
When the venturesome athlete reached the sidewalk he was seen to stagger. But he held to an iron railing, and shouted up to four men who were looking from the window above: "I'll bet you I can come up the same way!" There was no response. The crowd closed around the athlete. He gazed around at the faces of his audience and then turned and went into the side door of the hotel. The four heads above disappeared from view. The crowd slowly dispersed under the direction of a park policeman. The rope disappeared. It was hauled into the seventh story window. All was quiet on Twenty-third street. The red blazer gentleman was a prominent young Canadian, returned from England, where he has been playing on the Canadian football team.
He arrived in New York a week ago, and has been celebrating his return ever since. He considered the Bartholdi episode a bagatelle, and said be could have climbed back again with case'. (New York Advertiser).
(Photo of Bartholdi Hotel: New York Heritage)
In pure football terms, by the time the tour ended in the second week of January the Canadians had played two seasons of equivalent league football with 13 wins, 14 draws and 31 defeats. Against Football League opposition in England there were two draws (against Bolton Wanderers and Burnley) and a win versus Stoke City from nine games. There were no wins or draws in Ireland or Scotland.
James Dalton (pictured here) was signed by future 1892 league winners, Sunderland FC, a sign that some talent was recognised, playing with them from 1891–1894 before signing for Lancashire champions Nelson FC.
Walter Bowman was a second player to be signed at the end of the tour. For the 1892–1893 season he played with Accrington FC (including a February 1892 friendly versus Linfield in Belfast) before joining Ardwick FC who, after going bankrupted, who were replaced in 1894 by a new team called Manchester City FC. He played with them from 1893 to 1900, returning to North America to settle in Silver Bow, Butte, Montana in the USA.
Walter Bowman is the first Canadian (and first member of the Swedenborgian religion) to play in the English Football League.
(Manchester City photo is courtesy of Dr. Gary James)
Denis Shay is pictured here circa 1910 (in the white hat) in his saloon (or pub). But before his football days were over he had been offered professional contracts with Sunderland, Middlesboro, Arsenal and Newton Heath. Darwen FC announced his signature for Shea to play with them in 1892, but it came to nought. Shea would eventually play professionally in 1894 for Brooklyn in an ill-fated and short-lived American Professional League.
(Source: Denny Shay's Bar (New Bedford Free Public Library, 309: U7 Box 04 01)
Edmund Cumming Senkler (far-right in the photo) had an interesting 1891-92 sporting season. Not only did he plauy on the Canada tour to the British Isles, he was to play in the March 2nd, 1892 final of the Ottawa Hockey Association final versus Ottawa Hockey Club. While he did score, his side were 10–4 losers. (this game is significant in becoming the launchpad for Lord Stanley (at the celebratory dinner) to announce the establishment of the 'Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup' competition, today known as the Stanley Cup.
(Source: Hockey Gods)
His football teammate John 'Jack' Clark Warbrick was to continue to perform at a very high level, in a different sport - playing on the West London lacrosse team while continuing his medical studies in England. He would qualify as a doctor and practice in Chicago, Illinois until his passing in 1941.
Post-Script
Manager (and sometime player) James Ellis was harsh in his criticism of the standard of North American players, and whether this led to him falling out of the game Watty Thompson became secretary of the Ontario football scene on his return. He lived a well-lived life with major civic accomplishments as mayor of Ottawa.
It was an extraordinary achievement to pull-off a tour of such scope and ambition with a cobbled together team. They encountered bad weather, endured multiple injuries and poor refereeing; they were left short of gate-receipts but as young men saw every part of the old country - memories which must have endured.
One thing is to be learned from the tour and that is that the very best team which can be raised in Canada, or the States or both combined, cannot hope to defeat the strongest old country team at present. What can be done is to make good use of the lessons learned on this tour, and try to make the necessary improvement in football on this side of the Atlantic. If this is done the tour will have been of some use, and a benefit to football both in Canada and the States. (JA Ellis)
For his football, entrepreneurship and sheer doggedness - we salute an overlooked pioneer of soccer football - James Albert Ellis.