"Philly-Socca"
In the USA quite a lot has been written about the development there of football. Quite a lot has also been written about Philly Soccer, football in Philadelphia, but precious little about the two together. It is a mistake, a misunderstanding because, although football in America certainly began in New Jersey, Southern Massachusetts and Rhode Island and was somewhat high-jacked by New York money, the real source at least of American, professional football's first period of success was The City of Brotherly Love.
All soccer in America for economic reasons stuttered its way through the 1890s and into the 20th Century. Its first new shoots might have been seen in
Pawtucket in 1898 but with the re-forming of its Football Association in 1900, the visit in 1901 by the T.J. Bosanquet's touring team and league football, in a growing city with its influx of labour, much of it from Britain, firmly re-established by 1902 real impulsion was Philadelphian. The number of its teams would double between 1902, its initial year, and 1904, amongst them Thistle, Albion, Hibernians and Blackburn Rovers. Official referees were appointed in 1903 by a newly re-constituted Referees' Association, to be headed by Douglas Stewart. Hibernians won the first division of the league that same year, as it would for the next two years. Thistle was second, having been the previous year's champion.
And it would not go unnoticed. In 1905 the top English amateur team, The Pilgrims, visited and played three games, the first against those same Thistles, described, not just as the city's "best-playing" team but also, as would be expected as of its Scottish club, as its "most scientific". Then in 1906 the Pilgrim's visit was replicated by the still more eminent English amateur club, Corinthians, and during that and over the next two season three notable players arrived. All came from Britain and all had league experienced. The first was Tommy Hyslop, ex. of Rangers, several English clubs, a period in South Africa and inside-forward in revived Scottish national teams of 1896-7. He had joined Thistle. The second was Horace Pike, a highly regarded inside forward with Nottingham Forest from 1889 until 1897 and three more years with Loughborough. He was playing for the Philadelphia and Reading Railway team. And the last was Tommy Green, joining Hibernians, having had a career, again as a forward with a host of teams over twenty-three years in the English Midlands including Wolverhampton, West Bromwich and Aston Villa.
None of these players was young. Green had been born in 1863, Pike in 1870 and Hyslop in 1871 so in 1908 were forty-five, thirty-eight and thirty-seven respectively. And none would stay in America but their presence would not only energise the local game but professionalise it with Hyslop in particular, as he moved to Hibernians and then to Tacony, the conduit for the introduction of more professionals, not least from Scotland. In fact Hyslop was pivotal. Amongst them by 1909-10, with Pilgrims having visited once again the previous season and losing a game to Hibernians, were Andy Brown from Paisley and George Cairns, both of Hibernians, Hector McDonald from Hearts and Robert Morrison, both of Tacony and Pete Wilson, like Hyslop, first of Hibernians and then Tacony in a league won by the latter undefeated as well as for the first time the American Cup. In addition there was also the arrival in 1910 of James McGhee, as an Edinburgh Hibernian player, probably one of the first two Catholics to be capped for Scotland, then, still as a player, with Celtic and a manager at Hearts. McGhee's two sons, Bart and Jimmy, both Scots-born, would become professional footballers in the United States. Bart would even be in the USA team that reached the semi-finals of the first
World Cup in 1930 in Uruguay, having two games earlier in the knockout stages scored the first ever goal by an American and a Scot. And it would be Bob Morrison, who just three years later would himself move from Philadelphia to nearby Bethlehem, there being instrumental in the creation of The Steel, which would in becoming over the next decade and half on of American football's pivotal clubs, if anything, over-shadow but far from swamp a Philadelphian game that would, if quietly, prosper until the American Soccer Wars and The Depression saw professional soccer collapse.