After that was something of a pause, something of a move partially across the country to St. Louis, Missouri before something of a filling-in between 1883 and 1886. Two clubs opened in Paterson in New Jersey, a centre for silk with weavers, many from Scotland, drawn in. At the Clarks Thread Mill in the same state Kearny with its influx of spinners from Paisley ONT was founded, whilst across the river in Newark, the state capital, the Caledonians were formed. And second club in New York, the Thistles, too opened its doors, whilst Rhode Island was included for the first time, with the forming in eastern Rhode Island of the Clydes of River Point with its bleachery and print-works. The result was a competitive hub of several like-minded teams in New York and Jersey reaching up into southern New England linked by the railway. There was competition and with other teams it is not surprising that in 1884 the American Football Association was formed and the American Cup instigated, which in turn  set up another flurry. 1888 and 1889 saw a Caledonian in Pennsylvania in Scranton with its coal-mining and railways, a Thistles in Lonsdale, Rhode Island, amongst the Pawtucket mills and a Scotia in Holyoke and its paper mills in southern Massachusetts. The eastern limits were both extending and consolidating, just as for the first time the Great Lakes and Mid-West were opening too.  Niagara Falls in up-State New York had its Rangers. Chicago and Minneapolis would acquire their own Thistles and the former also a Scottish Shields.

And then there would be two final flurries at least in this first wave. There would be new clubs.  In Pennsylvania the Caledonians of Scranton would be joined by a Thistles of multi-industrial Philadelphia. In Rhode Island Pawtucket would also acquire a Thistles of its own, Cumberland and its mills a Rangers, this as in southern Massachusetts both Fall River and Holyoke would do the same just as its neighbour Springfield, with tyres, more guns, Smith and Weston and railway-cars, added a Caledonian. And further north too Lowell, also a textile town, there would be a new Thistle, whilst across the border into Vermont Barre with its stone -quarries yet another Rangers. And on the far side of the continent Thistles too would reach the Pacific at the European melting-pot that San Francisco was becoming, this as back in what is without doubt the spiritual home of US soccer, New Jersey, there was consolidation. Kearny got its Caledonians and Scots-Americans and Paterson its True Blues.