Seville -
Ore and Oranges
It was in very early 1890 that Huelva Recreation Club, Recreativo de Huelva, in Spain's eastern Andalusia received a letter from Seville, the Andalusian capital. It was in English, part challenge, part invitation, was signed by Isaiah White Jnr, came from Seville's English Club and proposed an Association Football match.
And it was a match that actually took place; on 8th March that same year two miles or so downstream from the city past the port at La Tablada. Now it's mainly a military airbase. Then it was the city's horse-racing track. The home team won, 2-0, the first of six games played over the next three years, home and away between the two clubs. And it was also the first, officially-recognised football match in Spain and quite probably the first on the Iberian Peninsula with football coming to Portugal, to Lisbon and Porto, only later.
Now, there are claims that Sevilla Futbol Club, Sevilla FC, was founded in January 1890 and is the oldest in Spain. They are not correct. The Sevilla club that exists today was founded fifteen years later in 1905 and was largely, if not entirely, of local origin and not British, as was the Seville team on that day in 1890. Moreover it, or rather the club it represented, the Seville Football Club, also cannot lay claim to being either Spain's oldest, having ceased to exist long before 1905, or even its first. In fact the doyen of Spanish football, that is Spain's longest surviving team, Recreativo de Huelva, was the opposition that day and it in turn had grown from seeds sown by Spain's first club of all, the now defunct Rio Tinto F.C., from the mining town of the same name in mountains behind the city of Huelva itself.
That being said we know the teams, both playing 2.3.5, that took the field that day in March. Huelva’s consisted mainly of workers in the docks in the port-town, where ore from Rio Tinto and other mines was loaded for shipping back to the Old Country. It had,
George Wakelin in goal, the backs, Thompson and Jones, half-backs, Norman, Oliver and Hodge and the forwards, Hopper, Mundell, Birchall, the captain, then Garcia and a second Birchall.
Both Birchalls were in their early thirties and established Huelva residents. Garcia has to be the first known Spanish footballer. And Seville was
Edwin Plews, Hugh Macoll at right back and G T Charlesworth, D. Thomson, H. Stroneger and W. Logan, Henry Welton, J. White Jnr, J. Poppy, P. Merry and T. Geddes.
They were employees of the foundry owned by White's father, employees of the Seville Water Works Company and, with some others, workers on the dock and for the shipping company, whose boats carried Seville oranges to Dundee.
Several of the Seville team, McColl, Thomson, Logan and Geddes, were almost certainly Scots. In fact there were possibly two Thomsons. D. Thomson is also known to have played in a game at Christmas 1890 in the city and Robert Thomson to have referee-ed not the first match but others that followed. There has even been the suggestion they were related to D.C. Thomson, the founder of the Dundee Courier and today's D.C. Thomson publishing group, not least because the Dundee Courier carried a contemporary report of that first game and someone must have sent it back to Jute City.
In fact it seems unlikely firstly that there was a Thomson family connection. D. C. Thomson himself was in 1890 already running the family business on the banks of the Tay and the family had no other Ds or Roberts. Secondly, the two Thomsons in question might have been one. D. Thomson and Robert Thomson were the same person, not least because fifteen years later a Robert Duncan Thom(p)son was one of the founders of the Sociedad de Foot-ball that became today's Sevilla F.C.. Moreover, with Duncan in his name it also seems highly probable he was Scots, a contention only reinforced by the knowledge that he worked for Coats, the thread-makers, a Scots company that often recruited locally in Paisley and had already been and would, if unknowingly, be instrumental in taking football to Northern Spain, the USA, Italy, Brazil and elsewhere. Indeed there there are three traceable Robert Duncan Thomsons of about the right age. One was born in Ireland in 1872 and seems to have emigrated to Canada. Of the second there is just one record, a birth in Aberdeen in 1866 but there is a third born in Glasgow in 1879, again of Aberdeenshire parents, and recorded in Scotland but not beyond. Perhaps he was then in Spain?
However, of all four possible Scots in that first game most is known about Hugh McColl. Aged 29 and Glasgow-born he was in 1890 the Seville team captain not just for the first game but throughout the series. He would stay, it is said, in Seville for at least 3 years and in 1896 in Sunderland be joint-founder in of a naval engineering company with Gilbert Reid Pollock. Both McColl and Reid are said to have worked at the Portilla and White foundry with McColl technical manager. Reid was an engineer. He was also a fellow Scot, registered as being born both in Carradale in Argyll and Neilston in Glasgow in 1865, was living in Lancashire in early 1891 so is likely to have arrived in Spain after that date, had married a girl from that same county in 1894 so was back by then, was living in Durham and Sunderland from 1896 and died on the Isle of Man in 1954. But most importantly in Seville he was also a fellow footballer, who in a later game, perhaps in 1891 and by 1892, was scorer of its first club's first away goal, the first in Spanish footballing history. As for McColl he would die in 1915, suddenly on a visit to Glasgow and is buried in Cathcart cemetery, but before his death and even before he settled in Sunderland in 1895, founding a first venture,Jameson & McColl, there is the possibility he made one more significant contribution to World football. A Hugh McColl, who in photographs from the time looks remarkably like the one in Spain, was in 1894 a player in Santiago in Chile and the trainer of the city's first representative team with a Hugh McColl also to be seen travelling back and forth from the UK to Chile over the next decade and a half.
And there was one more Scot, if not on the field, then at the heart of the match that day. Mr. Bower and Dr. Langdon were the umpires for the two sides thus were, if you like, Spain's first assistant referees but the referee himself, probably as was the way at that time on the side-line, was Edward Farquharson Johnston. Farquharson Johnston was born in Lhanbryde in Morayshire in 1854, the youngest son of the Johnston of Elgin woollen-mill family. He had arrived in Seville in 1873 and become British Vice-Consul there in 1878. The shipping firm, McAndrew & Company Limited, formed 80 years earlier by William McAndrew of Elgin, had as early as 1859 started to trade out of Seville, oranges for marmalade, Dundee marmalade, being an important cargo. A McAndrew is said to have played in later Seville teams against Huelva. Johnston himself was the great-nephew of the original McAndrew, was joint-proprietor of the shipping company and also a director of the Water Company, that had begun work in 1882. A keen sportsman he was involved in shooting, golf, tennis and was Seville F.C. club president and, although, perhaps at thirty-six beyond playing, would make a unique contribution to Spanish football, as a founder member of the British Seville F.C. and Spain’s first "ref".
Nor would Johnston be the last Scots and McAndrew contribution to football in a city where there today are two top-flight teams. We have first to move on two decades. In 1912 Herbert Jones, captain of Espanol of Cadiz FC since it foundation the previous year, moved with his family to Seville. There he had already made arrangements to join by then one of several teams in the city, Sevilla Balompie. Jones was clearly not Spanish. Nor was he British and certainly not Scots but born in Colombo, Sri Lanka but on 17th November 1912 he was right-back for his new club against and in beating Betis FC. The score was 3-0. Balompie played in green and white shirts. Betis, from a Seville suburb, play in green and black. The Balompie team, again not to be confused with present-day Sevilla FC, was mainly Spanish with in addition to Jones one other exception. His name is given as Miller and he was scorer of the third goal. In fact he seems to have been Alexander D. Millar, born in Elgin in 1885 and quite possibly Edward Farquharson Johnston's nephew.
And in the meantime there had been four further names that appeared and are of interest, Wood, Welsh, Kirkwood and Mackenzie, and one that would reappear, Langdon. October 1905 had seen the foundation of what was at first called La Sociedad de Foot-Ball Club and we now call Sevilla FC. It came out of the city's Merchants' Club, amongst its founders would have several nationalities and from its early days have players of similar background, with social status, religion and political affiliation being expressly no barrier but with the stipulation that all lived in Seville. Amongst the founders would be Carlos Langdon, son of the British doctor in the city, John Langdon, the La Tablada line-judge in 1890, Cyril Smith from the Water Works and Robert Thom(p)son of Coats. Amongst the players would be the Johns, Wood and Mackenzie, both sons of managers at the city's port, John Dalebrook and Adam Kirkwood, said to be a Londoner but highly likely to have been Scots-born, perhaps in Stirlingshire.
By December 1907 Sevilla FC was already playing a match against Receativo de Huelva, a 2-1 loss away with Mackenzie on one wing and Wood on the other. A month later there was a return and this time Sevilla won, 4-0, once more on La Tablada and with Edward Farquharson Johnston still in the city and again refereeing. And it was also in 1907 seemingly as a delayed response to Sevilla FC's presence that Sevilla Balompie, originally known as Espana Balompie was formed. It was a club for which, in contrast to Sevilla FC, non-resident foreigners could play; one which was officially recognised in early 1909. In April 1909 it played F.C. Sevilla's third team and beat it. In the middle of the year it played and beat its second team and at the end of the year its first team with, in addition to Mackenzie and Wood, a Campbell, a Welsh and another, or perhaps the same, Kirkwood in the squads and by which time Sevilla FC had been approached by and accepted an invitation to join the Spanish Federation of Football Clubs. Yet in spite of national recognition it may have been the three Balompie defeats that seems then to have provoked something of a crisis at Sevilla FC. It revolved around social class, with a change of rules that now excluded players considered to be of lower class. There was a response. A group of its members objected, broke away and founded a rival team they would call Betis Football Club. A die was caste.
At much the same time the involvement of the Spanish Federation of Football Clubs would in 1910 see the establishment of cup competitions for both Seville and Andalusia. The first Seville Cup was won perhaps unsurprisingly not by Sevilla FC even given its internal problems but by Sevilla Balompie, as were the next two also. Three teams took part that same year in the first Andalusian Cup, Sevilla FC and Sevilla Balompie once more and the winner, Receativo de Huelva. And it was also that same year that Sevilla Balompie played its first match against Betis F.C.
It was in this period too that Seville saw the emergence of more teams in addition to Sevilla FC, Balompie and Betis. Yet, there was a hierarchy. For no obvious reason only the first of the three took part in an again three-team 1912 Andalusian Cup. The others were Recreativo de Huelva and Herbert Jones's Espanol de Cadiz. Huelva won once more. And the end of that same year saw the first steps by the Huelva and three main Seville clubs, Sevilla FC with a new President, John Mackenzie now on the club's Board and now apparently another Thompson in the team, in the formation of an Andalusian Football Federation.
In fact, the new Thompson was not a Thompson at all. His name was Duncan McVean Thomson without a 'p'and not obviously related to the Thompsons and Thomsons, who had been involved in football in Seville before him. And, of course, with that name he could be nothing but Scots. He was born in 1887 in Partick. In 1891 he was still there, but not in 1901 or 1911, probably arriving in Spain aged 23 or so in 1910 or 1911 or at least that was the season that saw him first in the Sevilla FC team. Then in 1913 he disappeared for two seasons, only to reappear for 1915-16, 1916-17 and 1917-18. He then disappeared once more only to emerge in 1926 arriving in Liverpool, giving an address in Glasgow and with a young wife and a daughter. The three of them had travelled on a boat coming Manaus in Brazil, had boarded in Para, again in Brazil, quite likely in Belem, and are said to have been living in Peru. And they were planning to settle in Scotland. Thomson himself was by then thirty-eight and an accountant, which suggests what he had been doing in Seville. His wife, Dora Angelica, was just twenty-two, and likely to have been Peruvian, and his daughter, Dora Antoinetta, just two-and-a-half.
The Andalusian Football Federation was finally in place in 1915 by when there had been other changes on and off the field. On 1st January 1914 Sevilla FC moved to its first dedicated ground, the Campo Mercantil, the Merchants’ Field, and once there it would take its first trophy, the Copa Ayuntamiento de Sevilla. Taking part were Sevilla itself, Sevilla Balompie, Betis and a new name, Recreativo de Sevilla. The final was against Sevilla Balompie, the score 2:0. And in the middle of 1914 Seville's football went through some further re-organisation. Perhaps as a reaction to Sevilla FC having the pretender to the French throne as its Honorary President, Betis received royal patronage and from the Spanish king, Alfonso XIII, becoming in name what is recognisable today, Real Betis, but not quite the club we know. That would take a few months yet.
It was in October 1915 that Sevilla FC and Real Betis faced each other for the first time. Sevilla were to win easily, 3:0. It was for Betis perhaps the last straw after a string of poor performances, prompting what would happen at the end of the year; the merger of it with Sevilla Balompié. It was done with the agreement of both clubs and promoted by the captain of Sevilla Balompie himself, Herbert Jones. Perhaps he saw synergy. His club brought players, trophies, supporters and the ground, then the Campo de las Tablas Verdes, whilst Betis brought kudos in the form of Royal approval.
In fact the process of merger was slower than might be expected. Real Betis, still playing as Sevilla Balompie, was declared Seville champion in 1915, having beaten Sevilla FC in January, the new Real Betis not being formally recognised until August 1915. The new Real Betis also came in a game against Union Andalucia Recreativo to adopt the green and white of the original Betis. Furthermore the merger was not without problems. Betis Balompie was re-founded by a group of dissidents but did not survive. Nor would success be quick in coming. The club, in spite of on three occasions challenging Sevilla FC for the Andalusian Championship, actually after 1918 went into gradual decline until its management was taken over in 1924 once more by some of its founders, who turned it around. It only won its first cup in 1926 then finally in 1928 the Andalucian Cup. It was fortunate timing. The Spanish National League was founded in 1929 and, on the back of the cup-win, it formed part of the Second Division.
And elsewhere in 1915 back on the field there had also been developments. At the end of October and the beginning of November Sevilla F.C. played its first match outside Andalusia; in the Copa del Rey in Madrid against Real Madrid, losing twice. It was not the first invitation a Seville club had received. Sevilla Balompie had been invited in 1910 but for financial reasons was not able to accept. Moreover by the beginning of 1916 the Andalusian Football Federation had become part of the larger Southern Federation, including the Canary Islands, Spain’s North African territories, then including Morocco, Extremadura and, of course, Andalusia itself, with its headquarters in Seville and Paco Alba of Sevilla FC as its first president. Additionally at the end of 1915 the early rounds of that season’s Andalusian Cup were played. Real Betis, and Sevilla FC faced each other. The first game was a 2:2 draw. The second was an emphatic 5:0 victory for Sevilla. Then in January 1916 Espanol of Cadiz played Malaga F.C. in the same competition, with Herbert Jones as referee. Meanwhile Huelva had had a bye into the semi-finals, to be played against Sevilla FC at Campo Mercantil. Huelva was eliminated whilst Cadiz had a bye to the final, which amidst complaints about the refereeing Sevilla were to lose 2:1. The referee that day was none other than Alexander Millar.
Cadiz was with that win to take the first regional cup. However, its dominance was to be short-lived. Over the next twenty-three years Sevilla FC was to win the Andalusian Cup 17 times, be losing finalists in two more and take the Sevilla Cup in eleven of the next twelve years, including 10 in a row. Its run would start a month after the Andalusian Cup loss by beating Real Betis 1:0. And at Real Betis there were changes. Herbert Jones, now president, was called up by the British military to fight in a war that had left Spain almost untouched. Well into his 30s he left Seville in July 1916. He was never in any real capacity to return to the club although he did to Spain. In April 1917 with his family he spent some time in Cadiz. In 1918 he was elected, seemingly in his absence, the Vice-Secretary of the Southern Region Football Federation, with de Guzman of Huelva, president, and other posts filled by representatives of Sevilla FC, Recreativo de Sevilla, Espanol de Sevilla and Espanol de Cadiz. However, at some stage late in the conflict in 1918 he seems to have lost his life in the Middle East.
As Southern Spain’s football teams entered the 1916-17 season Real Betis would, for “bureaucratic reasons”, not be able to participate in the Andalusian Cup. Those taking part were Sevilla FC, Español de Sevilla, Recreativo de Huelva, Athlétic de Sevilla, Malagueño from Malaga and Español de Cádiz. The spread of football clubs was clearly widening. The final was played on 14th February in Seville at the Campo del Mercantil with Sevilla FC defeating Recreativo de Huelva 4:0. Noticeably neither team had a British player on the field in spite of the Sevilla FC squad still including both Thomson and Mackenzie. Then as both champions of Seville and Andalusia Sevilla FC was the Southern Spain representative in the 1916 Copa del Rey. In the quarter finals the club faced Real Madrid, losing 8:1 in the capital. On the score-sheet that day was one Santiago Bernabeu with 4 goals. However, in the return game in Seville the local team, again with no British presence, were the winners, only to lose the deciding game a few days later still in Seville with Real Madrid going on to win the Cup that year.
And the popularity of the game in terms of crowds was also increasing. Both Sevilla FC with its Campo de Mercantil and Real Betis that had been playing at the Campo de Enramadilla, were looking for new grounds. Both were to move in 1918, Sevilla FC to what is now the Paseo de la Palmera, just 600 meters from its current Ramon Sanchez-Pizjuan Stadium and Real Betis to Campo del Patronato Obrero, on Avenida Miraflores, to the north of the city, where working-class suburbs, what we would now call affordable housing, were to be built. It would be from there that it would would move the two kilometres to today's Benito Villamarin. Additionally the finances of the game were in flux. It was Real Betis, which would take the first openly obvious steps towards professionalism. In the absence of Herbert Jones Carlos Alarcon de la Lastra had taken over as president. It was he, who initiated, with the aim of winning the Andalusian Cup, the importation of outside talent; from Vigo, elsewhere in Galicia and from San Sebastian in the Basque Country. Although, no doubt, players for all clubs with revenue from spectators would pay players’ “expenses”, which, as was the pattern elsewhere in Spain and abroad, could be, shall we say, generous, those players would normally be local. At the new Real Betis they were certainly not.
Real Betis’s new recruits seemed at the beginning of the 1917-18 season to have the desired effect and to have ruffled feathers. Espanol de Sevilla was trounced 5:0 and then 8:0, when the match had to be replayed. The next opponent was Sevilla FC, with each winning their home game. A third game was scheduled for 10th March 1918 but Betis players were having to complete their military service and were not excused for the encounter. Real Betis objected, especially as the rumour circulated that the high-ranking officer making the decision had been influenced by the directors of Sevilla FC, and when their objections were dismissed decided to make a protest by fielding the club’s youth team. It was literally men against boys and the result, a 22:0 win for Sevilla, which was to have further consequences. The finals should then have been played between Sevilla FC, Recreativo de Huelva and Espanol de Cadiz. However, such were the feelings generated that there were disturbances in Huelva before the game with Sevilla. It was called off, the Southern Football Federation’s committee met and decided that the final should be between Huelva and Cadiz with Sevilla excluded but with the game to be played in Seville. Cadiz would not agree and so the trophy was awarded to Huelva without a game being played.
And it was perhaps at this point that football in Seville really changed. At Sevilla FC a number of players ceased to play, two Spaniards, the Frenchman, Laconte, in a stand against professionalism, and its last two British players, John Mackenzie, who retired and Duncan Thomson, who became a club director. Its new ground, or at least its pitch, was first played on on 21st October 1918 with a fixture against Madrid’s Union Sporting Club whilst the completed stadium was inaugurated a year later against Real Madrid. And on 24th November 1918 Real Betis’ new ground was opened with a match against Espanol de Cadiz, won by the home side, 9:1. If in 1907 a die had been cast a decade later it had hardened off. Seville's two top teams of today had consolidated..
It must have been soon after 1918 that the last Scots involvement in Seville football ended with the departure of Duncan Thomson to South America. He seems not to have returned to Spain, dying, remarried, in Scotland in Girvan in Ayrshire in 1961. Edward Farquharson Johnston seems already to have left Spain by 1911. That year he was living in Woking with his family, including his Scots wife, Mary Crombie of the Crombie coats family, who he had married in 1879 and, James, one of three sons, all born in Seville. One would die young, Edward would be killed in the Great War in 1915 and James would eventually take over the family businesses. James himself would die in 1964. His father's death would be in 1924 in The Boltons in Chelsea in London. The fates of Hugh McColl and Gilbert Pollack Reid are also known. As for John Mackenzie,, Robert Duncan Thompson and even Alex Millar, there are no records; at least not yet.