Found and Lost
- A Land of Opportunity
The Rise
It is fact that between 1911 and 1930 at least one hundred and two Scottish-born players registered for the first time with American professional clubs. They represented almost exactly half of all their two hundred and two players from abroad, including England and Ireland. Ten or so would return to play, mainly in Scotland but also in the rest of Britain. A few would become Scottish internationals. Most would remain, become permanent immigrants and see out the rest of their lives on the other side of the Atlantic.
Archie Stark was one,
Robert Millar too,
Bart McGhee,
Robert Morrison and others.
The trans-Atlantic flow of footballers playing for money by whatever means, shamateur, semi-professional or fully professional, was at first a trickle; perhaps just six before the outbreak of the First World War and six more in the war years. However, numbers started to grow in 1920, peaking in 1924, when in that year there were 24 alone. In fact, just over half of all the Scottish players to find work in the USA in the period did so in 1922 and the two subsequent years; 1922 being the year, in which a wage cap was imposed by Scottish clubs first impacted, with Scotland and the other Home Nations having resigned in 1920 from a FIFA and therefore no transfer fees enforceable between FIFA, including the USA, and non-FIFA countries.
During World War One new recruits included Thomas Murray, crossing the Atlantic just before the outbreak of hostilities and joining
Bethlehem Steel in 1914, Tommy Stark joining his brother, Archie, at Kearny Scots that same year, Peter Sweeney from Beith joining Badcock and Wilcox in 1916 and Bart McGhee New York Shipbuilding’s works team in 1917. McGhee was the son of James McGhee, born in Ayrshire, who, as well as representing his country, possibly as one the two first Catholics to do so, and almost unbelievably, again as a Catholic, both played for Hibernian and briefly managed Hearts; hence his son’s Edinburgh birth. James McGhee had by 1910 migrated to the USA after as manager being forced out at Hearts following an argument with star-player and international, Bobby Walker. He had seemingly gone to work in the emerging American leagues, when Bart was 11 years old. Bart had followed him a little later in 1912 with his mother, his footballing brother, Jimmy, and much of his football education in place yet before he or Jimmy could prove themselves in the Scottish Leagues or even at junior level.
Before the war, however, the most important arrival had been, or rather would prove to be said Robert Millar. He had been born in Paisley in 1889 and from 1909-11 played for his home town club, St. Mirren, at inside left, just as Brazil’s
Archie Mclean at the same time played for local rivals, Johnstone. Millar must have been a talented player, if something of a short-fused, wild boy, and not just in his youth. Even at the age of 23 his temper may well have accounted in 1912 for his move across the Atlantic initially to Disston in Pennsylvania. There may also have been another factor. In spite of his Protestant name Millar was a Catholic and being a Catholic and not playing for Celtic or Hibernian may have been becoming less easy. In America there were no such problems.
However, he would not be at Disston too long. The following season he was playing for the Brooklyn Field Club in New York before he was on the move once more, but not before in the quarter-finals of the American Cup, whilst playing for his new club against his old club he was involved in a fight with an opposition fan a la Cantona, which degenerated into a brawl between fans and players of both teams. Disston was to win the game only to lose in the final to local rivals, Bethlehem Steel. However, Millar was to have compensation, and three times over. Brooklyn would win not just the league title but also the first National Challenge Cup, also called the Lamar Hunt Cup, he scoring the decisive goal. And then he was to be transferred; to Bethlehem Steel.
In the 1914-15-season his purple patch was to continue. For Bethlehem he set a record of fifty-nine goals in thirty-three league and cup games, like Stark a decade later a better ratio even than Messi. And Bethlehem won the National Challenge Cup, 3:1, with Millar on the score-sheet.
However, clearly a free agent in a New World footballing free-for-all Millar was again on the move. He signed for Babcock and Wilcox, half way through the 1915-16-season, there playing alongside
Archie Stark. It was a slightly strange decision, presumably made for financial or disciplinary and not pure footballing reasons. True, Bethlehem Steel remained only in the Pennsylvania League, but they were the coming force. The “local” league would just be for another year before the club joined the top North American Football League and in the next four seasons the “Steel” would win the American Cup every year and the National Challenge Cup in three years of four. Meanwhile Millar seemingly spent a peripheral season and a half on loan and freelancing with Philadelphia Hibernian and Allentown in Pennsylvania, New York Clan Macdonald and St. George also in New York, before a season in Missouri, an island of soccer enthusiasm in the Mid-West.
It was only in 1918 and already 29 years old that he returned for seven months to Bethlehem Steel. But he played just five games, scoring a single goal. It would have seemed to most people that a career might be over, when from 1919 to 1921, Robert Millar was once again moving from club to club and league to league – Robins Dry Dock in Brooklyn, where he is said to have had “significant disagreements with his team mates”, Kearny Erie in the NAFBL, Paisley’s own J & P Coats in
Pawtucket
and Tebo Yacht Basin, owned by the same company as Robins Dry Dock – but he was clearly resilient and still effective. Robins Dry Dock won the American Cup in both 1920, beating Bethlehem Steel, with Millar and again the following year without him. It was a campaign, in which Millar however still made a mark. Whilst playing for New Jersey's Kearny Erie against Robins he received a two month suspension for, during half-time, hitting a former Robins’s teammate. He was Neil Clarke, a fellow Scot, a former Celtic player, who had first arrived in the USA in 1913 and the reason for the fight; perhaps a continuation of “significant disagreements with his (Robin) team mates”.
Now well into his thirties Millar had a steadier season in 1921-22, with ten goals in twenty-one games in the new American Soccer League for J & P Coats once more, then a year of drift with Fall River Marksmen, from where he was released after just six games, and the New York Field Club as, aged 33, he began on the face of it to drop out of the top flight. However, he was preparing himself.
After almost two seasons of Indian Summer with yet another club, New York Giants, playing forty-two games, scoring eleven times and where at the age of 36 he also played twice for the United States, Millar turned to player-coaching. Both Millar’s international caps would be in 1925 and against Canada. The USA lost the first game 1:0 away but was to win the second, the home-return, 6:1. At half-time it was 1:1 but Millar was the provider of the second goal, just after the break scored by none other than fellow Scot Archie Stark, one of five he scored that day, in a game that had yet another Scot, Newmiln's David Gould, running one of the lines.
After such an international introduction and rapid finale it was really at his next club that Millar was to begin to earn his coaching stripes, indeed his football management reputation. From that same year, 1925, at Indiana Flooring, a New York team in spite of its name, he would not only play, scoring twenty-nine goals in fifty seven matches, but also assembled a squad that would include not just Bart McGhee but also fellow Scot,
Jimmy Gallagher, both of whom he would get to know, to trust and in time call upn again in a different context.
Yet it would not be entirely straight-forward. With Bob Millar it never was. In 1927 Indiana Flooring was sold and renamed the New York Nationals. Millar, however, remained as player-coach. That is until the United States Football Association, in what have been called the 1928 Soccer Wars, declared as “outlawed” the American Soccer League, of which the Nationals was a member. Millar immediately resigned ‘on principle’ and moved as a player to his final club, the New York Giants, whilst coaching the New York Skeeters.
The "Soccer Wars" had been triggered by a number of factors. It was a complicated situation brought on in essence by the Scottish Football Association's agreement to a wage cap on players in Scotland and also its decision to leave FIFA. It meant, with the USFA a member of FIFA, there was no agreement on transfer fees for the Scots players crossing the Atlantic. The SFA, however, through its membership of the International Football Association Board, was still able to put pressure on FIFA as a fellow member to do something about it. That it did through pressure on USFA. It at first stood its ground then caved in and in term agreed to put pressure on the main user of the imported talent, the American Soccer League. It did so in part by insisting that all ASL teams take part in its National Challenge Cup. They could opt out if they wanted. The ASL as an organisation demurred but three of its clubs defied it. They were the holders, Bethlehem Steel, that needed the revenue it brought, and the Giants and the Skeeters, precisely the two teams, for which Millar was now pointedly working.
Millar’s willingness to tow the USFA line obviously held him in good stead. Indeed it might have been done expressly. In 1928 he was appointed the coach of the United States national team, preparing it and taking it in 1930 in Uruguay to the semi-final of the first ever World Cup; with both McGhee and Gallagher in his team that included five and half Scots in all. However, the sadness was, in fact the factor that could have meant a final for Millar's team, was that one more Scot, "soccer" best forward, was not there. He was, of course, Archie Stark.
The Fall
After the Great War it had taken football in Europe and the USA a couple of seasons of settling in before frustrations rose to the surface; on both sides of the pond. In America there was a dearth of talent of the quality expected by often immigrant and therefore knowledgeable, potential spectators. In Scotland, for young, working-class men returning from the fighting football seemed as good a way as a generation or so earlier of earning or even simply supplementing a living, remembering that at the time, just as it still is today except at the elite clubs, Scottish football was largely semi-professional.
That was until the Scottish Football Association in 1921 voted in the wage-cap. It was a measure designed to protect its own members’ interests, those members being the clubs, without thought for the raw materials, the talent on the field, on which they depended. The economics of working-class life and working-class football in Scotland after the First World War were harsh. For many men, young and old, there was little steady work, too often no work at all, and now football with its wage-cap would no longer pay enough either. It left many players struggling, both those coming towards the ends of their careers and looking for a final pay-day, those having learned to play before the war but perhaps not having a game, a style that adapted well to the significant change of rules in 1912 and young talent, for which opportunities were limited by experienced, former professionals returning from the War.
In days past, twenty years and even thirty-five years earlier, the players affected, particularly the young talent, might have reacted by moving to England. Now there was an alternative. The more ambitious of the largely shamateur, semi-professional clubs in the United States, much less badly hit by the war than their European counterparts, wanted, whilst still shamateur, to turn fully professional and with many subsidised works’ teams were able and willing to pay well for ready-made skill. In fact they were prepared to pay two or even three times what a player might expect in the old country and with a Scots-born boy, Archie Stark, by 1921 already emerging as a star, on the move from the comfort zone of playing for teams around home-town
Kearny, Scottish talent was especially sought after. For a brief few years it made more sense for it to head west to America and not south to England. There was demand. The money was good. Fed by the Diasporan grapevine it was a ‘no-brainer’.
In moving away from his New Jersey base in 1921 Archie Stark’s new team was the New York Field Club. It played in the newly-formed American Soccer League as its predecessor the NAFBL, the National Association Football League, folded for good. He would remain with them for three years, scoring forty-six goals in seventy games from right-wing, and clearly improving as he matured. In his last season, 1923-24, he scored twenty-one in twenty-five. However, with New York Field Club in financial trouble, Stark was transferred in 1924 still within the same league to the deep-pocketed Bethlehem Steel.
At “Steel” he was surrounded by talent, much of it Scottish. 1922, setting the standard, had already seen six Scots arrive – Carnihan, Goldie, Granger, Maxwell, McNiven and Rattray, two from Dumbarton, two from Partick Thistle and one each from Clydebank and Clyde. Daniel McNiven would be league top scorer that season nevertheless Bethlehem would not take the title. It would go to J & P Coats.
In 1923 there were four more arrivals, one from Dundee, another from Morton and the two young Renton-born brothers, Wattie Jackson, a centre-forward, who had already scored twenty-nine goals in three seasons and seventy-four games for Kilmarnock, and younger brother, right winger, 18 year-old,
Alex Jackson. Wattie would replace David McNiven and score thirteen goals in twenty-three games. Alex would play five games more and score fourteen. Both would stay a season, in which Bethlehem would again be title-less, before returning to Scotland and somewhat duplicitously joining Aberdeen. It would be Alex that Archie Stark would be brought in to replace. It would, as he converted to centre-forward, be Wattie, whose shoes he actually filled. It would be Wattie too, after Pittodrie, who would return to play for Bethlehem for a season in 1927, but only thirteen games, when Stark was injured. Little brother Alex, however, from Aberdeen would go on to play one hundred and seventy-nine times for Huddersfield Town, sixty-five times for Chelsea and seventeen for Scotland before finishing his career in France as professional football began there in the 1930s. His would be a career of great highs, perhaps Scotland's greatest talent in an era, when there were several, some lows and in the end tragedy. He was to die in 1946, in a road accident, whilst serving in the British Army in Egypt.
In 1924, as well as Stark with his record haul, sixty-seven goals in forty-two games including eight hat-tricks, at Bethlehem Steel there were just two new Scots. One, George Forrest from Alloa and Hearts via Canada and seven Canadian caps, who would return to play in Britain for York, Peterhead, for fellow-Scot Bob Jack at Plymouth and at Mansfield. The other,Johnny Rollo, came from St. Johnstone. But even with Stark Bethlehem again failed to take the silverware, as it also would in 1925. It was only in 1926 that the club would take its first title, having been runner-up in 1922-23, 1923-24 and 1924-25, on each occasion beaten by great rivals and almost a name from the past, the Fall River Marksmen.
Fall River was to re-take the title in 1927. Bethlehem Steel responded. In 1928 Billy Watson and 22 year-old Alex Massie were recruited, both Scots born, both half-backs, but now both from English clubs, the former from Coventry and Massie from Bury. Watson would soon move on after just three games but play out his days in America. Massie would stay two years, play thirty-two times and score twelve goals. Then in 1930 via Ireland he would return home, join Hearts for five years, play six games for the Scottish League, move to Aston Villa for another four years, win eighteen Scottish caps in all between 1932 and 1938, including three against England, two wins and a loss, and also captain his country.
However, even as Massie arrived the problems for football in American came all at once and the truth is that they were to a great extent caused indirectly by the foreign influx and Bethlehem Steel. Such had been the number of players crossing the Atlantic that it
“led to a significant amount of resentment in Europe and threats of sanctions from FIFA, including the possible expulsion of the USFA (the US Football Association).”
Translated that means that through the International Football Association Board Scotland or England directly, having re-joined FIFA in 1924, or both had complained. They had grounds, at least in their own minds, even if the problems they faced were largely of their own making. In terms of talent in 1922 at least seven of the fourteen top scorers in the American Soccer League were Scots-born. In 1923 it was ten of twenty, in 1925 23 of thirty and in 1927 at least twenty one of thirty-four, over half. Across the Atlantic Scots were increasingly everywhere and the exodus might have been seen by the SFA to be out-of-control. There were also financial implications. Although from 1924 to 1928 England was a member of FIFA, Scotland was not so transfer fees had to be paid by American clubs for players registered with English clubs, no matter what their nationality, whereas no fees were due on players registered north of the border.
The complaints, the pressure seemed to work. At the 1927 FIFA conference,
“the USFA and the other national associations came to an agreement regarding player transfers which defused the situation.”
Again translated that means the Scottish association, once more looking after its clubs interests, forced the USFA to agree that its members would pay transfer fees, never mind, if it restricted the players’ freedom of movement. The American Soccer League clubs, with players well-paid, playing standards now high and good crowds, worked out what was going on. They realised it was European-based FIFA wanting through their association to control their American league. It became more obvious still when FIFA, using the USFA as its surrogate, demanded that all American Soccer League teams enter the USFA’s National Challenge Cup, the Lamar Hunt Cup. It was something even the USFA had not been able to insist on. As before the American Soccer League refused to agree to the demand but three clubs, most prominently Bethlehem Steel, decided to enter anyway. The ASL suspended the three after half a dozen or so games of the 1928-29-season and that suspension was then used as an excuse by the USFA and FIFA to “outlaw” it.
There followed a period of standoff. The American Soccer League went to law and was backed by the US Federal Court. It was restraint of trade; foreign restraint of trade. Nevertheless, the stand-off continued, rival leagues were organised and Bethlehem Steel ploughed its own path outside the ASL. It was not until 1929 that there was some acceptance of realities by both sides. The American Soccer League stepped back and agreed to FIFA control. The Atlantic Coast League was then created to replace it before, as a gesture of conciliation, footballing gesture-politics, almost immediately changing its name back to the.....American Soccer League.
Business seemed to be resumed. Fall River took the 1929 league title, as it also did in 1930. The club would also to be winners of the Lamar Hunt Cup in 1930 and 1931, however, none of the parties realised at the time what damage had already been done in terms of income and image. Without continuity of revenue the finances of all the clubs had been severely affected and, as the economic situation deteriorated following the 1929 Great Crash, the once free-spending Bethlehem Steel folded at the end of the 1930 season after its owners’ withdrawal of support. After two hundred and twenty-one appearances and a remarkable two hundred and forty goals an unemployed Archie Stark then first joined Fall River and was almost stranded in Budapest on a European tour, when even his new club almost ran out of money. He had quickly to move on once more, this time closer to home to Newark Americans. Other players also had no option but to move. Some Scots, like Massie, returned home. Others, like Billy Watson, struggled on as clubs drew increasingly on other nationalities, from Scandinavia and Central Europe, and home-grown talent, both cheaper. In 1930 just fifteen of the thirty-five top-scorers were Scots.
However, in the longer run it made little difference as leagues continued to contract. The American Soccer League began 1930 with eleven clubs and finished with nine. In 1931 and 1932 it was seven strong before in 1933 in the face of the Great Depression, it collapsed altogether. In five years it had gone from being the second-best-attended, professional, sports league in America to oblivion. But worst still was that those who had attended the games as paying customers now saw the game of football, of soccer, as one not just played by foreigners but also controlled by foreigners in the form of FIFA. In that the paying public was mistaken. The real damage had been done behind FIFA's skirts by the FA and, above all, the SFA. Nevertheless that same public reacted by going elsewhere, to American grid-iron football or not going at all, leaving a once-flourishing, professional spectator sport it had taken five decades to build to be for the next half-century a struggling, amateur, ethnic preserve.