- and the real birth of Argentine football
Legend has it that in Buenos Aires in 1886 Alexander Watson Hutton, having opened his English High School a year earlier, recruited William Waters, the son of his ex-landlady in Edinburgh, to teach sports to the pupils. Waters is said to have brought with him a bag full of footballs and they began to roll. Games were organised between the English-speaking colleges. A revived Buenos Aires F.C. (BA F.C.) is also reported in 1887 as playing a match to association football rules against the Southern Railway. The first BA F.C. had twenty years earlier played in the Argentine capital a football game more akin to rugby.
However, association football in the Argentine capital seems from 1887 to have remained a game mainly for school-boys until 21st February 1891, when seemingly prompted not yet by footballing pupils becoming ex-pupils but immigrant working men simply wanting to indulge their sporting passion, the Argentine Association Football League was founded. And the impulse for it seems to have come neither from Waters nor indeed Watson Hutton
but another Scot, Alexander Lamont, supported by yet another or at least the son of Scottish parents, Arnot Leslie.
Alex Lamont by 1891 had been appointed, some say, teacher, others say, head-teacher, of St. Andrew’s School, Watson Hutton’s old employers. The school itself describes him as school secretary, one perhaps seconded from Ferrocarril Sud, the Southern Railway, for which he is also said to have worked as a clerk. Certainly an A. Lamont can be seen leaving Liverpool for Buenos Aires in 1890, on what was normally a four-year contract, and the school was going through a period of reorganisation, if not crisis. It had appointed a financial controller, who would step down in in 1891. Lamont, a man who was both an organiser and organised, seems to have filled the void.
The new league consisted of five teams – the clearly Scots-based, Old Caledonians, said to be the works team of Bautaume and Pearson, the company laying the Buenos Aires sewage system, the Buenos Aires to Rosario Railway, presumably the Buenos Aires end only since the city of Rosario is 200 lies to the north of the Argentine capital, Belgrano FC from the Belgrano English Club, the resurgent Buenos Aires Football Club and St. Andrews itself, but probably not the school but centred around its founding, Scots Presbyterian church of the same name. Lamont was league secretary, F.L. Wooley, from the railway company, president, with the rest of the committee, three more Scots, W.H. McIntosh also of St. Andrew's, H.G. Carr or Caird and T. MacEwan, Old Caledonians, and finally F. Archer, again from the Buenos Aires to Rosario Railway, four Scots, two English. None came from Watson Hutton’s English High School. It would initially have a different input.
(The inestimable Andy Mitchell has recently turned his laser like attention to both Frank Wooley and Alex Lamont with some very interesting, a conclusion and a suggestion.
In the case of the former he has discovered that Wooley had both footballing form and a related past and future. Frank Wooley was born in 1855 in Hackney, London, the son of a wine merchant. He was educated at Forest School, Walthamstow, presumably between about 1865 and 1873, the same Forest School that in 1864 had been one of the nine founding members of England's Football Association. And presumably at school having picked up the game but pointedly not the ball during the 1870s and into the 1880s he went on to play for Old Foresters and Upton Park of the Boleyn Ground but not strictly the fore-runner of West Ham. Although aged thirty-five in 1891 he had been a player. And Andy also points out that Wooley on his death was not working for the railways at all but, albeit six thousand miles away, like his father in the wine trade as a merchant, which leaves the possibility that the Argentine Malbec you now enjoy may be down to him. However, more importantly still in terms of Argentine football is that Frank Wooley died in 1892. The Argentine Football Association a year after its formation lost its President, probably stuttered as a result and Alex Lamont, Association Secretary, had to look for an alternative and found him in Alex Watson Hutton.
And in the case of the latter, Lamont himself, Andy has also done his stuff. He has taken what I had actually looked at and passed over as lacking substantiation and found out more, enough to warrant, after
In Search of Alex Lamont -First Try an In Search of Alex Lamont - a Second Try.)
Each team played the others twice during the season. We know the details of one game, between the Buenos Aires Football Club and St. Andrews. The teams, set up as 2:3:5, were for the former,
Millar, Robert Anderson and Morton, Wool(l)ey, presumably F. Woolley, Macadam, and Taylor; H. Anderson and Rowland or Rolland, Disbrowe, Guy and Crowe.
whilst St. Andrews consisted of:
Norwood, G. A. Waters, not William Waters but another, and Alexander Buchanan; F. Francis, H. Barnes and Shaw; Lamont, Alex himself, Charles Douglas Moffat,J. Buchanan, John Caldwell, and E. Morgan.
Scottish names figure in both teams, some Scots-born like John Caldwell, who just two years earlier in hometown Glasgow had been playing full-back at the very top level for Partick and Cowlairs, and again the sons of Scots emigrants to Argentina. We also know when the game was played and where; on 12th July at the Flores Polo Club, the ground of the Buenos Aires Football Club. It is reported that Anderson of Buenos Aires F.C. scored the first goal in the 15th minute and that J. Buchanan then scored a hat-trick for St. Andrew’s, the eventual winners. The referee was a Mr. T. Bruce of the English High School. In that first season English High did not compete but provided many of the officials, including not just Mr. Bruce but also Watson Hutton himself.
We also know the teams for the final game of the season, between St. Andrews and Old Caledonians, which ended in the 3:3 draw. St. Andrews team was more or less as earlier. Old Caledonians’ team was,
Edmonds; Gifford, Scott; Angus, Phillips, Smith; Cord(s)ner, White, Sutherland, Wilson and Riggs.
The scorers were two from Caldwell, now playing as a forward, Moffat, White, Sutherland and Riggs with “Jack” Sutherland regarded as the season’s star. That game meant that St. Andrew’s and Old Caledonians remained on equal points. It was a result that exactly mirrored that at the end of the first season of the Scottish League a few months earlier, Dumbarton and Rangers sharing top spot. Indeed, given the number of Scots involved in Argentina it may well have been the foundation of the Scottish League that inspired the league there. The impasse in Scotland had been settled by a play-off, Dumbarton awarded the title. So in Buenos Aires on 13th September 1891 a play-off also took place, once more at the Flores Polo Club. The result was 3:1. Charles Douglas Moffat scored a hat-trick and Wilson a consolation goal as St. Andrews became Argentina’s or at least Buenos Aires's first football champion.
It would also be Charles Douglas Moffat who would provide the best description of those first days in the 1890s of competitive football in his adopted country. He would retire from the game in 1901 at the age of 31 and was typical of the type of player involved in the early days. Born in London in 1870, the son of Alexander Moffat, an Ulster-Scot, and arriving in Buenos Aires aged 19 he worked for a number of Argentine companies and played for a number of teams as they came and went. In 1934 he was asked to recall in an interview in the newspaper, El Grafico, his part in the beginnings of Argentine football in 1891. What he said was illuminating.
“The alma mater of the League was Alec Lamont, who was employed by the Southern Railway (Ferrocarril Sud) and also a player for St. Andrew’s. Also involved were the Scots of Old Caledonians, almost all workers involved in the installation of the Buenos Aires sewerage system, those employed in the workshops of the Buenos Aires to Rosario Railway (FCBA to Rosario), who came from Campana (North of BA) to play, and the St. Lawrence team, composed, like St. Andrew’s of those employed there.”
Two things stand out from what Douglas Moffat is reported as saying. Firstly, he mentions St. Lawrence and not by name Belgrano FC. However, St. Lawrence was the Anglican church in Belgrano. The second is he personally regarded Alec Lamont as the “soul” at least of the first league, if not of early Argentine football.
However, the first Argentine Football League would not be repeated the following year. Games were played but as friendlies. It was not until February 1893 that it was resurrected with the same title, the Argentine Football Association, a mix of some of the same players as before but also new ones reflecting the games growing presence. It is this second entity that continues to this day. As for Alex Lamont, that he continued to be heavily involved is also clear, reinforced by the Buenos Aires local government, which confirms the composition of the Board of the second, reformed league in 1993 as:
"President - Alexander Watson Hutton; Vice-President: B. Guy (Buenos Aires FC); Treasurer: F. Webb; Secretary: A. Lamont (originally St. Andrew’s); Committee: F. Singleton, W. Reynolds, E. Morgan (also originally St. Andrew’s), G. Bridges, W. Rudd and B. Syers."
It was a curious committee, clearly in part a continuation of its predecessor but also novel. Lamont in remaining Secretary provided the only direct continuity but, despite St. Andrew’s no longer being in the League, he and one of its former player were still on the Board. There is perhaps a reason.
The crisis faced by St. Andrew’s School was that it had found itself in the way of an Argentine government plan to redevelop part of central Buenos Aires. It was forced to move and was in the process of building new premises. In the meantime its roll was reduced and much of its educational, and therefore footballing, activity seems to have transferred to Lomas de Zamora in the city's southern suburbs, where at least one of the St. Andrew's team lived. In the new league its club provided one of the teams. In fact, in 1893 of the 1891-teams only the Buenos Aires to Rosario Railway remained. Old Caledonians had been disbanded, presumably once the sewerage-works were completed, Belgrano too, only to re-emerge two years later. Not just Lomas but Watson Hutton’s English High came in, with Watson Hutton sometimes playing alongside what were mostly boys as well for scratch teams such as Buenos Aires Temperance. They were joined by Quilmes Rovers, founded in the southern BA suburb of the same name close to Lomas and around the Buenos Aires Great Southern Railway, and to which a number of the Old Caledonian and St. Andrew’s team members, including Douglas Moffat, Morgan and Lamont had transferred their playing loyalties. And lastly there was the newly formed and also British Flores Athletic Club, perhaps based on the old Buenos Aires Football Club.
It seemed with Lamont as Secretary, doing all the organisational work and doing it exceptionally well, and now with Watson Hutton as president and figurehead the Argentine Football Association had been put on a firmer footing. Its league that year would be won by the new-comer, Lomas Athletic. Yet, still there was some instability. Despite Watson-Hutton remaining as President the following season in 1894 English High dropped out of the league once more, as did the Buenos Aires to Rosario Railway team and Quilmes. However, perhaps again due to Alex Lamont, as a last flourish as he seemed to cease playing and, work done at the school, St. Andrew’s had re-joined, Lobos and Retiro came in for the first time as did, for a season only, Rosario Athletic; Rosario Cricket Club as was.
Lomas was to win the league once more in 1894 and again in 1895, when effectively their ‘B’ team, Lomas Academy was runner-up in what otherwise seemed something of a game of musical chairs. The St. Andrew’s team had now been officially disbanded, perhaps because Lamont was gone. In April 1894 he had announced that he was not only stepping down as Secretary but was leaving Argentina altogether for Brazil and Rio de Janeiro. However, English High had once more replaced St. Andrew's and was joined once again by Quilmes Rovers, with Lobos dropping out. And 1896 would also see changes. Watson Hutton would step down from the league presidency, replaced by Alfred Boyd, Alfred Black Pringle Boyd, who would stay in place for two years. Boyd was the Buenos Aires-born, thirty-two year-old son of Liverpool-born, Presbyterian father, a merchant in Argentina and Uruguay, and a mother born in Buenos Aires. However, his paternal grandparents were both Scots-born, he, Thomas, in Greenock and she, Mary Pringle, in Glasgow. At the AFL Scot living in the Diaspora had been replaced by Diasporan Scot.
With Watson Hutton resignation English High once again dropped out, its players moving to other teams. It would reemerge four years later. Belgrano joined, having absorbed the Buenos Aires and Rosario Railway in a league won this time not by Lomas but by maturing Lomas Academy. However, Lomas would return to the top spot in the two following years to 1898. The Lomas team in 1897 had been captained by
James Oswald Anderson. Once more the son of a Scot he would go on to be Argentina's first international captain. And throughout the manager of the Lomas teams from 1893 to 1898, never losing a championship, was none other than Arnot Leslie. Close friend of Alex Lamont, he was said to have been a player with Old Caledonians, was the oldest brother of
William and George Leslie. Mainstays of Lomas and Lomas Academy under him and all three sons of Arnot Leslie Snr, a plumber from the Gorbals, who had moved to Buenos Aires in the 1860s. they had returned from school in Scotland in early 1893, were noted for their Scottish, passing style and would both also be future Argentine internationals.
Alex Lamont remain in Rio de Janeiro until at least 1901. That year he refereed two games between Rio and Sao Paulo XIs, travelling with the Rio team to Sao Paulo for the matches. He might have briefly returned to Buenos Aires in 1896. An A. Lamont can be seen arriving from Rio. In 1899 Lomas could finish only third in the league and the team would begin would break up. It was no coincidence. In 1898, although his brothers had remained in Argentina, Arnot Leslie Jnr travelled to Scotland with his mother and father, as the Arnot Snr retired to Eastwood in Glasgow. That same year the number of teams involved in the championship had fallen from seven to four. There was a possibility that the following year it might even have been only three and in reality non-viable. The situation was perilous and it was perhaps at this moment, in spite of having been league president for three seasons, that Alex Watson Hutton made his made his real and vital contribution to the Argentine game. By bringing his English High School back into the league in 1900 and then supporting a change of name to
Alumni, the team that for the next decade would be Buenos Aires's footballing flag-bearer, he may well have saved not just the league itself, effectively Alex Lamont's initial hard-work, but Argentinian football for posterity.