When twice a nascent country in the form of its capital had to fight off military invasion, on the first occasion by privateering mercantile-capitalism and one the second by a state itself and from the same source, it can warp perception. Moreover, if it is known that a third, still bigger and better attempt is about to be made, one which events elsewhere disrupt to the point of cancellation, then that perception can be twisted still further and remain so, thus far for more than two centuries. Facts are that with the Viceroyalty of the River Plate, now Argentina and Uruguay, officially then part of Spain's Empire, albeit one crumbling under pressures, in June 1805 a detachment of 1,660 soldiers arrived by sea to occupy Buenos Aires, then with a population of about 45,000. The invaders had actually come from the Cape of Good Hope, taken in similar fashion the previous January, and they stayed for forty-six days before being countered and pushed out by about one thousand trained and semi-trained local, criollo forces and perhaps a further fifteen hundred volunteers. 

But, of course, the original source of the invasion force was not South Africa but Britain and the British were back again the following year. This time they attacked across the River Plate first, in February taking Montevideo with now an army of 6,000 against perhaps 5,000 locals. The attackers were under the command of the American-born son of a planted-Irish family of Scottish origin, Lieutenant-General Sir Samuel Auchtermuchty, before the bulk were with reinforcements then taken by Lieutenant-General John Whitlocke on to the main prize. Whitlocke with between 9,000 and 12,000 men arrived in Buenos Aires at the beginning of July 1807. Having on landing overwhelmed initial resistance the city was entered but he, they failed to match the 7-8,000 locals in street-fighting, suffering 1,000 casualties and a further 1,800 troops taken prisoner, so 2,800. It was in contrast to some 600 casualties amongst defenders and prompted the almost unbelievable. The British sued for peace, it was arranged by the middle of August and was followed by withdrawal not just from what is now Argentinian but also Uruguayan territory. 

However, that might not have been the end of the matter but for Napoleon, the war against whom was being pursued in Europe. Although Whitelocke was court-martialled on his return to Britain, it is said that a third force bound for the Viceroyalty was being gathered in Ireland until in 1808 the French Emperor displaced the Spanish king and placed his brother on the throne in Madrid. To that the British response was the divert all available forces to assemble an army to invade the Iberian Peninsula. It, under the Duke of Wellington, landed in Portugal on 8th August 1808, dug in and included the troops that had been bound once more for South America. The window for attack was lost. There were more important fish to fry, whilst the River Plate colonies first revolted in 1810 against Spain and, as the Napoleonic Wars in Europe were only just coming to an end, in 1816 declared full independence.

It meant that amongst Argentinian of Spanish or criollo origin in particular the episodes have left an undying distrust or more strongly a hatred of what they saw and still see as an openly rapacious, colonising British. It was in part a cause of the Falklands or Malvinas Conflict depending on what side of the fence you choose to sit, rather than more sensibly firmly on it. But the waters are muddied by two things. The first is that it said some 1,200 of the British troops wounded and/or captured in the second invasion of Buenos Aires deserted, remained and integrated. They became "criollos". From the 71st Regiment of Foot, the "Highland" Regiment of Foot, the Scottish "Highland" Regiment of Foot, there were said to have been 170 alone. The second is the inability of the Spanish-speaker properly to distinguish between British and English. All natives of Britain, indeed Britain and Ireland, are seen as English unless and until it is pointed out that we are not. We are also Scots, Welsh and Irish, at which point a penny drops and forgiveness mostly flows . 

But it has not been the case with River Plate football. By some, particularly Argentinians of Latin origin, its first two decades have almost been dismissed, even quasi-eradicated. The game in their country begin with the rise of "criollo" teams after 1912, whereas the first Argentine football championship took place in 1891, the second in 1893. The reason for dismissal is because that and almost twenty subsequent championships are seen as "Ingles", English. That is despite the facts. That first league was won by St. Andrews, an off-shoot from Buenos Aires still existing Scottish Presbyterian church, defeating Old Caledonians, with the name speaking for itself. The three founders of that league and the one that followed and continues to this day were Scots, Alexander Lamont, Arnot Leslie and Alexander Watson Hutton in that order. And of the first team officially to represent Argentina, although all eleven should have been Argentinian-born the ten that were included two with Irish parents, two with English, fully six with Scots parents and/or grandparents with the only exception, Jose Laforia, the goalkeeper, having been born in Spain and nicknamed "The Basque".

The team itself included Jose Laforia, "The Basque", two Eduardos, Edwards, Duggan and Morgan, two Buchanans, Walter and Carlos, Charles, William Leslie, brother of Arnot, two related Browns, Carlos Dickinson and two Juans, Johns, Moore, the captain, and Anderson. The game took place on 20th July 1902 in Uruguay in Montevideo and the Argentine won 0-6. The line-up was Laforia in goal, full-backs probably Leslie and Walter Buchanan, half-backs Duggan, Carlos Buchanan and Ernesto Brown, the forwards Morgan, Moore, Anderson, Dickinson and Jorge Brown. They were drawn from five teams, were all top-flight players but not necessarily the best in all positions. There was a number of others at those and other clubs not born in Argentina and therefore not included.   

Of those involved probably the ones with the deepest roots in the country were the two Browns brothers. The elder and the one, who would become marginally more famous one was Jorge Gibson. He had been born in a small town to the south of Buenos Aires in 1880 so was twenty-two at the time. His sibling, Ernesto Alejandro, was five years younger so just seventeen. They were sons of James Brown Jnr and equally Diasporan Eliza Gibson, also Argentine-born. But they were also grandsons of James Brown Snr and Mary Hope, both of whom had in 1825 sailed from Leith in a party of 220, most of whom were agricultural labourers from the Scottish Borders, some in couples, married or otherwise, and all at home seen as superfluous to requirement. In other words they were cleared, lent not given the money to pay for the passage and sent on their way to the other side of the World and a farming project cum colony in Monte Grande by Chascomus to the south of Buenos Aires on land bought by Scots investors. The project failed. The colonists remained with nowhere else to go and integrated but they continued to practice Presbyterianism and maintain roots and, it seems, routes back to the Old Country. They through education included football. Seven of the Brown brothers would play plus a cousin. Six of the eight would represent Argentina over the next decade and half. The last of the same footballing dynasty at least so far would be the late Jose Luis Brown, who played for the Albiceleste throughout the 1986 World Cup, including the Final, where from full-back he scored the first goal in the 3-2 victory.   

And the other team members had family stories that, whilst they did not go back so far, also tell tales of betterment through emigration. Eduardo Duggan, Edward Patrick Duggan, who would become an engineer. He had been born in Buenos Aires in 1881 so was just twenty-one. His father was Tomas, Thomas, Duggan from Ballymahon, in Co. Longford in Northern Ireland, in the New World one of three wool-broking brothers. Moreover, his mother, Marcela Casey O'Neill, although born in Lobos, a country-town west of the Argentine capital, in a region to which there seems to have been considerable Catholic Irish settlement, had a father from West Meath and mother from Wicklow. Incidentally Lobos is also the birthplace of Juan Peron. Then, continuing the Irish theme Juan Moore, John Joseph Moore, born in 1871/2, so aged thirty, and in Lobos once more, had a father, John, from the United States but with both his parents Irish-born, and a mother, Martha Gahan, again of Irish-origin on both sides and from a family that was one of earliest to arrive in the province as sheep-farmers. In fact her mother and Duggan's grandmother had grown up in the same small Argentinian town of Navarro, thirty miles to the north and another of the Irish-enclave towns.

With regards to those of English origin Edward Morgan probably had been born in 1877 in Buenos Aires, so was twenty-five, but his father, Charles, despite his Welsh name was from London and there seems to be no record of his mother. Charles Morgan, a journalist, is shown in the 1895 Argentine census as widowed. Which leaves Carlos E. Dickinson as the other "Englishman". Charles Edgar Dickinson has been born in Buenos Aires once more in 1881 so was twenty-one.  He would die in the city too, in 1955 aged seventy-three but the family had its roots in another port-city, Liverpool. In fact Charles seems even to have been christened on the Mersey, not the Plate. His father was George Clarke Dickinson, who can be seen in the city as a young man, in 1866 to have married a local girl in Salto on the Uruguayan bank of the Parana River that enters the sea as the Plate and to have remarried in Buenos Aires in 1879 to another Uruguayan, Eleanor Lowry, obviously of British origin and Charles's mother.             

So finally to the Scots. One, Juan Anderson, probably the team captain, although Juan Moore is also named as such, I have already covered in more detail in the piece, "First Captain Albiceleste". But here is the essence.  He was born again in Buenos Aires and in 1872, although sixty years later he would die in Reading in Berkshire, having returned to Britain in 1906, recorded in 1911 in Lewisham in London as a newspaper proprietor, married to Maud Eleanor, also Buenos Aires-born, and with two children, Hugh, again Argentine-born, and Phyllis, born in Birkenhead.

But back to 1902, when he was the senior player, already thirty at the time of the match and assumed to be "Ingles" but was not, based on the following evidence from an still earlier census.  

"In addition a simple check of records reveals that in 1891 James Anderson is recorded as a student of theology, he studied at Bedford Modern School, born in Buenos Aires, but staying in Hertfordshire at the house of his Uncle Henry. The family is well-off. They have servants. Uncle Henry is a banker. And he is born in Scotland. (Another Uncle, John, is a clearly successful architect living in Mayfair, London but also Glasgow-born)

In fact Uncle Henry, Henry David Anderson, was born in Glasgow. His father John Anderson, his mother Frances Burn were also both Scots-born. John Anderson is himself recorded in Glasgow as a South American merchant and in 1869 his eldest son, William, Uncle Henry's brother, is, doubtless as part of the business, living and married also in Buenos Aires. (He was another perhaps with footballing connections, born not in Glasgow but in Rhu, the source of Glasgow Rangers) In addition James Oswald Anderson has a pivotal place not just in in Argentinian football history, lamentably all but forgotten except among a small group of experts, but in Argentine field-sports in general. ............. His contribution went far further."

He was also one of the founders of the Argentine Rugby Union and even its President in 1904-6 so just prior to the move back to the UK.

Then there were the Buchanans, who do not seem to have been related. One, Carlos, probably Charles James, seems to be easier to trace than the other, Walter. I would particularly like help with his origins but this is what seems to be known. In August 1955 a Walter Buchanan died in Buenos Aires. He was a widower, seventy-five years old, so born in 1880. But then a Gualterio Andres Buchanan, so Walter Andrew, had died in 1946 and is buried in the British Cemetery. There seemed to be a choice. However, a Gualterio Andres Buchanan also seems to have been baptised in 1915 in Tandil south of Buenos Aires as  a thirty-seven year-old convert, recorded as born in 1888  and therefore too young to have been a player in 1902. And that is it except that the Walter Buchanan, who represented Argentina that year, whilst playing for the Buenos Aires team, Alumni, had previously played, like Moore and also Carlos Buchanan for Lobos suggesting similar origins. As to Charles Buchanan himself there is much more certainty. In the 1895 census in Lobos a rancher is recorded by the name of Diego Bucanen, otherwise James Buchanan. His is fifty-seven, five years older than his wife, Maria, Mary, they have been married twenty-three years and they have eight children, aged from twenty-one to eight, the fourth of whom is Argentine-born Carlos. He is sixteen years-old so born in 1879 and therefore twenty-three in 1902. However, Diego and Maria are both Scots-born, indeed they still call themselves Scots with the spelling of their surname an aberration. Indeed their neighbours on one side, the Chisholms, are Scots-born too and on the other side they are Irish, the Gormans.

And finally there was William Leslie, one of three footballing brother. His eldest brother, Arnot, was probably in the Old Caledonians team that had lost the play-off for the first ever Argentine League in 1891, was a close friend of that League's secretary, Alex Lamont and would go on in the second league to manage the Lomas team. It would include his two younger brothers, William himself, twenty-seven in 1902, and George, two years younger, who in 1901 had also represented Argentina, albeit unofficially, and be Argentine champion five ties in a row from 1893 to 1898.  The boys' father, also Arnot, was a plumber and the Caledonians team was based on workers, who had come to Buenos Aires with the British company tasked with installing a water and sewage system in the city. And Arnot Snr and his wife had both been born in the Gorbals/Tradeston areas of Glasgow and would retire comfortably to house in the Glaswegian suburb's that they would call "Argentina". Moreover, they had grown up within a stone's throw of the birth-place of Alex Watson Hutton and Thomas Lipton, Sir Thomas Lipton, millionaire grocer and donor in 1905 of the Lipton, for which Argentina and Uruguay would then play twenty-nine times.

However, with the lives of his father and brothers covered in another of my pieces, "Leslies the reality is that little of William Leslie's life either side of his contribution to football is known. He was born in the Argentine capital in 1875. He is known to have been schooled in Britain, presumably Scotland since in 1891 as scholars he and his brother are staying between Langside and Shawlands, Glasgow, a stone's throw from Queen's Park, with their Uncle John. William is sixteen. George is fourteen. Then in 1895 they are back in Argentina and with the family there. But there is little after that. He can perhaps be seen travelling back and forth to England until 1940, although there was another William Leslie in Buenos Aires just then and born about the same time, 1877, but then nothing after that, with the proviso that for the bulk of the war-years the South Atlantic and its U-Boats became a no-go area. My own family in Brazil was direct witness to that. Otherwise he, having in 1904 with the visit of Southampton been the referee for its game against Alumni and played for the scratch-team, Argentinos, against the same tourists,  simply disappears after 1906. Then he at thirty-one is recorded as Third Vice-President and, with a B. Campbell on the left, the right-back of Quilmes F.C., the team for which he was already playing in 1902, in a match against Argentinos de Quilmes that even today is a Derby. However, I can find no further mention.

But to return to the history lesson, with which this article began, and the blinding effect that it can have. William Leslie's 1906 game, which took place on 26th May, whilst there is no doubt that the Quilmes club was at the time British and Argentinos de Quilmes was not, is another example of myopathy. It is even today reported as "criollos" against "ingleses", whereas, with in addition one of the forwards a Juan, John, Murray, it was, firstly, not English but at the very least Anglo-Scots, with the Scots involved self-evidently not English and bringing the distinctive Scottish passion for and understanding of the "beautiful game", and, secondly, evidently "criollo". Murray is Juan. William Leslie was Buenos Aires-born. And this Quilmes argument can be extended beyond the club to Argentine football in general, through the other Leslies, the rest of the 1902 team bar Laforia and many others. Indeed it can embrace South American football in general through still more "British", more often than not Scots, some of whom were Diasporan, true, but many more as native-born, as crillo as a first generation player of Spanish, Portuguese or later Italian and other origin.