When France went to the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam its coach, according to FIFA, was an Englishman by the name of Peter Farmer. And the team began well. In seventeen minutes of its first round game it was two up against Italy, both from Juste Bouzes of Red Star, a club that still exists, based in the Paris suburb of St Ouen and playing in Ligue 2, France's second tier. But the Bouzes brace was as good as it got. Two minutes after the second Torino's Rosetti pulled one back and in the second half Italy opened up a two goal gap. It was a lead that the French then closed to one but no more and were eliminated. Italy, on the other hand, went on to take the bronze medal, having lost in the semi-final to the eventual gold medallists, Uruguay.
Italy's three goals had come through Levratto, Banchero and Baloncieri, a player, of whom Farmer was well aware. The reason was that Baloncieri in 1925 had joined Torino from home-town club, Alessandria. There he had made one hundred and twenty appearances, scored an excellent seventy-four goals and impressed the then Torino manager, none other than Farmer himself. In fact Farmer may well also have known Banchero. He had joined Torino in 1926 just as Farmer left but may well have already been identified as a target and by the Englishman himself.
Except, of course, Peter Farmer was not English. He was a Scot, born in the early footballing hotbed of
Renton in the Vale of Leven, at 9, Rossbank Place, his father Francis and his mother Margaret, nee Madden. The year was 1886 two years before his local club, with its Tontine Park ground 200 yards away and
James Kelly, Bob Kelso,
Andrew Hannah and
Archie McCall
in the team, in beating both West Bromwich Albion and then Preston North End became "World Champions". Had he not been there in person he would have at least heard the cheers from his front step.
Francis and Margaret Farmer had been married just up the Vale and across the River Leven in Bonhill in 1879. Both were Irish-born. And in 1891 and 1901 they with their children, including Peter, were back in Bonhill on Main St. He was there too in 1911 still living at home and listed as a general labourer, so not a full-time footballer. By then he was probably turning out, it is said for at least three years, not for Renton as it dropped out of the league, it was dissolved in 1922, but for Vale of Leven, the club back across the river and a wee bit further up the Vale in Alexandria. More than likely too it was from perhaps 1904-5. He was then eighteen so maturing and it was period when the club's fortunes improved somewhat. In 1905 it rejoined the Scottish League as Division One was increased from fourteen to sixteen and Falkirk and Aberdeen moved up with no club relegated. And, although it finished second to bottom that first year back, the following season only Edinburgh's St. Bernard's did better, and the season after that only St. Bernard's once more and Barrhead's Arthurlie.
It may indeed have been in 1911 that Peter Farmer attracted the attention of Celtic, which aged twenty-four and approaching his playing prime he joined, turning out in the reserves but, it seems, never in the first team. He is not listed as such. It is suggested too that it was at this time he began coaching, presumably first in Glasgow and then before the Great War reportedly in Germany and Austria. Certainly post-War in 1923 he was coaching in France at Marseille, taking them to and winning the 1924 Coupe de France, defeating Sete, player-managed by Victor Gibson, said also to be Scots but actually something of a fantasist from Southern England. Perhaps with the name Gibson and Scots football being predominant a footballer saying he was Scots and not English was good PR. Certainly it seemed to work. A year later he himself was managing Marseille.
Farmer by then had, of course, moved on. He, perhaps via Switzerland, was in Turin. The top flight of Italian football at that time, 1924, was divided regionally. The South, that is Rome and below, had four leagues. The North had two.
Genoa had finished top of one, Bologna top of the other with Torino second. Both winning clubs were managed by foreigners, ex. Arsenal Willie Garbutt at the former and Hermann Felsner at the latter. Torino clearly thought it should follow suit. It turned to Farmer and to an extent it worked after something of a blip, perhaps due to reorganising. At the end of the 1924-5 season Torino finished sixth of twelve in a league once again won by Genoa. However, the following season it recovered somewhat, over-taking the previous twofold champion but nevertheless still finishing as runner-up, this time to city-rival Juventus. At which point Farmer was on his way, again perhaps via US Biellese still in Northern Italy, back to Glasgow heeding the call of his parent club.
Celtic record Peter Farmer as a trainer, not manager or coach but trainer, fitness and otherwise, for the entire period from 1926 to 1938, after which he was said to be coaching for the Romanian Football Association, a job that would have ended with the War. He was also by then nearing the end of his career. He would die at the age of the eighty in Hammersmith in London in 1964 but by the end of the War would already have been touching sixty and by 1950 of retirement age. His post-War activities would therefore have been very limited. However, in the 1920s and 1930s that had far from the case. Eddie McGarvie had been Celtic's principal trainer from 1923 to 1926, Will Quinn through the years of the Great War and until 1923. And Quinn would return for a second stint from 1930 to 1932 to be followed by Jack Quskay for two seasons and Jimmy McMenemy to the suspension of football in 1940. It leaves a gap from 1926 and a return from Turin to 1930, when the baton was at least in part Peter Farmer's. Certainly he was there in 1929 when, as was the system at that time with training of the national team rotated, he was in charge for the Northern Ireland game in October of that year. Scotland would win 2-4 away. Hughie Gallacher scored a brace, Alex James and Jimmy Gibson one each.
Nevertheless, it is not to say that Farmer did not travel still. The 1928 Olympic Games is proof itself but it was merely a result of what had come before. For at least a large part of the 1926-7 season he seems then to have returned to France, to St. Ouen and the aforesaid Red Star club, with which on 6th May he had taken the Coupe de France for a second time, this time against CA Paris, Cercle Athletique, at the Stade Colombe watched by 30,000. No doubt the win had contributed to his brief Olympic sojourn just three weeks later. And it is from there we have from Peter Nicolas, one of his French squad, one who was taking part in his third Olympics and also played under Farmer at Red Star, this brief description of the the Scot's character and approach.
And it appears that as Will Quinn returned at Parkhead in 1930 so Farmer was on his way once more, for a season, perhaps two, back at Marseille but this time without national success. He had to be content with wins in both cup and league regionally as the French national set-up was reorganising for the start of the the truly professional era. Top-flight football on the other side of the English Channel had been notionally amateur. In fact, from the end of First World War it had both been “shamateur” and developed in a way that in 1932 translated into overt professionalism in a form that was both unique and well-funded. If teams were not works, i.e. company-backed, they were often supported by the local municipality or department and with the money they provided able to recruit, players and coaches alike, not just in France but also throughout Europe and even in South America."He was a fine fellow but he never gave us a word of advice, just saying 'OK' each time we won. On the other hand, he knew how to keep the team's spirits up and that was ample compensation."
Between 1932 and 1939 540 foreign footballers are said to have played in France, more than a 100 annually, with 50 or so coming and going per year, each club with an average of seven, some naturalised but most not. Some, indeed, of these imported players went on the play for France. Hector Cazenave, born in Uruguay, had started his career at
John Harley’s
Penarol before moving back to his parents' homeland, winning eight French caps including playing at the 1938 World Cup. Miguel Ángel Lauri was Argentinian, also said to have had French parents, although it was never proven. He arrived in France in 1937, played once for the French that same year but, when he was called up into the French army in 1939 returned once more, not home but to Uruguay, also to play for Penarol. However, the most influential foreign-born French player of all was Auguste Jordan. Born in Linz Jordan was one of 100 or so Austrians, who arrived to play for French clubs between 1932 and 1939, recruited through agents in Vienna, who also operated out of Paris and Prague. He would go on between 1938 and the Olympic Games in Berlin and 1945 to win sixteen caps for his adopted country and with his fellow Austrians and other Middle-Europeans bring with them the pre-Great War, Scottish footballing styles not just of
Jimmy Hogan
but also
Madden, Dick and others. Indeed it may have been Hogan that first attracted him to France. There he would play for just one club, Racing Club Paris, arriving in 1933, thinking Hogan, the coach for the 1932-33 season, might have been staying on. Instead, Jimmyhad mo ved on to Lausanne in Switzerland and Jordan found Peter Farmer in his stead.
Peter Farmer would with Racing Club win nothing. Sete won the league. Racing was eleventh of fourteen. Sete won the French Cup too and Farmer was on his way perhaps via or followed by a short stay at the Stella Club of Cherbourg but definitely back to Britain. Jimmy Hogan was on his way back to Britain too. He went to Fulham, Farmer not to Celtic as might be expected but to Rangers, Tunbridge Wells Rangers. Neither lasted more than a few months, this whilst Jordan stayed where his was, rewarded with the Double in 1936 as Scottish, indeed British influence in French football frankly faded to nothing, at least directly. There was always the Hogan legacy.