New paragraphThe state of Ohio is perhaps best known in football terms, the American game in the form of the Browns and the World game through Columbus Crew. But the latter is only a generation wise plus not quite another in further, defunct iterations. In fact soccer, actually first came to the state four generations earlier and to the city on the lake-shore, to Cleveland. 

John McF. Howie, with a clue in the name, the Honorary President of the board of Cleveland's first soccer league recounted that our football first came to the full city in 1905. Although a decade earlier games had taken place between Scots from Detroit and Lorain and Elyria down the shore at the second gathering of Cleveland's Scots, that year on Thanksgiving Day an encounter was arranged between Scotland and England, result not known. Then the following year there was a further game of two teams drawn from existing teams. It was perhaps in preparation of what was to follow, a visit in August from the renown Corinthian team, arranged by Cleveland resident, A. R. Hamilton. 

So it was that on the 29th August 1906 a Cleveland eleven was beaten 0-8 by the English amateurs.  A crowd of 903 looked on, two thirds of which were Scots and English. The high score was attributed to the lack of height and agility of the local goalie, Johns. We do not know the full team but we do know that it consisted of a Canadian, two Englishmen and eight Scots. It is unlikely Johns was amongst the last. It is also safe to assume that Hamilton was playing, as before the match he was photographed practicing with two other "locals", Semple and Scott. 

As a results of the game that autumn saw the start of a local league of four teams, Cleveland Association, the Engineers, the Thistles and the Hungarians Magyars. And here we do have the players. For the Thistles there were McGillivray, Walton and McCue, Lindsay, Hutchinson and "Johnson", Wilson, McKinnon, Walters, Gardner, the captain, McDonald, Lawson and Archer so Scots through and through. The Engineers were McGlaschan, Collier, Gould, White, Lambert, Hutchinson, Edwards, Douglas, Templeman, Kennedy, the captain, Moir, and Lovell, so at least half Scots, and Cleveland, Howie, perhaps John Howie himself, Gunton, Field, W. Hamilton, the infamous Johns, Hall, the captain, Semple himself, Paton, a certain Scott, Donald, A. R. Hamilton himself, Phillips and Eden, again probably half-Scots.   

In that first season the Thistles took the championship, the Engineers were second and Cleveland, several of the members of which had left to join their Thistles compatriots, were third. The Scots club was also champion in 1907, 1909 and 1910.  Only steelmen of Lorian interrupted the sequence. The Thistles would also take the local Bowler Cup in 1909,1910 and 1911. Even in 1913 it took five game to separate them and eventual winners, Cleveland. And once more we have the teams. In the squad for the Scots were Wheeney and Wilson, Weir and Henderson, H. McKinnon and Gardner, Brown and Tillie, McDougal and A. McKinnon, McDonald, Valentine, Fairweather and Kenney, Clark and Mott. And Cleveland was hardly less Scottish with Love and Woolgur, White and Baird, Thwaites, Barker, the captain now R. Scott, King, Dalley, Bradford, Walker, McPherson, Newlands and W. Scott.   

So who were these these pioneers, who in Ohio carried the beautiful from implantation to the Great War with the emergence from the Cleveland League of the State Association. John McFarlane Howie had been born in Edinburgh in 1870, had arrived in the United States aged 19 in 1889 so grew up with the explosion of the game in his homeland, had married in Cleveland in 1894, ran clubs and restaurants and died in New York State in 1948. Equally A.R. Hamilton was probably English by birth. A Henley-born Albert Robert had arrived in 1904 aged twenty-one, settled in Cleveland, working as a draughtsman, married there but might have returned to England later in life. dying again in Oxfordshire in 1969. 

Similarly a Scots-born Alexander MacGillivray had arrived in America in 1907 also aged twenty-one or twenty-two, made his way to Cleveland, married there, died there in 1930 and is buried in Strongsville Cemetery there.