It is not much of a photo but it is the best we have of the man, who can be described with little scope for refutation as taking football to Portland certainly, quite probably to Oregon in its entirety. His name is George James Cameron, who would become the District Attorney of his adopted West Coast city but was a Ayrshire-boy, born in Symington, brought up in Kilmarnock.

It was a story that began in 1862, when he was born the youngest child of a toll-keeper, George Cameron Snr, and Marion McIntyre, also know as Mary, born in Riccarton. His father would die in 1866 and by 1871 his mother would remarry, to a grocer in Killy, an early hotbed of the beautiful game. However, Killy was clearly not enough to keep young George at home. At eighteen officially, actually at seventeen, he was on his way, and to America. He arrived in 1879, probably in New York but is said to have made his way to Michigan, marrying there before in 1890, aged twenty-eight, heading further west still to the Pacific Coast.       

On arrival in Portland he brought with him both ambition and his Scottish passion for the Association game, for soccer. Probably being a simple clerk when he had left the Auld country, in his new home he qualified as a lawyer, called to the Oregon bar in 1893. But by then his presence on the football field was already having its effect. It is thought that in 1885 a football game was played between "English", read British, longshoremen. But since there were 36 of them taking part it is unclear as to the rules. However, on Thanksgiving Day, so the second Monday in November, in 1890 a Portland XI and a team called the Wanderers faced each other in a notionally eleven-a side game, although the latter was able to field just ten. Then in May 1892 five-a-side matches were held featuring three clubs, Neptune Rovers and, more importantly in terms of Scots involvement, Clydesdale and Thistles. And Thistles won the tournament with George Cameron in its team. Moreover, in July 1893 a Portland team played the Astoria Football Club, Astoria being the town at the mouth of the Columbus River, on which Portland stands. Portland won, George Cameron was named as club secretary and is assumed to have played. Three months later in the return game back in Portland he certainly did. It took place at the then new Multnomah Amateur Athletic Club (MAAC) ground, Multnomah being the county, in which Portland is to be found. The Portland XI won once more, 5-0. The ground is now Providence Park, the site today of the stadium of the MSL club, Portland Timbers. 

However, this all proved to be a false dawn. An Oregon/Washington league failed to take off as American football arrived and almost swamped nascent soccer. That is until 1901 when a first game in Portland for five years took place between British sailors and the local Seamans' Institute. George Cameron was the referee, at least initially, it is reported. With the Institute 1-2 down Cameron, now aged thirty-nine, got one of its team, notably Stewart, probably another Scot who knew the game, to take the whistle, leading the attack to the extent that, as time was called, a final one was repulsed a by the ball being licked off the line. However, the spark was relit in what was called the "Scotch and English game".  Just a month later Cameron, lawyer, local politician and now the Municipal Judge, organised a meeting at his offices, which saw the formation of the Portland Football Club with him elected as its first president.  

A first inter-state game against Ilwaco resulted almost immediately but again little more than local games for The Cameron Cup, donated by the man himself and won by MAC in 1902 and 1903. That is until 1905, when Cameron created a new club, the Portland Association Football Club (PAFC) and began the organisation of a tournament to include teams from elsewhere in Oregon, British Columbia in Canada, Washington State and even San Francisco. In the end only Portland and one other team took part.  Cameron did not play but ran one of the lines. But there was momentum. In 1906 PAFC played six games against visiting sailors, winning five, and in 1907 four encounters took place between local English and Scottish expatriates. The "internationals" were held at the Portland Cricket Club with Scotland emerging as city champion.             

Yet this was not George Cameron's final involvement in the promotion of a game that for him was more than simple, youthful contagion.  In 1910 a meeting of Portland Football Association, with him President once more and pushy, was held again at his offices in the Portland Chamber of Commerce Building. There the next playing of the Challenge Cup, the Cameron Cup in a new iteration, was discussed. Won the previous season by MAAC it had featured the clearly Scots Balfour-Guthrie team, National, the Cricket Club and again seemingly Scots Queen's Park. The second meeting was after an earlier meeting, at which had suggested that a "select" XI be sent to play three colleges, the universities of Willamette and Oregon and Oregon Agricultural College, which had begun to play the game. It was followed by a third meeting for club and therefore Cup registration. MAAC and Portland Cricket Club were there again, with the National and Oceanic Football Clubs and others mentioned. There was also an schools league being formed in a city that had more than doubled in the previous ten years to 207,000 inhabitants, amongst whom were "many new soccer men....., some of whom are old professional players from England and Scotland".

With the newcomers in place it is perhaps when George Cameron, first player, then official and administrator and as such torch-carrier and vital element in the eventual implantation of his game six thousand miles from his roots could finally step back, job done.  In 1910 he was living in Portland with wife, Canadian-born Kate, and their son, also George. In 1920 he was there on 12th Street with both once more and relatively young at the age of fifty-seven. Yet the following year he had passed. He died in July 1921 of Brain Haemorrhage and is buried in Portland still, at the Rose City Cemetery.