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In the Chilean capital, Santiago, July 1903 saw the formation of the Association de Football de Santiago with a league of sixteen teams in two divisions. The trophy played for in that first championship was the Copa Subercaseaux, donated by the Honorary Chairman of the association. The Secretary of its first Board of Directors came from Union Atlético; a certain Jorge (George) D. Ewing. Its first winner was Ewing’s club, captained by John Ramsay.
John Ramsay was Chilean-born, in 1879. He was one of five brothers, sons of Scot, Alexander Ramsay and Diasporan Scot, Jessie Frew. Alex Ramsay, a railway employee, no doubt having been caught up in the game's initial explosion, had in his new home taught all his five boys it from a young age. One, James, was to die, aged 33 in 1915 in France, having returned to Britain to enlist, as so many did from the British Diaspora in South America. Another, Alexander would also become a noted defender. It was he who in the city of Talca would be instrumental in the formation of its Rangers club, go on to become a referee and also died young, in 1917 but in Chile. The third, Joseph, José Ramsay played until 1910 and would become an important figure in the Loma Blanca club. And youngest of all was Manuel, also known as by his second name, Arthur. He would play at Loma Blanca alongside his brother. Founded in 1904 in 1907 with Jo in attack and Arthur at left-back it would win the Santiago Football Association's Copa Unión. And then there was John.
Juan Ramsay was not only to be a significant player but also for a decade, a crucial decade, an important football official and administrator, in Santiago initially and later nationally. Described as a clean and brilliant defender, at fifteen he was already playing for the Santiago Rangers-non-Sunday-Playing Club. It may have been in a five-a-side league with he and his brothers forming the entire team. Still a teenager he was firstly to be one of the founders of school team, Instituto Nacional FC, before, in his early-twenties, moving on with his brothers to Union Atlético. After 1903 in 1904 it, Union Atlético, took the Copa Subercaseaux for a second time with a team that included a Scottish spine, John and Joseph themselves, F. C. Campbell, Frank Morrison, a Scot, who in 1927 can be seen travelling to New York with Joe Ramsay, described as a Scot, and his wife to New York, Andrew Taylor, now captain, the Anglo-Scot, Fred Anderson, Hugh Sutherland, born in Pittentrail by Rogart in Sutherland itself and George Hood. In fact, from 1903 Union Atlético was to be the predominant club in Santiago and John Ramsay perhaps the most recognised figure in the local game. That is until 1906, when the club disbanded because of bad results and, whilst Joseph and Alexander went to Loma Blanca, John would form English F.C and play for two more seasons until 1908.
It was then he took the step from player to administrator, being elected, aged 29, to the Santiago Football Association’s board. He was also involved in the Referees’ Association before in 1910 being promoted to Santiago FA president. It was fortunate timing because there was conflict between the Santiago-based, Spanish-speaking National Sports Federation and the still British-orientated Football Association of Chile in Valparaiso.
It was a situation not dissimilar to that developing in Buenos Aires at much the same time, remembering too that in Chile like Argentina there was a degree of British antipathy, not least because Bernardo O'Higgins, the country's liberator from Spain, was the son of an Irish family dispossessed of its ancestral land in Ireland by a Britain under Cromwell. It was not resolved with the stepping down as president of the CFA of Alfred Jackson in 1908. The election of his replacement, Horace Cooper, also did little to alleviate the culture clash then Cooper’s rapid replacement by William Bailey, one of those at the organisation's foundation, and the brief return of Jackson simply added instability. Nor was it even resolved with the transfer in 1912, once again under Cooper, of the CFA to Santiago, its name-change to the Asociación de Football de Chile, the creation of a National Football Championship, won in its first season by a club neither from Santiago or Valparaiso but Antofagasta, and the change of affiliation that same year to FIFA from the English FA. The arguments were to continue, even with Andrew Gemmell, its first ever Secretary almost two decades earlier, chosen as President in 1912. On one side were the British, still with a power base in Valparaiso and now on the other the new CFA establishment in the capital eighty miles away. It would even cause a temporary split in the Santiago Football Association that John Ramsay was able to patch up and it was not until 1915 that the arguments were finally ended under Juan Estaban Ortiza, CFA president from 1914 to 1917.
The eventual resolution, although it was to be effective, would very nearly mark the end of obvious British, that is Scottish, involvement in Chilean football. Andrew Gemmell would be the last to hold its highest office and the Ramsays would seem simply to fade from the scene. James and Alexander would sadly be dead before Estaban Ortiz stepped down. As to the other, Jose, who had married in 1908, remained in Chile, was visiting the United States until the early 1950s sand died in Santiago in 1959. Alexander married in Chile in 1909. He seems to have had a daughter, who died young, but nothing more is known. Juan married in 1916 and seems to have died childless in 1940, whilst of Manuel, of Arthur, nothing more is known.
And none of the brothers appears to have had any further significant role in or effect on the Chilean game. That was to be left to an another Scots-Chilean father, John Livingstone, a Ramsay boys' contemporary, indeed a player against them, and Sergio, his still more famous, footballing son. But it does not mean that they are either unrecognised or un-lauded. Even today there is as part of La Romeria, the traditional, annual procession of multi-protest to Santiago's General Cemetery, a deputation from the Club de Antiguos Deportistas Juan Ramsay to the Ramsay family grave, which, like that of the Ewings, is in its Protestant section.
