Scotland did not invent "soccer" but "soccer", American soccer, has from its earlier days been defined by Scotland and Scots. Across its breadth the game in the USA was peppered with clubs bearing names that included  a form of Caledonia, Scotia, Ranger or Thistle to denote their cultural origins. But clubs are nothing without teams and teams nothing first without players, in these cases pioneering players who have long passed but deserve what belated recognition we can give. 

Though there were certainly earlier encounters organised soccer kicks off in 1884 with the first round of the first American Cup. The place is the "field" of Clark's ONT in Kearny, New Jersey. The date is 25th October and there is seemingly hardly a Scot in sight. The opponents that day are the Domestics, so called because they are a team of American-born players. ONT itself is stuffed with Lancastrians bar the captain, in fact honorary captain that day, William Clark, not from the mill-owners but another Paisley-family of the same name. Some of those Yonners were even imported. Joe Swarbrick and Abraham "Harry" or "Hal" Holden came from football in Fall River, Massachusetts, cotton weavers perhaps but more importantly learned exponents of the round-ball game. Indeed the day is only really saved from the Scots point-of-view by the referee in the era when each team had an umpire on the field itself and he adjudicated independently from the side-lines. He was local James Lennox, born in 1865 so still just a teenager, who, possibly also from Paisley, had emigrated in 1881 so at fourteen and with footba' already very much in his veins.

In fact the Scots playing presence is only really to be seen a month later in the Cup's second round as the other Kearny team, Rangers, took on New York at the Baseball Ground in Newark and lose badly, 0-4. Captain that day of Rangers in a Scots 2-2-5 formation was the same James Lennox, now joined by the Hood brothers, William and John, David Ferguson and Robert Raeburn, all Scots-born. Indeed on the field on that 27th November there may have been as many as sixteen from the Auld Country for in the final, refereed once more James Lennox and lost to ONT, the New Yorkers lined up as Walker, Johnston, Masterton,  Sinclair, Gold, Mitchell, Young, Lowe, Grant, a second Sinclair and McNeill and notably in the formation that might have come as equally naturally to them as it did their opponents, the Scots 2-2-5.

Unfortunately with the constant flow of immigration through the Big Apple it remains impossible to identify the New Yorkers individually and the same, perhaps unsurprisingly, applies to the players of the next club that in 1886 would follow in the city, the Thistles. But the name of the club and the players - Cameron, Russell, Patrick, Bailey, Harley, Kirk, Scott, Jameson, Walker, Barber and Wing - perhaps give away the origins of most. Yet before they were to have their first appearance in 1888 two more clubs would make significant contributions. The first was the Almas of Newark, the New Jersey state capital across the river from Kearny. It was a team mainly of local players that the following season, 1885-6. would take on and beat New York only to lose to Kearny Rangers in the semi-final. And the other rising club was Caledonian Thistle of Paterson, another New Jersey town. It was a centre of not cotton but silk weaving with, on the face of it,  a very Scots team, consisting that day of T. Paterson, Chapman, Hall, Williamson, Forsythe, Anderson, Donaldson, H. Craig, J. Kane and two Turners, Archie and the captain William. In fact, whilst the team did have a Scots core, there were Irish and local additions with the Turner boys, as two members of a wider family, now at the active centre of the town's game and clearly passing on the contagion.

Meantime, the next club to rise to prominence would be Trenton. Again from New Jersey it would do so with a team drawn from all the home countries and would reach the 1887 semi-final, this as Kearny Rangers tried to rebuild, including the addition of Roddy McDonald. The rebuild was necessary because a number of the older players had ceased and others, notably the Hoods moved across to what might be described as Newark's newly-formed equivalent, the Caledonians. However, the new failed to spark, knocked out of the 1888 Cup in the First Round as the final was competed between Almas and another newcomer, indeed one from a growing soccer centre. 

The newcomer would win comprehensively, the victory marking the first of six seasons in the next seven that a team from the Massachusetts textile town of Fall River would take the trophy. For the first two years it would be Rovers, the next the Olympics,  two more the East Ends and finally Olympics once more. And in all those seasons and teams the Scots input would be minimal.  Rovers in its two wins seems to have been a team of all sorts, British and local, Olympics and East Ends much the same with two observations. The first is that the star-player of East Ends was without doubt Pat Stanton. Rochdale, England- born of Irish parents, arriving in 1882 at the age of fifteen via he from 1890 he would give seven seasons of service to his club. Secondly, the movement to-and-fro of players between the three clubs plus a fourth, the Conanicuts, was remarkable as were the timings of those moves. From 1888 to 1889 there was but one, from 1889 to 1890 two. Then the following year it was zero but in the next fifteen and in 1892-3, the year the cup was won by a new kid on the block, Pawtucket Free Wanderers, nineteen. Then as the cup was retaken in 1894 it was twenty-one or more or less two teams worth. It looks from this distance that in effect what had been a club competition was being manipulated into one between individual teams even within one location, say Kearny and Fall River as an entire town, with the suspicion that words were eventually said.

In fact a Fall River team would never again win the American Cup, or at least the first iteration of it, with Rhode Island's Free Wanderers continuing to run with the ball locally in New England but otherwise the cap handed back to New Jersey, indeed once more to Kearny, Paterson and Newark, plus Philadelphia until competition was suspended in 1898. That Philly team was brewery-based, professional Manz, several of them probably Scots, not least Galston's David Gold or Gould, later to be manager of the US national team. In New Jersey's capital it was the Caledonians, still a team of several Scots, Smith, Dawson and McCance, but now more and more locals. In Paterson it was the True Blues, a mixed Scots-English eleven including Tommy Turner, Willie Barr, Alexander, Ingram, Lauder and Findlay. This whilst Soccer Town was now represented by two Athletics, US and Irish Arlington, just to the north, and Kearny itself, a successor to Rovers and Rangers and also mixed in terms of personnel but including McGhee and still Hood, McCance again and Hayes, and now Scottish Americans with McDonald once more, Paton and Galloway. Meanwhile, whilst Free Wanderers would play Scots Peter Hunt and Leggatt, it would be a second team in Pawtucket, Y.M.C.A, that was the bluer. It would included the full Scots, William Moore, William Cameron, Duncan McFarlane, and William James, the the US-Scots, McNeil and Alex Morrison, and the notional Anglo-Scot, Alex Meikejohn.     

But no games can take place without officials. After James Lennox in 1884-5, numbered amongst the following season's four known referees were Tommy Hood, Archie Turner and Robert Craig. And in 1887 Archie was there once more with Craig, R.L. Craig, that year's American Football Association President, and J. Grant, probably James Grant of New York, with the umpires, neutral umpires, in the final O'Toole of Newark Caledonians and Lang of Tiffany Rovers.

James Grant was to be there again for the following season, 1887-88, as was Bob Craig for the final as he would be the next. Willie Turner also took to officiating. In fact he would referee the 1890 Final with one of the Kearny Hoods also involved during the season, something repeated in 1891 with that year a Turner, whether  Willie or Archie is unclear, not just in Final charge but also the incumbent AFA President. And it would be the AFA President, now Robert Miller, who would take the 1892 Final with Willie Hood involved earlier as was another new name, Pawtucket's Alexander Love. James Hood was there too in 1893, as he would be the next season, James Lennox again making an appearance in both years with Roddie McDonald now taking one of the 1893 fixtures. 

Remarkably then a clearly reinvigorated or perhaps returned James Lennox would be the senior official at the 1896 American Cup Final. He had also been charged with one of the semis, the four Second Round games taken by Alex Meiklejohn, McIntosh, Gray and Willie Turner. And in 1897 Lennox would also take games two, three and eight, Willie Turner game six, and Alexander Jefferies, another from Pawtucket, the last of the four games, three replays, needed to decide the final between True Blues and ultimate winners, Manz. Indeed a case could be made that throughout the period of the first iteration of the American Cup from 1884-98 without Scots and Diaporan officiating there might have been games.

And off the field in the committee-room the Scots presence was equally apparent and crucial. Until 1891 the members of the American Football Association seem unrecorded but from 1892 a pattern emerges with  John Lang, Treasurer that year, Willie Turner, President in 1894,  Alexander and Andrew Meiklejohn of Pawtucket, Treasurers in 1895 and 1896 respectively. And then from 1895 until 1898 there would be the probably Scots-born William Robertson as Secretary with in 1896 and 1897 two more Paterson Turners, James and then Willie as Vice Presidents. Indeed as in 1898 the league was effectively moth-balled for eight seasons, impacted by economic depression, it was left to yet more probable Scots, in fact to Newark/Kearny Scots - William Robertson still Secretary, Scots-born John McCance as Treasurer and Dr. J. W. Reid as President - to do the job.

However, it will be clear from all the above that there are multiple caveats. Whilst it is possible with some painstaking analysis to identify some of the above players, officials and administrators as Scots or Diasporans, the dearth of comprehensively recorded AFA data, American census recording prior to 1900 being no more than place and name, even after it piecemeal, and population mobility makes difficult the establishment of place of birth or childhood even simply to Scotland never mind town or village. But there are exceptions. The Turners have their origins in Ayrshire's Newmilns and Darvel, as does David Gould of Manz in Galston. David Ferguson and Robert Raeburn are very likely to be from Paisley as probably is James Lennox. Roddy McDonald seems to have been Glasgow-born, in Tradeston. As to the Meiklejohn, whilst Alexander was English-born in Rochdale it was to a Scots family en route with all his siblings including Andrew born North of the Border. Indeed Alexander appears to have been a figure of importance not just on the football pitch but American academia and pedagogy. See:  https://riheritagehalloffame.com/Alexander-Meiklejohn/.