Scotland fans and the Boston region have been a match made in heaven this past week. Thousands upon thousands of singing, chanting, bagpipe-playing, kilt-wearing, beer- and whisky-drinking Scots, known as the "Tartan Army," have taken over Boston, Foxborough, Providence and everywhere in between as they cheer on their national soccer team in the World Cup, the country's first in 28 years.
Their arrival, for all intents and purposes, officially announced the start of that World Cup, a tournament we all knew was coming, but maybe weren't super enthusiastic about as a soccer-skeptical people. The Scots have injected a vibrancy into the region. They've turned Boston into party central. They had Gillette Stadium (on Saturday) and Fenway Park (on Sunday) sounding different than they've ever sounded before. That Scotland beat Haiti, 1-0, on Saturday certainly helped, but you get the sense that not even a Scottish loss would have killed the vibe.
This is not the first time that the Scottish and their love of soccer have elevated the local sports scene. One hundred years ago, that passion helped turn one local soccer team – Fall River F.C. – into an American powerhouse, one that went toe-to-toe with top teams from Europe and South America and produced two of the best players on the only United States team to reach the semifinals at a World Cup.
By the time Fall River F.C. was founded in 1922, the city already had a rich soccer history. Scottish and English (and later Portuguese) immigrants had brought the game with them when they came to Fall River in the mid-to-late 1800s to work in the city's textile mills, which offered better pay than similar jobs back home. They helped launch numerous soccer clubs in the city in the decades that followed, most notably the Fall River Rovers, who in 1917 won the National Challenge Cup as the best team in the country.
"What drove soccer being successful, specifically in Fall River, those mills brought in English, Irish and Scottish immigrants," said Derek Goncalves, a Fall River F.C. historian and member of the Society of American Soccer History (SASH). "And with the increased populations of all three nations and ethnicities, they had the opportunity to play soccer here. We had semi-pro leagues in the 1880s and 1890s. Fall River teams did pretty well in whatever tournaments that were organized back then. But at some point during that time, the Scottish were known as being the better players."
When the Rovers disbanded in 1922, local baseball and basketball promoter Sam Mark saw an opportunity to swoop in and launch Fall River F.C., who came to be known as the Marksmen. He built 15,000-seat Mark's Stadium, one of the first soccer-specific stadiums in the country, just over the Rhode Island border in Tiverton to avoid Massachusetts' "Blue Laws," which would have prohibited games from being played on Sunday.
Determined to win and willing to spend, Mark began recruiting top players from the northeastern U.S. as well as Canada, most notably buying star forward Harold Brittan from Philadelphia F.C. But after realizing how many top players were of Scottish descent, he set his sights abroad and decided to go straight to the source.
Mark traveled to Scotland himself and began prying players out of the Scottish League, one of the top leagues in the world at the time, with the promise of better pay. Winger James White and full-back Tommy Martin joined from Motherwell, full-back Charlie McGill joined from Third Lanark, and wing-half (essentially a wide midfielder) Bill McPherson joined from Beith. Other top Scottish players on the Marksmen would include Alex McNab, Bob McAuley and Hugh Coyle. Mark even dipped into England and poached players from the likes of Manchester City and Arsenal, including Scottish goalkeeper Bill Harper from the latter. He was so aggressive in his recruiting that the Scottish and English began referring to him and his Fall River team as "the American menace."
"That would be completely unheard of today," Goncalves said. "There's no way to express how insane that is, when you read the newspapers that Arsenal lost out on a bidding war for a goalie that ended up coming to play for Fall River."
The rest of the American Soccer League struggled to keep up, and the Marksmen quickly emerged as the country's dominant team. They won the ASL title three years in a row from 1924-26, and three-peated again from 1928-30. They also won the National Challenge Cup four times, in 1924, 1927, 1930 and 1931. The National Challenge Cup, now known as the U.S. Open Cup and now featuring MLS teams, remains an annual competition to this day, and the Marksmen's four titles are still tied for the second-most in its 113-year history.
They became a local phenomenon, frequently filling their 15,000-seat stadium and outdrawing MLB's Boston Red Sox and Boston Braves, both of whom struggled mightily throughout the 1920s. They were loved not just by the local Scottish community, but by the whole city. Mark started an elementary school league and had his players run it, further bonding team and community.
Two Fall River natives, Bert Patenaude and Billy Gonsalves (who would later be described as "the Babe Ruth of American soccer"), became two of the Marksmen's stars in the late 1920s and went on to help the U.S. reach the semifinals at the first World Cup in 1930. Patenaude's three goals against Paraguay marked the first hat trick in World Cup history. Until Folarin Balogun this past Friday (also against Paraguay), he had remained the only American to ever score multiple goals in a World Cup match.
Mark's Field became a regular stop for top European teams that went on American tours, and they found stiff competition in Fall River F.C. The Marksmen beat Sparta Prague, 3-2, in 1926. They drew Scottish champions Rangers, 0-0, in 1928 in front of a packed house. Later that summer, they beat an Italian All-Star team, 4-2. They won 3-0 against Kilmarnock, another top Scottish team, in 1930. In 1927, the Marksmen tied the Uruguay national team, 1-1, in an exhibition match at Mark's Stadium. Uruguay was considered the best team in the world at the time, in the middle of a stretch that saw them win Olympic gold in 1924 and 1928 as well as the World Cup in 1930.
In the summer of 1930, the Marksmen toured central Europe, becoming one of the few American teams to do so. They drew against Slavia Prague, split a pair of games against Austria Wien, and beat Slovan Bratislava, before ending the tour with a 6-2 loss against Hungarian powerhouse Ferencvaros.
Unfortunately, that tour of Europe would prove to be something of a last hurrah for the Marksmen. The Great Depression hit both Fall River and the American Soccer League hard, with attendance dropping dramatically as many Americans could no longer afford luxury items like soccer tickets. Mark moved the team to New York City in 1931 in hopes of finding a larger audience (shortly after the move, the team, still full of Marksmen players, beat Scotland's famed Celtic, 3-2, at Fenway Park). It proved to be a temporary solution; by 1933, the entire league would collapse, bringing an end to what would retrospectively be viewed as "the golden age of American soccer."
Today, Fall River F.C. is largely forgotten and unknown among New England sports fans. There are virtually no traces of the team's presence. There is not even a sign at the spot in Tiverton, Rhode Island where Mark's Stadium, one of the premier sporting venues of its day, once stood. Goncalves, as part of his work documenting the Marksmen's history, has tried to get some kind of marker put up, only to be shut down by the business that now owns the land.
But as our region gets taken over by Scottish fans this week, in town to watch their beloved national team play a pair of World Cup games in Foxborough, it is as good a time as any to be reminded that this is not the first time Scots, New England and the sport of soccer have come together to create something special. One hundred years ago, a team stacked with Scottish players, playing for a fan base that included a large number of Scottish-Americans, made Fall River a focal point of the soccer world, just as Boston and Foxborough are right now.
Special thanks to Derek Goncalves for his help on this article. If you're interested in a more detailed history of the Marksmen, check out his write-up for SASH from a few years ago celebrating the 100-year anniversary of their founding.
