Nowadays most top-flight teams go on pre-season tours, promoting the club and making money playing other top international teams. However, at the beginning of the 20th century clubs going on tour were true pioneers, and teams could spend six weeks on a ship to simply get to their next game.
This week we are looking at a programme from The Players Foundation for a game played between two English clubs in Buenos Aires in 1909 – Everton and Tottenham Hotspur!
Both Everton and Spurs were invited to South America for a tour or Argentina and Uruguay to play against a number of local teams as well as against each other on two occasions. Spurs had just played their first season in the Football League and came runners-up in the Second Division. Everton finished second in the First Division.
The Everton team left Liverpool on 13th May 1909 and stayed overnight in London before catching the train to Southampton for the boat. Both teams were meant to sail together, but Spurs missed the train and only caught up with the boat downstream in the Solent by hiring a special tug.
The trip took 21 days and went via places such as Cherbourg and Lisbon picking up mail and passengers, to St Vincent and Rio de Janeiro before reaching Buenos Aires. Time on board was spent with various activities and entertainment. According to the diary of E. A. Bainbridge (one of the Everton Directors who accompanied the team on the trip) “Sport on board was of the usual varied description, and was thoroughly enjoyed.”
The day the two teams arrived in Buenos Aires they played their first match against each other in front of a crowd of more than 10,000 people. Bainbridge noted in his diary: “After a grand display of football, considering the teams had not regained their shore legs, the game resulted in a draw of 2-2.”
Interestingly, this was the first football match between two professional teams anywhere in the Americas, even though they were not the first to play in South America as Nottingham Forest and Southampton had taken separate tours to the River Plate region a few years before.
In the following weeks Everton and Spurs played matches against local teams in Buenos Aires, Rosario and Montevideo. The two English teams faced each other again for a second game at the end of their tour, which Everton won comfortably 4-0. Everton and England forward Bert Freeman scored a hat trick and was the player of the match and indeed the tour.
The teams set sail to return to England on 25th June, full of memories of a great experience. The tour was a great success, as Bainbridge puts it in his diary: “Undoubtedly our latest visit –to South America –has been the brightest in our wandering […] When a team has travelled 14,000 miles in ten weeks to introduce and develop first class football, and returns with a clean bill of health, and a clean slate, and at no cost […], it has something to be proud of.”
You can find out more about The Players Foundation and their work via their website below.