"The Boys Are Hopeful" -- Canada's 1888 Tour of Britain

In September 1888, a team of Canadian internationals (including many of the University of Toronto varsity teams) led by David Forsyth embarked on a tour of Britain, facing the likes of Glasgow Rangers, Sheffield, Aston Villa and West Bromwich Albion. It's hard to know what their British hosts expected to witness upon their arrival in Northern Ireland on September 1st, but when the Canadian team crossed over into Scotland to face Rangers on September 8, the Toronto Globe remarked of the 1-1 result, "The Canadians are winning many friends by their quiet, gentlemanly conduct both on and off the field, and in my humble opinion the visit...of this Canadian football team [has] done more to bring Canada prominently before the British public than all the emigration agents in the three kingdoms."

The tour had likely been the brainchild of Forsyth, whom the Globe called the "father of football in Canada." It's not hard to understand why: he was a founding member of the Dominion Football Association (1878) and the Western Football Association (1880), and had been part of the Canadian team that played against the US in Newark in 1885, a game that likely constitutes the first true international outside of Britain. He had promoted the game in the Waterloo region of Ontario, the same area where the 1904 Olympic Gold-winning Galt team originated.

As the Canadians garnered more and more praise for their performances in Scotland, beating Hearts 3-0 shortly after drawing Rangers, word spread and a reported crowd of 10 000 arrived to see Forsyth's team blank Sunderland 3-0. The team then went on to beat Middlesborough 3-2, and Lincoln City 3-1, before drawing 1-1 against Sheffield. Perhaps most pertinent to today's incredible football imbalance, Canada also beat Newton Heath 2-0, the team that would later become Manchester United.

Canada finished the tour with a record of nine wins, nine losses and five draws. After the final game, London Sporting Life reported that the Canadian side's "...success against some of the best Irish, Scottish and English clubs had been greater than most of the followers of the association game at least expected and indeed, considering the formidable opponents they have met over here, they have made themselves a deseverdly high name as all-around exponents of football." 1888 was an unprecedented year for Canadian soccer, and more incredibly the team was full of mostly homegrown University and Ontario club players. We would never see anything like it again.

Colin Jose has dedicated a wonderful chapter to this tour in his book Keeping Score: Canadian Encyclopedia of Soccer, which also provides biographies of each player on the 1888 touring side.