Irish Association Football in Argentina
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Volume 6 - Number 1 March 2008 IRISH MIGRATION STUDIES IN LATIN AMERICA Society for Irish Latin American Studies Minnie, Katie and Eleanora Murphy at Estancia San Martin, Salto, Buenos Aires province, ca. 1890 (Anastasia Joyce Collection, Universidad de San Andrés) Volume 6 – Number 1 March 2008 Sporting Traditions in Ireland and Latin America Guest Editor: John Kennedy Editors: Edmundo Murray, Claire Healy Associate Editors: Patricia Novillo-Corvalán, Helen Kelly ISSN 1661-6065 Society for Irish Latin American Studies (SILAS) Smoorbeg, Kill, Co. Waterford, Ireland This journal is available online at SILAS website: www.irlandeses.org Irish Migration Studies in Latin America CONTENTS John Kennedy (Guest Editor), Sporting Traditions in Ireland and Latin America: An Introduction .......... 1 John Kennedy, The Sporting Dimension to the Relationship Between Ireland and Latin America................. 3 Víctor Raffo, Irish Association Football in Argentina................................................................................... 15 Ronnie Quinn, Catholic, Male and Working-class: The Evolution of the Hurling Club into a Wide-Ranging Irish-Argentine Institution (1920-1980)............................................................................................ 21 Hugh FitzGerald Ryan, The Development of Rugby in the River Plate Region: Irish Influences.................... 29 Jimmy Burns, Don Patricio O’Connell: An Irishman and the Politics of Spanish Football............................ 39 John Kennedy, ‘El Primer Crack’ of Argentine Basketball: Oscar Furlong.................................................. 49 Edmundo Murray, Horses and Horseracing: An Irish passion in Nineteenth-Century Río de la Plata......... 59 Guillermo MacLoughlin Bréard, From Shepherds to Polo Players: Irish-Argentines from the First to the Last Chukker.................................................................................................................................... 67 Edmundo Murray, ‘Rugby gives you values: they aren’t written but they are for life’: Interview with Felipe Contepomi .......................................................................................................................................... 75 John Kennedy, Alfredo Di Stéfano, football player ....................................................................................... 79 Conrad O'Neill Malcolm, Fabián O'Neill, football player.......................................................................... 83 John Kennedy, Santiago Phelan, rugby player and coach............................................................................... 85 Guillermo MacLoughlin Bréard, Pablo MacDonough, polo player............................................................. 87 William H. Mulligan, Jr., Review of Brendan O Donoghue's 'In Search of Fame and Fortune: The Leahy Family of Engineers,1780-1888', and Author's Reply................................................................... 89 Olwen Rowe, Review of Iván Alejandro Portela Bonachea’s 'Cantos de Tir na n-Og' ................................... 93 iii Irish Migration Studies in Latin America Sporting Traditions in Ireland and Latin America: An Introduction By John Kennedy Guest Editor The Fahy Boys hurling team, ca. 1940 (Hurling Club collection) Like many other aspects of Western culture, bonds of informal empire associated with sport can be traced back to ancient Greece, trading and capital investment, rather than where it played an important role in society, through formal colonial mechanisms. Argentina, particularly for religious and aesthetic purposes. as the country whose economy was most heavily It was in ancient Greece that the concept of influenced by the British, was also one of the sport as a competitive activity developed, the earliest countries to embrace modern British most well-known manifestation being the sports. By the early twentieth century, these Olympic Games which were held from 776 BC modern British sports had become an integral to 394 AD. Modern organised sport began to part of Argentine culture. They have picked up emerge in late eighteenth-century Britain and the ball of British sport and run with it with reached it zenith during the mid-Victorian more vigour than any other non-English period (1850-1873) with the codification of speaking nation (Carlin, 2007). As Argentina various types of 'traditional' football. was also the recipient of the largest number of Irish immigrants in the region, the Irish, as part Latin America was one of the first regions to of the wider English-speaking community benefit from the diffusion of these modern generically termed ingleses, were to play a sporting innovations. In continental Latin significant role in the diffusion and America, in contrast to the Caribbean region, development of these new sporting innovations. the diffusion process took place through the Kennedy, John. ‘Sporting Traditions in Ireland and Latin America: An Introduction’ 1 Vol. 6, n°1 (March 2008) As the articles in this journal demonstrate, the importation of the sporting elements of cultural contribution of the Irish and subsequently Irish- nationalism as exemplified by the setting up of Argentines to the sporting landscape was varied Buenos Aires Hurling club in 1900, analysed and wide-ranging. Many Irish people who here by Quinn. worked for British-owned railways or businesses Participation in sport was also shaped by social were either co-founders or members of the first class, rather than just ethnicity. Murray sports institutions, initially cricket clubs and later examines how many Irish were attracted to football and rugby clubs. Some also contributed Argentina by the possibility of becoming to the Argentine national team in the early days landlords, a progression in Ireland that would of football. Some Irish immigrants who had not have been attainable. Many of these became settled in the countryside and progressed from involved in equine sports, in particular labourers to landowners became connected with horseracing, which was associated from its early the development of equestrian pursuits such as years with nobility, landownership and horseracing and polo, which is covered in the masculine behaviours. As Murray illustrates, a essays by Murray and MacLoughlin. Beyond the disproportionate number of Irish or Irish- boundaries of the community of ingleses, Irish Argentines were founders of the exclusive immigrants and their families also made a Jockey Club of Buenos Aires, indicating the contribution, particularly in the field of social and economic advancement of the former education; the most notable example being Dr. tenant farmers. The article on polo by Santiago Fitzsimons, a pioneer of physical MacLoughlin also illustrates this social and education in the Argentine school system, which economic advancement. In contrast, as Quinn is detailed in 'The Sporting Dimension to the demonstrates, Hurling Club never attracted this Relationship Between Ireland and Latin traditional rural population of wealthier Irish America' essay by Kennedy. Irish and Irish- immigrants to their fold; the club was almost Argentines were not only influential in the exclusively made up of Irish or Irish-Argentines development of British sports, but also those of with more urban working and middle-class North-American provenance such as basketball, backgrounds. as examined by Kennedy. Furthermore, the impact of the Irish in sports was not just The internationalisation of sporting culture confined to Argentina, but also extended to from the mid-twentieth century onwards Spain, as explored in the article by Burns, which involved reciprocal interactions, with Latin documents the story of Patrick O'Connell, the Americans becoming innovators in various Dublin-born player who went on to manage five sporting disciplines, in particular football, polo Spanish clubs, most notably FC Barcelona. and to a lesser extent rugby, and introducing these innovations to Europe and further afield. The Irish Diaspora were not removed from the This interaction is eloquently illustrated in the profound cultural and political developments biographical profile of the footballer Alfredo di that were occurring in late nineteenth-century Stéfano. Other aspects of reciprocity include the Ireland, such as the trends towards Home Rule small but high-profile presence of Latin and cultural nationalism. Such developments American players in Irish provincial rugby were to have an impact on the Diaspora in teams, including Felipe Contepomi, who is Argentina, where some of the community interviewed in this edition. carved out a more distinct ethnic and social identity from the wider community of ingleses. These changing relationships are examined in John Kennedy this edition. Among the earliest expressions of these developments was the founding of distinct References Irish association football clubs in the 1890s, - Carlin, John ‘In the hands of God’ in Observer such as Lobos Athletic Club and Porteño Sports Monthly (London), 25 November 2007, Athletic Club, as examined in Raffo's essay. An accessed on-line 2 January 2008. obvious progression of this growing consciousness of Irish identity was the 2 Kennedy, John. ‘Sporting Traditions in Ireland and Latin America: An Introduction’ Irish Migration Studies in Latin America The Sporting Dimension to the Relationship between Ireland and Latin America By John Kennedy Mercedes Football Club. From left to right, standing: Rufino Bello, Tuco Rodríguez, David Lennard, Hugh Gahan,