Two Exeter City supporters, Mike Paxton and Martin Weiler, have just returned from a trip to Uruguay and Argentina organised by Aficionados, a new football travel company.
While there they took the chance to follow in the footsteps of the Grecians tour of 1914. They were delighted to find that the visit had not been forgotten and quickly made new friends to keep the link going. Here they report on their experiences...
It took the original City party three weeks to reach Argentina by ship and one of the places they stopped on the way was Montevideo, capital of Uruguay. There were some reports of discussions about possible matches there but these didn’t come to fruition. Nevertheless some of the party went for a drive and reported that ‘motor drivers seem to move like the wind in this country’ and that when they came to corners ‘it was a little nerve wracking to see ‘speeding motors, tramcars tearing across, and the ordinary slow and cumbrous horse and mule traffic’.
Modern Montevideo, especially in the old town with its pedestrianised streets, seems much calmer today but it was good to see the port and imagine the City players looking out on what must have truly been another world.
After Uruguay it was, like the City party of 1914, on to Buenos Aires, capital of Argentina - a short trip across the famous River Plate. One of our first visits there was to Palermo Park where there is a monument to the first recorded game of football in Argentina in 1867. Exeter City were due to play games in the stadium at Palermo but a dispute led to a switch of venues
And so six of the eight games played in Argentina were hosted at the Avellaneda Stadium, home of Racing Club. These games were against Norte, Sur, Racing, Combinados, Liga Argentina (twice). The game against Racing achieved notoriety for an incident when City scored the opening goal in a 2-0 victory. Club Chairman Michael McGahey wrote ‘when we got our first goal, one of the spectators, who by the way, is the Secretary of the Racing Club, produced a revolver and threatened to shoot the referee’.
We were very keen to watch a game at Racing, especially as their ground is still on the exact same spot where City played. Luckily we managed to see a top division match when Racing played Independiente Rivadavia. It was quite an experience thinking about Exeter being there nearly 112 years ago.
City also played one other game in Buenos Aires, at the Western Railway Athletic ground at Caballito. It’s the oldest ground still in use in Argentina and home to historic Club Ferrol Carril Oeste. They have a very active museum and we couldn’t have been made more welcome as we undertook a stadium tour and museum visit. They were aware of Exeter’s game there. It was 0-0 against ‘Argentinos’ – a select eleven that was virtually a full international team. Every player was an international at some stage of his career. One museum volunteer excitedly shared a minute from the Argentinean FA records about the visit.
We were honoured to present the museum with a copy of Aidan Hamilton’s book ‘Have you ever played Brazil? The story of Exeter City’s 1914 tour to South America’ along with some other mementos. We also brought back some small items from Ferro for the ECFC museum.
We later visited Quilmes Football Club, the oldest in Argentina. In their museum we heard about two of their players who had turned out against Exeter in several games. While here and against the backdrop of an old Argentinean FA pennant we also presented a copy of Aidan’s book to Esteban Bekerman, a leading Argentinean football historian. He is director of Entre Tiempos, a football cultural exchange centre, and generously shared information on Exeter’s visit to add to our museum’s collection.
Everywhere we went there was interest in the Exeter City story. We were part of a group interviewed on live TV outside the Velez Sarsfield stadium and so ‘Exeter City’ got a double mention when we were all asked who we supported. One night when watching a game at Independiente we sat next to a local father and son. They asked us who we supported and when we said Exeter City the son immediately said “League 1”. What we didn’t know was that the father was a radio broadcaster and a couple of days later Esteban sent us an extract from a podcast talking about ‘these passionate Exeter fans ‘.
And amazingly just days after we got home we heard from another football friend we had made in Buenos Aires. He was keen to tell us that Exeter City had gone viral in Argentina with the story of the Barcelona fan who turned up at the wrong St James Park. Who would have imagined that back in 1914!