David Forsyth graduated from the University of Toronto in 1875 (see previous post), and it may not be entirely coincidental that the number of mentions of “football” in the Toronto Globe archives increases significantly in the latter half of the 1870s.  Not a few mention the Berlin High school team (in what is now Kitchener, Ontario, renamed during the First World War in part to erase that pesky German heritage) where Forsyth went to teach after graduating.  The high school team, led by what was affectionately known as the  “Triumivirate”—Forsyth, school principal J.W. Connor and Adolph Mueller—was likely one of the few of its kind.  Hence, as this Globe story from November 21st, 1876 details, a one-all draw between the Galt bankers and the Berlin High school, hardly the most attractive of match-ups.

Considering Forsyth’s future exploits, a game against some bankers from nearby Galt (now Cambridge Ontario) seems a pretty inauspicious beginning.  Yet it was a small sign of things to come.  Colin Jose notes in his book The Encyclopedia of Canadian Soccer that the 1870s saw an explosion in the number of teams in Ontario.  Roughly three months before, Toronto’s Carlton Cricket Club formed a football section, and Jose points to a Toronto Daily Mail article which explains it had been “formed for the purpose of introducing the London Association game as a great many players disapprove of the carrying of the ball which enters so largely into the Rugby Union game.”

On October 21st, 1876, the newly-formed Carlton team faced off against the Toronto Lacrosse Club.  Despite the initial draw, Carlton won a rematch 3-0 the following month.  A new football power had emerged, and so naturally, a mere eight months later, Forsyth organized a match between his Berlin high school team and the Carlton Club.  While initially meriting only a tiny blurb in the Globe, the match seems to have gone down as a classic, or as the Globe put it, “the finest game of football yet played in Canada.”

Chances are Forsyth knew some of the Carlton Club players from his University of Toronto days (a Globe article from April 1876 details a match between “Eastern” and “Western” Ontario played at the University of Toronto, likely featuring players from U of T and Queen’s University in Kingston. Many of the same names from the “Western” team played for Carlton against Berlin high school, including the goal-scorer).  While Carlton won 1-0 on a strike by R. M. Liddell, the game proved Forsyth’s mettle as a proponent (and player – see the Berlin team sheet) of the game.  While still hardly the game we would recognize today (Jose quotes Forsyth as recalling the pitch was 150 yards long and 100 wide), the match marked the beginning of a shift toward the Berlin-Galt region as the centre of power in Canadian soccer.  It would be a mere three years later when Forsyth would help form the Western Football Association.