City tour to the Netherlands in 1925

[Boyo]

The story of our 1914 trip to Argentina and Brazil is very well documented. But I'm curious to learn more about the tour to the Netherlands a few years later.

I copy below some info from wiki, but there's little else I can find. Can anyone signpost me to more information please?

2025 will mark the centenary of this tour. Wouldn't it be fabulous to play in Amsterdam again!

First tour of the Netherlands[edit]

Exeter City relaxing in an Amsterdam café before their match with Ajax in 1925
On 15 March 1925, just one day after playing Norwich City in the league, City played a friendly match against Ajax in Amsterdam. The team travelled from Harwich to Rotterdam by ferry in the morning, before beating Ajax 5–1 in the evening in front of 15,000 spectators.[11] Harry Kirk netted a hat-trick, with the other two goals being scored by Stanley Charlton (from a penalty) and Wilfred Lievesley.[12]

 

[iscalad]

Great find. Nothing in the Grecian Archives about this, as far as I can see.

 

[Grecianman135]

The story of our 1914 trip to Argentina and Brazil is very well documented. But I'm curious to learn more about the tour to the Netherlands a few years later.

I copy below some info from wiki, but there's little else I can find. Can anyone signpost me to more information please?

2025 will mark the centenary of this tour. Wouldn't it be fabulous to play in Amsterdam again!

First tour of the Netherlands[edit]

Exeter City relaxing in an Amsterdam café before their match with Ajax in 1925
On 15 March 1925, just one day after playing Norwich City in the league, City played a friendly match against Ajax in Amsterdam. The team travelled from Harwich to Rotterdam by ferry in the morning, before beating Ajax 5–1 in the evening in front of 15,000 spectators.[11] Harry Kirk netted a hat-trick, with the other two goals being scored by Stanley Charlton (from a penalty) and Wilfred Lievesley.[12]

This is brilliant! perhaps worth an email to the club admin staff or to Craig for a programme feature would be an interesting read with even further research!!

 

[Hants_red]

Mike posted this last week

Hants - you should have gone to Holland! You would have been following in the footsteps of Exeter City. After beating Norwich 1-0 in a Division 3 South game at Carrow Road on Saturday 14 March 1925 the team traveled to Amsterdam by boat from Harwich. The next day City played at the Ajax Stadium and thumped an Ajax packed Swallows team 5-1. The crowd was variously described as ‘12,000’ and ‘15,000 or so’.

The Exeter City FC Museum has a wonderful black and white photo of the team in an Amsterdam Cafe. On the day following the match the City players were ‘driven round the city in a charabanc and amongst other places interest visited the Stadium, where the Olympic Games are to be held’.

Hants - you could have done a charabanc ride and visited the Olympic Stadium (1928 Olympics). It’s still there.

 

[tom_ecfc]

From the Grecian Archive

 

[Martin Weiler]

Totally agree that we should try and do something to mark the centenary of our trip to Amsterdam. I wrote to the Club a while back to raise that very point.

There are often errors repeated about City's early history and the game against Ajax is one of them. It's true we played in the famous old Ajax stadium, it's true that several Ajax players were in the opposing team but despite reports to the contrary we actually played a team known as Zwaluwen or the Swallows.

Anyway in 2019 I wrote a piece for the Some Sunny Day fanzine to try and summarise what I could glean about the one game tour . I reproduce it here:


THE DAY CITY DIDN’T PLAY AJAX

A recent trip to Amsterdam got me interested in the game played there by the Grecians back in 1925. I was determined to visit the site of the stadium where the fixture took place and to find out all about the match itself. It turned out things weren’t quite as they have been portrayed down the years.

Historians are always told to go back to primary sources to establish the facts. For example you can find many articles that state that the famous Brazil v Exeter City game in 1914 ended 3-3. It didn’t. Contemporary reports are quite clear that Brazil won 2-0.

And certainly the secondary sources I looked at concerning the Dutch adventure were strangely contradictory. Mike Blackstone’s ‘Exeter City: A File of Fascinating Facts’ records that the occasion in 1925 ‘saw City go down 5-1 to a strong Ajax side in Amsterdam’.

In contrast my much thumbed ‘Exeter City: A Complete Record’ states City ‘opposed Ajax in a friendly match. Ajax were not quite at full strength... City won 5-1’.

So the one thing agreed on was that City were playing Ajax. So I went onto an Ajax history website which lists every friendly game played by Ajax down the years. Excitedly 1925 was reached but to my frustration there was no mention of the game.

I could hear my history teachers from down the years saying – go back and check the original reports and so I did. And as a result I found out what really happened.

For many years The Football Express was the authoritative voice of local football and its edition of 21 March 1925 has a full account under a headline ‘The trip to Holland’.

And there early in the report is the explanation of why the game isn’t on the list of Ajax games. In summary: City didn’t play Ajax.

The reporter ‘The Chiel’ explained ‘The absence of several players of the Ajax Club on international duty in the match Holland v Belgium, led to Exeter City being opposed by a mixed representative side styled Zwaluwen (The Swallows) at Amsterdam last Sunday’.

The Swallows had been set up in 1907 inspired by the English Corinthians team. The Corinthians with their promotion of gentlemanly amateurism had toured the Netherlands in 1906 and again in each of the three years prior to City’s trip.

Although City didn’t play Ajax they pretty much did the next best thing. The Swallows side included five Ajax players and the game was played at the Ajax stadium. It is perhaps no great surprise that all this got translated over the years to a game against Ajax.

I managed to hunt down the site of the stadium known as Het Houten. It was the home of Ajax from 1907-1934 and held 15,000. Sadly there is no reference to the stadium there now amid a bland shopping and housing quarter.

But the Football Express says ‘The Ajax ground was surrounded by flags in real gala fashion and places of honour were given to the Dutch and English flags – although, be it whispered, the layer was the Red Ensign’. The report added ‘There was a huge score board on top of the banking and as the goals went in they were registered in big numbers on this board’. The crowd was variously described as ‘12,000’ and ‘15,000 or so’.

Exeter had made the trip straight after a Division Three South victory (1-0; Compton) at Norwich on 14 March. They sailed to Amsterdam from Harwich and ten of the team who had played at the Canaries played again the next day resplendent in ‘red jerseys with a white “V”. The Swallows wore ‘blue jerseys and knickers’.

The Football Express described the occasion as ‘an exhilarating Sunday afternoon match which the Grecians, playing excellent football ran out comfortable winners’.

The Swallows had added ‘first class players from other clubs’ to the core of Ajax players. ‘Some very good forward play was seen from the home side’ says the Express ‘but their half backs were weak and the strength of the Exeter defence and of the right wing of their attack were among the deciding factors in the game’.

City won 5-1 with Charlton (pen), Kirk (3) and Lievesley scoring the goals. In the second half ‘amidst tremendous excitement Blinkhof, the Zwaluwen inside right, scored a beautiful goal. Dutch reports say a different player, Pijl, scored. Primary sources eh!

Local reports said that Charlton and Albert Potter (who later died in the Exeter Blitz) were the outstanding City players. Potter was described as ‘de spil’ – the lynchpin.

‘Exeter’s superior training told heavily in the second half’ and another report commented that ‘a curious feature of the game in Holland is that charging is not permitted although in the match in question kicking went by unpunished’.

Details of the game were eagerly awaited back in England. One paper (spot the mistake!) said ‘The performance of the Exeter team against the famous Ajax Club at Amsterdam has aroused great enthusiasm locally. Every follower of the code in the East Devon district has been anxious to know who did the damage’.

When reports emerged, they also included details of the off field entertainment enjoyed by the City party. Photographs have survived of the team in an Amsterdam cafe. They were also taken to the Diamond works and to the Queen’s Palace. The day after the game saw the City players ‘driven round the city in a charabanc and amongst other places of interest visited the Stadium, where the Olympic Games are to be held’.

I too went to the Olympic Stadium, where the 1928 games took place, and it was good to stand there and think of former Grecians doing the same all those years ago in another chapter in the fascinating history of our Club.

 

[Boyo]

Love it. Thank you Martin. So who’s up for a Dutch tour in 2025!?

 

[tom_ecfc]

There are often errors repeated about City's early history and the game against Ajax is one of them. It's true we played in the famous old Ajax stadium, it's true that several Ajax players were in the opposing team but despite reports to the contrary we actually played a team known as Zwaluwen or the Swallows.

I will update the Grecian archive match report, thanks Martin

 

[Hants_red]

Mike posted this last week

I meant Martin not his brother!

 

[iscalad]

I meant Martin not his brother!

Too late....