October 28th (1884)

Oct. 28, 1884: In an important milestone for St. Louis soccer, and, perhaps, for the global history of the game, the first soccer league in St. Louis, the Western Association, is organized. The Western Association will consist of five teams — the Hibernians, Thistles, Westerns, Jacksons and the Shamrocks — in the league’s first season in 1885. Games will be played at Sportsman’s Park on north Grand and at Union Park at Cass and Jefferson. “If this was truly a football ‘league,’ it predated the first in England by more than two years,” David Wangerin writes in his 2011 book, Distant Corners. The Shamrocks will win the 1885 championship. The league will disintegrate before the finish of its second season.