Join us for a SASH Session on Friday, June 7 at 12 pm ET when Tom McCabe will present, “Tom ‘Bullets’ Cahill: A Reappraisal of a Founding Father of American Soccer.”
There is quite a bit of mythology surrounding Thomas W. Cahill. The driving force behind the formation of the United States Soccer Football Association (now U.S. Soccer) in 1913, and the manager of the USA’s first official international matches in 1916, Cahill was called “The Father of Soccer in the United States” by 1920.
His scrapbooks at Southern Illinois University’s Lovejoy Library attest to that role, but they also appear to have left out an important life event. Tom “Bullets” Cahill almost died from gunshot wounds in 1900, a previously unknown fact. It’s as if it had been erased from history. While bedridden in a St. Louis hospital, Cahill reflected on the direction of his life: he had lost his job, his marriage was in shambles, and he had just been saved by a tricky operation. Within a few years, he turned his life around and was on his way to becoming a key figure in the American soccerscape. A better understanding of that pivotal moment at the turn of a new century can lead to a reappraisal of Cahill’s role as a founding father, and for that matter, a more complex and complete understanding of early American soccer.
Tom McCabe teaches at Notre Dame’s London Global Gateway, but has also taught at Rutgers University and St. Benedict’s Prep in Newark, New Jersey. He is working on a history of the American Football Association and has also produced two documentaries. He is past president of the Society for American Soccer History.
Login information for the session is as follows:
Topic: Tom “Bullets” Cahill: A Reappraisal of a Founding Father of American Soccer
Time: Jun 7, 2024 12:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82828637478?pwd=A2zKcoP1jAvmeCcVZOqvRgNZnYkFtg.1
Meeting ID: 828 2863 7478
Passcode: 823709
I enjoyed this session when I caught up with it a week or so ago. I am a journalist in Sydney, Australia with a keen interest in soccer history. I have written books on Australian soccer before World War II which can be found on the Fair Play Publishing website. There appear to be links between Tom Cahill and Australian soccer people in the period 1909-1914 that I would like to explore. I wonder whether Tom McCabe could contact me to help direct my enquiries on these matters. Australian press reports in 1913-14 carried stories claiming backing from Cahill and Winton E. Barker for an Australian tour to the U.S. and Canada and the then newly formed Australian national body, the Commonwealth Football Association (1911), refers to ‘voluminous correspondence’ with USFA.