No Excuse to Offer if Soccer Champs Lose
Commenting on the Scandinavian invasion by the American soccer champions, critics contend that the Americans will have no excuse to offer if they lose, basing this contention on the reserve material that has been included in the squad. One critic says:
"If America's championship soccer football club, Bethlehem Steel Company's great team, fails in its conquest on foreign fields in the next three months, it will have no excuses to offer. The Beths face a severe schedule in five different countries, but an adequate number of extra players is being taken along to meet any reasonable emergencies -- emergencies, that are reasonable to be expected in what approaches international competition with teams whose styles of play is not a little rough.
"In fact, Manager Thomas W. Cahill, who as honorary secretary of the United States Football Association, was invited by the Bethlehem athletic management to direct the tour, will have 17 players -- 11 members of the Bethlehem squad of last season and six added stars, virtually the pick of the East.
"there are two goalies, Duncan, of Bethlehem, and George J. Tintle, just home from France, and who was the goal keeper of the first American international soccer team in Norway and Sweden in the summer of 1916.
"Four fullbacks in the squad will be Fletcher, Ferguson and Wilson, veterans of the Schwab aggregation, and James M. Robertson, of New York, who captained the Robins Dry Dock eleven last season, and who starred in the American halfback line in Scandinavia three summers ago.
"Halfbacks will be five in number, including John J. Heminsley of Newark, who played brilliant football for the Merchant's Shipbuilding Team "A" of Harriman, Pa., last season;; Albert Blakely of Philadelphia, who, with Heminsley, was a member of the 1916 international team and three Bethlehem standbys, Pepper, Murray and Captain Campbell, who has been elected to lead the Beths on this tour.
"If the entire country had been scoured for talent probably no better array of forwards could have been presented than Davey Brown, of Kearny, and Archie Stark, of Paterson, both members of Paterson F. C., runners-up in the national title quest in the 1918-19 season; Fleming, McKelvey, Forrest and the phenomenal Ratican, all familiar to followers of the steel company team.