Dr Gabe Logan from Northern Illinois University has been invited by the Andrew Hook Centre for American Studies to hold a lecture on Tuesday 20 April examining football in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Chicago.

Dr Logan is an expert on the early history of football in the United States and his lecture will explore how Scottish immigrants - mainly miners, railroad workers and shipbuilders - developed the game in the US.

"Gabe Logan's work is so interesting because it takes the story of Scottish migration to the United States and uses a popular example understood by both sides of the Atlantic," explains Marina Moskowitz, Director of the Andrew Hook Centre for American Studies, at the University of Glasgow.

"Although we call it football in Scotland and soccer in the US, the sport proved one of the ways that continuities in immigrant communities were carried out."

In the late 1920s the Chicago Bricklayer's Union (Number 21) organised one of the nation's only union sponsored football teams, dominated by Scottish players. The "Brickies", as they were known, enjoyed a remarkable run of success, and represented Chicago as the losing finalists in the 1928 and 1932 Open Cups (the US equivalent of the Scottish Cup).

The connection between the US and Scotland, and in particular Glasgow, remained strong, and Brickies players dominated the Chicago line-up against Rangers when they visited the city in 1928 and 1930, against Celtic in 1931, and against a team of Scottish International All-Stars in 1935 and 1939. Through all of this activity, Dr Logan will argue that Scots played a crucial role in the creation of a viable professional football league in the American Midwest, and that football succeeded in bringing together different ethnic communities more effectively than any other sport.

Media Relations Office (media@gla.ac.uk)

For more information contact Dr. Marina Moskowitz Director, Andrew Hook Centre for American Studies on 0141-330-2962 / mam@arts.gla.ac.uk, or contact the University Press Officer Mike Findlay on 0141 330-8593 or email: m.findlay@admin.gla.ac.uk.

Dr Gabe Logan?s lecture will be held 5:30 PM, Tuesday 20 April, Western Infirmary Lecture Theatre, off University Place. All welcome to attend.

First published: 19 April 2004