EP 39: ”’How about that trip to Worcester!’ Building sporting links between Britain and the USA in the 1920s.”

2026-05-19

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On Friday, May 8, Dilwyn Porter presented a SASH Session titled, “How about that trip to Worcester!’ Building sporting links between Britain and the USA in the 1920s.” In the presentation, Porter discussed the history behind a series of games featuring clubs from Worcester, Massachusetts and Worcester, England in the 1920s. Originating during the First World War with the establishment of the British American Fellowship, a forerunner of today’s “twinning” or “sister cities” movement, the partnership betw...

On Friday, May 8, Dilwyn Porter presented a SASH Session titled, “How about that trip to Worcester!’ Building sporting links between Britain and the USA in the 1920s.”

In the presentation, Porter discussed the history behind a series of games featuring clubs from Worcester, Massachusetts and Worcester, England in the 1920s. Originating during the First World War with the establishment of the British American Fellowship, a forerunner of today’s “twinning” or “sister cities” movement, the partnership between the two cities resulted in teams from the American Worcester visiting the English Worcester in 1926 and 1929, and teams from Worcestershire crossing the Atlantic in the other direction in 1927 and 1930.

Porter has written an essay describing some of the background that can be read on the SASH website.

Soccer historians are most likely to have come across Dil Porter via English Gentlemen and World Soccer: Corinthians, Amateurism and the Global Game, co-authored with Chris Bolsmann, or through his online contributions to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography on various iconic figures in English football, especially members of the 1966 World Cup winning squad (most recently Jimmy Greaves, Bobby Charlton, forthcoming).

As a historian of sport, he has been drawn to a number of broad themes – amateurism, Cold War sport and sports tourism being three of them. Now retired from teaching at De Montfort University, Leicester, he chairs the Friends of Worcestershire Archives in his home town of Worcester, England, which is how he got interested in this topic.

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Podcast produced by Brian Quarstad.

Music created by LiteSaturation and found at Pixabay.

View the video of the session at httpshttps://youtu.be/RDV0Ba-At9g

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