And had to wait 100 years for the curse to be lifted and for them to win their first major silverware.
Even after managers had put crucifixes on the floodlights and urinated at the four corners of the ground.
While fellow English clubs Leeds and Derby have also dallied with the Romany community and lived to regret it.
The Penn is mightier
Building on success: Philadelphia
Sometimes a curse can be imposed across sports as what happened when Philadelphia’s Big Four teams were cursed.;
For the hubris of city builders in 1987.
Who perhaps didn’t think that the Ghost of William Penn, the city’s founder wouldn’t notice that they erected a building taller than the peak of his hat.
On his statue atop the spire of City Hall.
A no-no in the City of Brotherly Love.
When the final beam of the Comcast Center, was raised in 2007, iron workers attached a small figurine of Billy to the beam in an attempt to break the curse.
And it seemed to work with the following year, the Phillies winnimg the 2008 World Series.
Ten years later, when the even taller Comcast Technology Center was topped out.
The iron workers did the same thing and the Philadelphia Eagles won the Super Bowl.
And in other curses
Pitching for success: Cubs’ Wrigley Field
Add to that the Curse of the Bambino (Babe Ruth’s trade from the Boston Red Sox to the New York Yankees) and Merkle’s Boner and the Curse of the Billy Goat placed on the Chicago Cubs.
And you’ll see that there is no limit to price that can be paid for perceived indiscretions.
Though what our own Scotland did to offend the deities which ensures that our football team can never progress.
Beyond the group stages of a major football finals.
Well answers on a postcard… and yes, we all know the joke about Scotland returning home before the postcards.
And yes it will sound better in his native Xhosa tongue but for the day that’s in it and in the words of my fellow Glaswegian… oh, oh, oh, oh Mandela Day.
The Great Man, and the world hasn’t really had anyone like him since, was born on this day 108 years ago.
When you’re young you don’t mind approaching sporting legends but that gets lost over the years, all of which springs to mind reflecting on the life of Gary Sobers, a Bajan legend cast in stone.
Alas, the old autograph book of the players from that cricket match in Glasgow, including the great Sir Gary’s scribble, is also a thing of the past.
Windies blow in: With Jevan at the cricket
While in the haze of rum from a day out at the cricket at the Kensington Oval in Bridgetown I lost the courage to approach the great man, sat in the crowd.
Or ask him his recollections of Old Anniesland or the boy who had crept through the bushes to see him.
In with the bricks
The name of the game: The Murty name
Sobers, for those of us who were lucky to see him back in the day was the OG all-rounder.
And the first to hit six sixes in a six-ball over.
You can imagine just how.
Standing by his statue outside the Bridgetown ground flashing his bat in the air.
When it was Scottish teacher Hutton, the Father of Argentinian Football, all along.
For it was Gorbals boy Watson who popularised the game in Buenos Aires along with his fellow Caledonian emigres.
Elementary: For Watson Hutton
Watson, a keen sportsman (obvs) introduced kickball at the St Andrews Scotch School in the nation’s capital in 1882.
And the Glaswegian was behind the formation of the Argentine Association Football League in 1893.
And two years later the Buenos Aires English High School and a former pupil’s team in 1898 which became known as the Alumni Athletic.
Argentinian Alumni
We’re all right Jock: Alumni
Now historians of Argentinian football will know all about Alumni, the leading lights in that country’s game in the first two decades of the 20th century.
Watson was himself standing on the shoulders of another giant, an Alec Lamont, a head teacher from St Andrews, who two years prior to Watson’s league set up the Argentine Association Football League.
The earliest known league outside of Britain which St Andrews won after a play-off with Old Caledonians.
Our cup of Lipton tea
Down to a tea: Thomas Lipton
Now World Cup anoraks will be quick to tell you that the first final was between Argentina and Uruguay.
But it was an established rivalry by 1930, again because of Scots.
Glasgow tea magnate Thomas Lipton donated the Copa Lipton trophy in 1905 for competition between both nations which ran until 1992.
Watson’s son Arnold starred for Alumni and scored in Argentina’s 2-0 Copa Lipton win over Uruguay in 1906.
And that Scottish thread has been running through Argentinian teams ever since.
James Brown’s Boys
Argentina legend: Watson’s gravestone
With a James Brown, one of the original Scottish settlers to Argentina in 1824 delivering manifold to the Argentinian cause.
Seven brothers and a cousin, all grandchildren of James Brown, would play for Argentinean clubs and six would also play for the Argentinian national team.
Jorge Gibson Brown captained Argentina from 1908 to 1913 and if you recognise that name in a previous Argentina team then ten out of ten.
Jose Luis Brown scored one of the goals as Argentina won the World Cup in 1986.
Vamos Argentina
Boca roll: Diego at Boca
While World Cup winner and key member of today’s Argentina team Alexis Mac Allister, is clearly one of Jock Tamson’s Bairns.
All of which you can regale your Argentinian friends with when you visit the country’s iconic grounds.
While, of course, you can pay pilgrimage to the Father of Argentinian Football himself, Watson Hutton.
At the British Cemetery (Cementerio Britanico) on Avenida Elcano in the Chacarita neighbourhood of the capital, accessible via the Federico Lacroze subway station.
