Scottish Sport History - devoted to our sporting heritage
  • Home
  • Books for sale
    • The men who made Scotland
    • World's First Foot-Ball Club
    • First Elevens
    • Arthur Kinnaird
    • History of Dunblane Football Club
  • Sports History News and Blog
  • Scottish sports bibilography
    • Scottish sport general
    • Football books
    • Football books (non league)
    • Rugby books
    • Cricket books
    • Athletics books
    • Shinty books
    • Curling books
    • Bowling books
    • Swimming books
    • Hockey books
    • Ice hockey books
    • Tennis books
    • Boxing books
  • Digitised books and articles
  • Scotland v England: the origins
    • England v Scotland 1870
    • Scotland v England 1872
    • England v Scotland 1873
    • Scotland v England 1874
  • Arthur Kinnaird: First Lord of Football
    • Kinnaird's FA Cup
    • Kinnaird blog archive
    • Kinnaird the canoeist
    • Kinnaird family history
    • Rossie Priory
  • Contact / About Me
  • Links

Scots in opposition: Peter Farmer and Victor Gibson at the French Cup Final of 1924

29/10/2015

4 Comments

 
Picture
The Sete team which played in the 1924 French Cup final, with player/coach Victor Gibson at right end of front row
Sadly, there will be no Scots in France at next summer's European Championships. So I've been taking a look back at an era when Scottish football played a key role at the very top of the French game: the 1920s.
   And in particular the 1924 French Cup Final, when both sides may have been led by Scottish coaches.  I say 'may have been' as there is an air of mystery about one of them, but what is in no doubt is that Olympique de Marseille won the cup for the first time under the charge of a Scotsman, Peter Farmer. His team won 3-2 after extra time against FC Sete, who were captained and trained by Victor Gibson.
   Peter Farmer is often referred to as 'anglais' in the French reference books, but while there are some gaps to be filled in his career, he was definitely a Scot; in fact he was born in the football hotbed of Renton on 26 October 1886.
   Little is known of his early life or how he embarked on a life in foreign football. I have seen references to him playing for clubs in Scotland but no facts to back that up. Similarly, there are sources that say he coached in Vienna, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia and Berlin, but there is scant contemporary evidence.
   However, I did find a mention of him holding a diploma in medical massage from Glasgow's Western Infirmary, and this would have been as much an essential qualification as his coaching skills.
   Peter Farmer was appointed to train Olympique de Marseille in 1923, and soon took the club to its first major triumph, the French Cup on 13 April 1924.
Picture
Olympique de Marseille's 1924 cup winning team
   His career after that was a dizzying carousel of clubs and countries. He had two seasons in Italy at Torino and US Biellese; he returned to France with Red Star (Paris) and won another French Cup with them in 1928. He was even appointed trainer to the France national team for the 1928 Olympic Games, but they were knocked out at the first hurdle. One of the French players, Peter Nicolas, who was taking part in his third Olympics and played under Farmer at Red Star, had this to say about him: 'He was a fine fellow but he never gave us a word of advice, just saying 'OK' each time we won. On the other hand, he knew how to keep the team's spirits up and that was ample compensation.'
   In the summer of 1929 Farmer returned home and spent a season as trainer of Celtic, also taking charge of the Scotland team for their game against Northern Ireland. After a year, it was back to France for a second brief spell at Marseille, then a couple of years with Racing Club de Paris and a short time with Stella Club of Cherbourg. 
   In 1934 he was finally appointed to manage an English club but it was the backwater of Tunbridge Wells Rangers, and a few months later he had resigned to go abroad again, this time to assist coaching development at the Romanian FA.
   That seems to be the end of Farmer's football career, and he spent his remaining years in London, dying in obscurity in Hammersmith on 4 September 1964.
Picture
Peter Farmer trained a second French Cup-winning team, Red Star in 1928. He is in the back row, second from left.
   And what of Victor Gibson, the opposing coach in 1924? He is a man who had an enormous impact on French football over two decades, yet who remains a complete enigma outside of his time there. He is described as Scottish in many sources, even as playing for Falkirk and Morton, but I have not been able to confirm anything about his origins, despite extensive research.
   The earliest mentions of Gibson come in 1911 when he was with a touring team of amateurs from Plumstead, Kent, who played a couple of games in Barcelona against CD Espanyol.
   Apparently then aged 22, Gibson (and a couple of his colleagues) liked it so much there that he stayed and was appointed captain of the team. He even made the front cover of the sports magazine 'Stadium'. There are potential clues to his identity as he is sometimes described as 'V. Raine Gibson' but unfortunately this has not led to any breakthroughs.
Picture
Victor Gibson on the front cover of Spanish magazine 'Stadium' in December 1911

After a year in Spain, Gibson was persuaded to head for Sete (or Cette as it was then known) and he would spend the next 12 years there as captain and coach. He was already described as a veteran in the early 1920s but continued to play and score goals throughout the decade. Sete reached the French Cup finals of 1923 and 1924, losing both, with Gibson only playing in the latter match.
   He then succeeded Peter Farmer as Marseille coach and in five years he led them to two more French Cup successes, in 1926 and 1927. 
   Regarded as one of the top coaches in the country (in fact known as 'Papey' which translates as 'Daddy') he was poached by the Peugeot family in 1929 to manage their new club in Sochaux. Their free spending led to the game in France finally turning professional, but his five years there were not a great success and he left in 1934 (they won the league the following season!). He was still playing in 1930, although not as a first team regular.
   Gibson's coaching powers were probably fading and his last appointment was for the 1934/35 season at an amateur club in Bordeaux, called FC Hispanola-Bastidienne. 
   There is one delightful anecdote of him watching a Marseille match and each time his side scored he took a bottle out of his pocket and had a swig; his colleague asked what was in it and the answer was 'water and tea'. It was only when he stood up at the end of the game that it became apparent the (now empty) bottle had contained whisky.
   Although Victor Gibson is often now described as Scottish, contemporary reports are inconclusive and he disappears from view after 1935 - there are no newspaper reports, no comments, no death notices. It seems nobody knows what happened to him.
   The only potential clue is that in 1934 he was interviewed about the chances of the France team in the forthcoming World Cup, and the reporter noted that Gibson had recently become a father, with a charming young daughter. So perhaps, somewhere, there is a family who have proud memories of their football pioneer grandfather.

Update (January 2019): The true identity of Victor Gibson is discovered!

Victor Gibson and Peter Farmer belonged to a generation of British coaches who were successful in France but were virtually unknown in their own country. It would be wonderful to find out their full stories, so please get in touch if you have any additional information.
​
4 Comments
Pep Puey
11/1/2016 05:05:41 pm

On May 18th 1911, "El Mundo Deportivo", a sports newspaper from Barcelona, reported a series of football matches between one of the teams from Barcelona called a Club Deportivo Español (it took more year before they could use the term Reial, and their name was in Spanish because Catalan was forbiden) and the Plumstead FC from London.
In the article, they talk about Plumstead fottball players. One of them is V. Raine Gibson. Literally: "V. Raine Gibson (defender).- 22 year old. Excellent international player. He represented London in several ocasions. His classic way of playing and his confidence are much appreciated".
Football matches were played on May 25th and 28th. In the first match, the English team were (literally): "Hapgood, goalkeeper; Buggs i Raine-Gibson, defenders; Darley, Basset i Childs, midfielders; Cturton, Allack, Hodge, Quinn i Elliot, forwards. English players controlled the match and scored 5 to 0. In the second match, two Plumstead players played with Espanyol team, Raine-Gibson and Allack. The result was 1 to 6. Allack scored the goal of Espanyol team.
Another match was played on May 29th. In this match, newspapers reported that -Gibson, Allack and Hodge had signed up and played with Espanyol team. The result was more modest, 1 to 3. Gibson scored the goal of Espanyol team.
In the football season 1911-1912, Gibson was player, captain and coach of Espanyol. The Espanyol team won the Catalonia championship.
In the beginning of 1912, the "Federació Catalana de Clubs de Football" (Catalan Federation of Football Clubs), appointed Gibson as coach of the Catalan team. Newspapers reported him to be English and not Scottish (please note that in that time they confused the terms and used to name English to all the British). They played against the French team at the Colombes stadium on February 20th. The game and the result were terrible as the French won 7 to 0.
Gibson is in a photography of a Catalan team published in a newspaper

Reply
Andy Mitchell
11/1/2016 06:42:19 pm

Pep, many thanks for your comments and the additional information about Victor Gibson. His identity is still something of a mystery, but I will keep looking.

Reply
Pierre Lanfranchi
8/1/2017 07:01:07 am

About Victor Gibson, I had, over the years, the possibilty to look at quite a lot of sources.
I can confirm that he was a Scotsman.
In 1914, he created Football Cliub de Sete together with a Swiss Victor Schlegel and as Club President another Swiss. They choose green and white as the club coulours because it was the colours of the Vaud (Lausanne) canton in Switzerland (place of origin of Schlegel) and the colours of Celtic, Gibson's favourite club.
His French career saw him in Sete (1912-24), Montpellier (1924-25), Marseille (1925-29), FC Grasse (1929-30), FC Sochaux (1930-34), FC Deportivo Bastidienne Bordeaux (1934-35).
Regarding Farmer, he is not on the picture of 1924. The man on the right is Andre Gascard, the club's secretary and former player of Cette and Marseille.

Reply
Martha S link
6/1/2021 05:43:20 pm

I enjoyed reading your blog thanks.

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    September 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012

    Categories

    All

    Author

    All blog posts, unless stated, are written by Andy Mitchell, who is researching Scottish sport on a regular basis.