The Greatest Show on (Tartan)Turf
56 years ago today, Civic Stadium hosted the first professional soccer match in Oregon—and first on a new kind of (artificial) surface.
This short piece is another entry to the category Ephemera—mostly things that don't yet fully fit into Long-form , but are still worth sharing.
The 1969 NASL season was a different breed of cat.
One year after its formation (a merger between the National Professional Soccer League and United Soccer Association) and 1968 inaugural campaign, the anemic NASL found itself with only 5 of the original 17 post-merger sides remaining.
As a solution to stave off extinction and build interest in the league, the ‘69 campaign’s five teams played two seasons in one, the first of which featured NASL teams represented by established European sides on holiday. The International Cup Competition—as these first 8 games played in the month of May were called—saw the Kansas City Spurs (née England’s Wolverhampton Wanderers) lift the cup. Following in the standings when the double round robin settled were second-place Baltimore Bays (West Ham United), then Dallas Tornado (Dundee United), Atlanta Chiefs (Aston Villa), and St. Louis Stars (Kilmarnock) respectively.
The second season of that, um, season saw the proper NASL professional sides replace their European doppelgängers for a three-month, 16-match quadruple round robin, where the (actual) Kansas City Spurs took home the playoff-less 1969 NASL crown with a record of 10 wins, 2 loses, and 4 draws, earning them 110 points—one better than the second-place, Vic-Crowe-player/coached Atlanta Chiefs, who missed a co-crown by a goal, with 109 points.
And it was a message earlier this week from that Chiefs-(eventually) turned-Timbers first gaffer’s oldest son, Mark Crowe, that initially alerted me to the Northern-Enterprises-presented, 3M-sponsored match that occurred between the two 1969 NASL seasons: A May 25 “Professional International Cup” meeting between two of those NASL cosplayers, cast in the part of their European selves, this time, in a proof-of-concept turf-affirming exhibition match right in our own Civic Stadium.
That night—56 years ago today—3,073 fans witnessed the first professional soccer match in Oregon, a contest between England’s West Ham United and Scotland’s Dundee United. Brought to them by Tartan Turf creators 3M, the Terrors 8-2 drubbing at the hands of the Hammers may be somewhat lost to history.
And though the World-Cup-winning trio of Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst, and Martin Peters playing for West Ham that night was definitely a treat for fans in 1969, it’s three other names from the East London club that strike the sensibilities of 2025 Timbers fans.
Clyde Best
At just 18, the Bermuda International was in the US with West Ham and scored his first senior-side goal for the Hammers (as Bays) in the International Competition opener on May 2. When West Ham appeared in Portland as itself at the end of that month, now-Timbers-legend Best, whose mural permanently resides on the Providence Park concourse, was not on the roster that night. He would go on to properly debut for the club, in its actual English league competition, later that year when he appeared in an August 25 draw with Arsenal. You can hear more of his incredible journey in Podcast Episode 36.
John Charles
Those reading this most likely know John’s older brother Clive, the Timbers Ring-of-Honor legend who is the only Timber ever to have his club number retired. Clive Charles’ legacy and contributions to the game of soccer in the US and Portland can never be overstated, yet it’s Clive’s older brother, John, who is the first of his family to step foot on the field at what we now know as Providence Park. On that night in 1969, nine years before his younger brother would debut for the Timbers, John Charles—the first Black Hammer and first Black player to captain an international England side—put in a full Civic Stadium shift at the back for the Hammers.
Bobby Howe
When the Portland Timbers returned in 2001, they tabbed Bobby Howe to lead the team from the bench. Though a Sounders player from ‘77 to ‘83, Howe will always be one of us as well, having managed the A-League/USL Timbers 2001-2005, including being named 2004 A-League Coach of the Year as the Timbers brought home the Commissioner's Cup. No stranger to Civic Stadium field construction, Howe was present for the 2001 renovations when the stadium became PGE Park, a fitting bookend to that May 1969 match that was the first ever played on Tartan Turf. Howe put his name in the scoresheet with a 58th-minute West Ham goal. He lent his story to the project in Podcast Episode 19.
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