Long-lost B.C. soccer trophy found — in a garage
BATTERED CUP WAS ONCE USED AS PLANTER
From 1914 to 1947 the Mainland Cup was the pinnacle of B.C. soccer. “There wasn’t a formal provincial championship, so if you won the Mainland Cup, you were essentially the top team in B.C.,” explains Jason Beck of the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame.
“For a 40-year period, it was the most significant soccer trophy in B.C.”
But it disappeared in the late 1940s, and nobody had a clue what happened to it.
“People have asked me about this trophy, and I thought it was lost,” said Beck.
Then Beck got a phone call from Dick Fryatt, the son of the late B.C. soccer legend Dave Fryatt.
“Dave passed away a couple of years ago, unfortunately, and Dick was doing a cleanup of his father’s house,” said Beck.
“He said I’ve got this large trophy, it has these two big arms, it’s really elaborate.’ I hadn’t seen a photo of it, but on a whim I said ‘Does it say Mainland on it?’
“He said ‘That’s it! How did you know that?’ I said ‘Because everyone’s been looking for this trophy for 30 or 40 years.’ ”
It turns out the Mainland Trophy has been in Dave Fryatt’s garage since the late ’50s or early ’60s, when he rescued it from somebody’s garden.
“It was being used as a planter,” said Dick Fryatt.
“Either Cy Ashdown or Austin Delaney (had it). He convinced them to give him the cup because he wanted to preserve it. So he put it in our garage.”
Ashdown was a top official in the B.C. soccer world, while
Delaney was a soccer star with the New Westminster Royals in the 1920s who became the soccer writer for the Vancouver Province in the 1930s.
How they obtained the trophy and why they were using it as a planter remains a mystery. It must have been in the garden for a while, because it’s quite weathered.
The bottom is being held together by duct tape, and the silver plating is so tarnished it’s hard to make out some of the inscriptions.
But if you look closely you can spot the names of legendary soccer teams like the Chinese Students, who shocked the soccer
world by winning the cup in 1933.
At the time Chinese Canadians couldn’t vote, and Chinese immigration was banned. So it was a very big deal for the Chinese community.
“A lot of those guys said when they were on the soccer field, it was the one time they felt like things were equal,” said Beck. “It was a level playing field, and they could really shine.”
The trophy is about three feet tall, and comes in three sections. It was made by Caron Brothers of Montreal, and features a lovely illustration of a soccer game near
the top. Underneath the soccer scene is the inscription “Presented by the Hon. W.J. Bowser K.C. to the Mainland District Soccer Football Association.”
William John Bowser was a Vancouver lawyer who was B.C.’s Attorney General in 1914. A Conservative, he succeeded Sir Richard McBride to become B.C.’s 17 th premier in 1915-16.
Fryatt also donated a second trophy that’s shaped like a shield. The Challenge Trophy for the Vancouver and District Association Football League dates to 1909-10, and was donated by Charles Tisdal, who owned a sporting goods store and was Vancouver’s mayor in 1922-23.
The winners’ names are in smaller crests around the outside of the trophy, but sadly several have fallen off. You can still make out some names, though, like the B.C. Sugar Refinery team that won the Challenge Cup in 192829. Businesses often sponsored teams; the Wallace Shipyards team won the Mainland Cup in 1918-19.
Fryatt also donated a pair of his dad’s own soccer cleats, which probably date to the late 1940s or early 50s. The hi-top leather boots were made in England, and the cleats are little metal nibs that look prehistoric.
Modern soccer players will be shocked to find out they also had steel toes, which offered extra protection in the days when people kicked straight on instead of using the side of your foot.
The B.C. Sports Hall of Fame is located in B.C. Place Stadium. It has about 27,000 artifacts in its collection, including 1,000 to 1,500 trophies.
EVERYONE’S BEEN LOOKING FOR THIS TROPHY FOR 30 OR 40 YEARS.