Thumbing through the Eccles Journal from June 1965 we came across an incredible story which is astonishing even to this day.
The article recalled the death of 80-year-old Father Edward Power, who at one time offered daily mass at St Mary’s R.C. Church on Church Street, Eccles.
There is nothing remarkable in that, however, you can imagine our astonishment when we read that as a young trainee priest at an English Theological College in Spain, he played in a football match against Real Madrid and scored a remarkable five goals in a 6-2 victory.
The match was played on April 28, 1907 between the the seminarians of the Royal English College at Valladolid.
In March of that year Madrid F.C. had won the Championship Cup of Spain for the third successive year and were acclaimed by the Spanish press as being “invincible”.
They would change their name to Real Madrid F.C. in 1920: Real is Spanish for Royal and the name was bestowed to the club by King Alfonso XIII, together with the crown in the club’s emblem.
Madrid scored in the first minute and it looked like a rout was on the cards for the English seminary.
However the team settled down and centre-forward Father Power took charge of the game.
He scored a hat trick in the first half, two more goals after the interval and had one disallowed!
One English priest told the paper that Father Power made the Spanish defence “look ridiculous” as he mystified them with his dribbling.
The match report at the time in La Correspondencia de España also extolled the virtues of the English trainee priests: “The football played by the seminarians of Valladolid being one of study, precision and accuracy, it seems to all intents and purpose to have been learnt from a textbook.
“The seminarians did not waste a pass and all 11 players moved like one with one intelligence and one will controlling their every movement and thought.
“There is no doubt if this team played in the Spanish league it would have won it for sure.”
The reporter went on to say that he had never seen football played like this in Spain, not even from visiting international teams.
Father Power came back to England in 1910 and commenced his duties in Chorlton were he stayed for five years before moving to Salford Cathedral, then being called up as a Chaplain to the forces in the First World War.
After the war he worked in Chorlton, Ramsbottom and St Joseph’s Bury, before settling at St Charles’s Moorside where he stayed for 17 years until his retirement in 1940.
He moved to Ellesmere Park in Eccles and was a well known figure about the town often seen walking about Eccles to conduct mass at St Mary’s.
The story doesn’t end there though.
When Real Madrid played Manchester United at Old Trafford on 25 April 1957 in the European Cup – a match that would end in a 2-2 draw, the surviving priests from the 1907 match were invited to Old Trafford to meet the teams.
It was reported that Santiago Bernebeu, then president of Real Madrid, who had participated in the historic football game, told him: “That game changed the whole history of football in Spain by showing us how football should be played.”
This remarkable story made me wonder how Father Power’s career would have panned out if he had made the decision to become a professional footballer instead of a man of the cloth? One can only wonder.
If you know any more about this story, or about Father Power’s life, please contact me at tonyflynn@salfordonline.com
