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This is likely a photo of the Cavan football team at the time of their Gaelic football match against Leitrim in 1914. The New York Times reported the match as part of the Fifteenth Annual Games of Local 20, International Union of Steam and Operating Engineers, held at Celtic Park (Queens) on Sunday, July 26, 1914. The next photo in the LOC stream, captioned "Leitrim football (soccer) teams (LOC)" depicts the Leitrim team photographed at the same time. In the background of the Cavan team photo (above) is a Leitrim player in a striped LYM shirt, looking on.  

How do other people feel about looking at photographs from the distant past when you know everyone has long since passed away? For some reason old sport team pictures really bring a sense of my own mortality to the forefront of my consciousness. Life is precious and only temporary.

Is it certain this is a soccer team and not a Gaelic football ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaelic_football ) team? There are too many players for it to be soccer.

There are fifteen players in the photo which is the number of players on a Gaelic football team team ???

Get a PDF of a brief New York Times article (missing its first paragraph) published May 14, 1911, which tells about these British amateur boxers who were visiting the U.S. at the time: (URL ) (Registration on the Times website might be needed to see the page- I'm not sure.) There are other Times articles about the boxers as well: Googling on "boxer Erskine" got me the article I mentioned and two others in the News Archive links at the bottom of the results page. "A. Spenceley" might have been either of two A.Spenceleys active in the 1910s to 1920s: Arthur or Alf. I'm guessing they might have been brothers or cousins. Here's a page mentioning Arthur Spenceley. Looks as though he went professional, but without success. I can't find an info page for Alf, but an ebay user has or had a postcard photo of him on sale: Here's a Google cache in case the original page is gone. It looks as though most of these boxers are mentioned on this page of the Amateur Boxing Association of England website. Rube Warnes was middleweight champion in 1910, W.W. Allen was bantamweight champion and A. Spenceley lightweight champion in 1911. R. Erskine lost the featherweight championship title to H. Bowers that same year. Allen appears in every year listed on the page. I haven't yet examined the site beyond the page to which I linked. Parks doesn't appear at all. I guess his giant hands did him no good.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_Boxing_Association_of_England en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Mostyn_Parks en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuben_Charles_Warnes Here they are in a photo published in the New York Times on May 14, 1911:

W.W.Allen was a British bantamweight boxer and bantamweight champion of the Amateur Boxing Association of England in 1911, 1912, 1914 and 1919.

great shot