The earliest reference to a football team in Pachuca dates to 1892, when a local paper reported the side was being reorganized after a split.
“There’d been a falling-out between people in Pachuca and the ‘mountain men’ from Real del Monte.
“I laughed when I saw that—it felt so Cornish. We do love a good schism.
“They were told to pull together and strengthen their team.”
In 1895, Rule convened a meeting that led to the decision to merge the Pachuca Cricket Club, the Pachuca Football Club, and the Velasco Cricket Club into a more powerful outfit.
That merger created the Pachuca Athletic Club.
Rule donated land near his hacienda for matches, on the condition—stemming from his Methodist faith—that no games be played on Sundays.
By 1902, new clubs were emerging in places like Orizaba, Veracruz.
Orizaba still disputes Pachuca’s claim to being Mexico’s first club and asserts that title for itself.
Those two teams, along with three others, formed Mexico’s first recognized football league, the Liga Mexicana de Football Amateur Association.
Orizaba won the inaugural championship in 1902, while Pachuca enjoyed early success too, taking the 1904–05 title.
It wasn’t just the miners who enjoyed the matches—Cornish women were also central to the matchday scene.
“They loved turning out for games and often wore the club colors,” says Dr Schwartz.
“The first mention of pasties being eaten [in Mexico] appears when play paused during a cricket match. I suspect Cornish women baked them.”
Pasties were essential to miners then—the thick crust served as a handle for dirty hands, and the robust pastry could even survive a drop down a mineshaft.