AN ENGLISHMAN IN NICARAGUA: REMEMBERING THOMAS CRANSHAW

The name Thomas Cranshaw will mean virtually nothing to the inhabitants of modern-day England, but, until recently, there was one little corner of Central America which bore the name of this particular Englishman, and for good reason.

Cranshaw was born in the town of Chorlton-upon-Medlock, Lancashire on 22 September 1892. He, his father William, who was a policeman, mother Agnes (who worked as a seamstress) and his four siblings, lived in Molyneux Street in the town until 1898, when his father died at just 36 years old. William himself was predeceased by his youngest daughter, who had died in infancy a couple of years earlier.

It seems that Thomas and his siblings were either interred in - or attended school at - Nicholls Hospital in Arndale, then an orphanage, from 1898 to 1901, when the five surviving family members moved to the south of Manchester.

Little else is known about that stage of his life, but it has been claimed that he moved to Nicaragua as early as 1914, where he worked in the import/export business for a company called Laberne and Thompson before setting up on his own in the city of Granada in 1917. He met a local girl, Isabel Ramirez Váldez, and married her two years later.

"Mister Cranshaw", as he was popularly known, proved to be an astute and successful businessman, and was well-liked by the locals, not least for his generosity towards the poor - he was a man who never forgot his roots - but also for his enthusiasm and sense of humour. At the start of the 1920s, he took up refereeing in his spare time as football slowly became more popular in Nicaragua, spreading outwards from its cradle of Diriangén (in the south-west) and the country's capital, Managua, where the game was first played more than twenty years earlier.

Thomas and Isobel had three children: Tom, born in 1921, William, born a year later, and Gladys, who was born in 1926, the year Cranshaw helped create the first proper football league in Nicaragua. The family was a happy unit, but tragedy struck in August 1930 when Isobel died in Managua, aged just 34.

A year later, in 1931, Cranshaw was instrumental in the creation of the General Secretariat of Football, which fell under the umbrella of the CNDO, the Nicaraguan National Sports Commission, and became its first general secretary. The Secretariat was renamed FENIFUT in 1958, and retains its position as Nicaragua's official football governing body.

Thomas Cranshaw (Photo: Salon de Fama Deportes Nicaragüense; photographer unknown)

Cranshaw later branched out into other sports, adjudicating at swimming meets and organising boxing matches in Managua, and, in 1935, not only competed in a tennis tournament but was a delegate in the Nicaraguan team at the third Central American Games, which were held in March of that year in El Salvador. (Nicaragua did not take part in the football tournament, however.)

However, football remained his first love and, apart from continuing to referee football matches - and being a founder member of the national referees association, the ANAF - he helped organise a friendly between Costa Rican side Alajuense and a team representing Managua.

Cranshaw helped organise sports competitons in both Nicaragua and Costa Rica during the 1940s while continuing to referee matches and work for the CNDO. He eventually retired from all sporting activity in Nicaragua in the 1950s - although he did become honorary president of the ANFA - and before he did so, wrote to FIFA in 1951 enquiring about the possibility of global football's masters getting involved in women's football after seeing women playing football across North America in countries as diverse as Costa Rica and the USA. 

He received the rather curt response that FIFA had no jurisdiction over women's football and had just as much interest in getting involved in it. 

After spending more than 35 years in Nicaragua and playing an integral part in the development of the country's sport scene, Cranshaw moved to Costa Rica in 1953.

After spending eleven years in the country, he moved to Los Angeles in August 1964 with the aim of helping kick-start football in that part of the United States, although there is no information as to which sector of the game he wanted to get involved in. 

Upon hearing the news of Don Tomas's impending departure for the States, in a gesture hardly showing a sign of appreciation of his life's work, the ANFA stripped him of his honorary presidency. 

Sadly, Cranshaw never got to achieve his latest dream. He died in Los Angeles on 4 October 1964, aged 72, felled by a severe stroke.

Thomas Cranshaw, just weeks before his death (Photo taken from his obituary in La Prensa; supplied by Javier Hernández)

Thomas Cranshaw is remembered to this day in Nicaragua, but only in a somewhat piecemeal fashion at best. Until earlier this year, his name lived on in a more real sense. In 1960, a newly-constructed stadium in what is now the Barrio El Boer area of Managua was given his name, and the Estadio Thomas Cranshaw became the city's premier football venue. Prominent clubs such as Juventus and Walter Ferretti used it as their home stadium. (A wake for Cranshaw was also held at the stadium when his remains were brought back to Managua for interment.)

In more recent years, the 2000-capacity stadium, which became more and more run-down as time went on, lost its status, especially after the Estadio Naciónal de Fútbol de Nicaragua was built in 2011. (International matches had also been held for many years at the old Estadio Naciónal baseball stadium.) 

The Estadio Thomas Cranshaw hosted lower-league matches and was used as a training ground until last year, when Managua city council announced that both it and the old, disused baseball stadium (the Estadio Denis Martinez) behind it were to be razed and replaced by a new sports complex under the name of Complejo Deportivo Dignidad. 

The Estadio Thomas Cranshaw, Managua (Photo: Javier Hernández)

The new complex will include a baseball stadium, two practice baseball pitches, two small-sized baseball pitches and a 1950-capacity football stadium named after Miguel Buitrago, a former Nicaraguan footballer of note from the 1960s and 70s. (Both Buitrago and Cranshaw, as it turns out, were inducted into the Nicaraguan Sports Hall of Fame in February 1995. The Salon de Fama Deportes Nicaragüense will also find a new home in the complex.)

The Estadio Miguel Buitrago, which will cost around US$10.9 million (€10.1 million) is already nearing completion, will host Segunda División and Tercera División matches as well as Liga Primera club Managua FC's home matches - although mentioned in local media, the latter is yet to be confirmed.

A new football ground was badly needed, but there was surely no reason to drop Cranshaw's name. It would have been a fitting tribute to the man, sixty years after his death, for the stadium to keep its name, even if it fell under the new sports complex. 

The façade of the old Estadio Thomas Cranshaw (Photo: photographer unknown; supplied by Javier Hernándea)

Thomas Cranshaw might not have been the man who introduced football to Nicaragua, but he did a massive amount to modernise and improve the game in the country, not to mention giving a leg up to various other sports. Don Tómas is virtually unknown in his native England, and little more than a name from the past for most Nicaraguans, but he left behind an impressive legacy which remains to this day and will be hard for anyone, anywhere to beat.

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AUTHOR'S NOTE: The information contained in the article came from several different sources: La Prensa, Onda Local, The Blizzard, Facebook and the Salon de Fama Deportes Nicaragüense. Many thanks to Nicaraguan chronicler Javier Hernández for his assistance, which was considerable.

Attempts were also made to contact FENIFUT, La Prensa and the Alcadia de Managua (Managua City Hall), amongst others, for more information on the life and times of Thomas Cranshaw; unfortunately, none of them were successful. As ever, any errors and/or omissions in the article will be corrected upon notification.