Riga Vanderer

Riga Vanderer (sometimes written as Wanderer, in later years – Rīgas Vilki, also – RV) was a Latvian football club that was founded in 1927, disbanded in 1940, restored a year later and disbanded again in 1944.

The decision of founding the new sports club was made by Arthur William Macferson, the former consul general of United Kingdom in Latvia after a conflict of interests involving the Latvia national team sportsman in football and bandy Arvīds Jurgens. October 21, 1927 is considered to be the foundation date of the club. The newly founded sports club at first promised to work mostly in raising its own young footballers, however almost the entire first selection squad of Vanderer in the early years was made up by already known and experienced footballers from other Riga sports clubs. As the majority of the Vanderer footballers in its first squad came from RFK, there started a deep rivalry between these two clubs and several of their matches ended in violence.

Riga Vanderer played its first ever game against Sport Tallinn on May 13, 1928. The following players represented Vander in its first ever official match: Arvīds Jurgens, Fēlikss Zandbergs, Ādolfs Sīmanis, Blūmentāls, Česlavs Stančiks, Harijs Fogelis, Aleksandrs Ābrams, Emīls Urbāns, Valdis Plade, Aleksejs Andrejevs and Veinbergs. The Tallinn club won with 3–0.

As a new club despite it having several national team footballers in the squad Vanderers had to start from the very bottom – that is the level B Riga tournament. In the B class tournament there proved to be no competition for the experienced Vanderers team which won all 8 matches in 1928 A the B class champion Vanderers had to play against the weakest A class side – Amatieris which also was no competitor for Vanderers and was beat 7–1. A year later Vanderer (with two further former Rīgas FK footballers – Alfons Novickis and Vladimirs Svistuņenko in the squad) won the A class tournament and because the Latvian Higher League was extended, it earned a place there without additional play-off matches.

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