There was only one Archie Hunter. There will never be another, so far as first-class football is concerned; indeed, it is difficult to see how another could arise. After all, men are products of their times. You would require lost conditions to be restored before you could get another Archie Hunter. The young professional of twenty-one, in receipt of £4 per week, is not going to be a leader of men; he is not going to act as an inspiration. Archie Hunter was great mainly, if not solely, because he loved football. Men do not love football in the same way nowadays; the professional does not always look forward with intense longing to the week-end to come. Often he would shirk the weekend task if he could.

Archie Hunter was the product of the old amateur spirit. Because a great many Scots came to England for football purposes long before the legalisation of professionalism, it has often been assumed that Archie and Andy Hunter migrated to Birmingham with the specific object of playing football with Aston Villa. But that was not so. As a matter of fact, Archie Hunter did not know where the Aston Villa ground was when he came to the Midland capital. In the season before Archie came to Birmingham to fill a business position, the Calthorpe, then the leading Birmingham team, had undertaken a Scottish tour. They met Ayr and Mauchline, and Archie Hunter, who was a playing member of the Ayr Thistle Club, had met them. Accordingly in the first few hours' leisure he went in search of the Calthorpe ground, but failed to find it. He told a fellow-worker of his unsuccessful quest, and that fellow-worker happened to be an Aston Villa enthusiast. They were few in number then, were Aston Villa enthusiasts, but they were ever a keen set. He promptly invited Archie to look up the Villa players, and told him of the association of George Ramsay, a fellow Scot, with the club. Archie turned out for the Villa, and who shall say what his accession meant to them? But for his coming it is conceivable that the Villa might have remained a purely local team, indeed, they might have gone the way of hundreds of other clubs of moderate strength. St. George's or St. George's or Aston Trinity might have gone ahead instead of the Villa.

What a sensation Archie's play caused! Hundreds of new adherents came each week to watch a forward the like of whom had never been seen in Birmingham games. I do not believe there has ever been quite such a fascinating player. Some men may have dribbled as well; others may have shot as hard and as straight, but no forward that I have seen ever dominated a game as Archie Hunter did. It was a black afternoon when he could not get off, and as he had an employer who had small sympathy with football, he was never certain as to his movements on Saturday afternoons. Often he left business in bare time to catch the brake in which the rest of the team were waiting round a convenient corner close to the place where Archie was employed, and on one occasion the Villa chartered a special train in order that their captain might reach Nottingham in time for a match. That was an unheard-of thing in those days, but whatever had to be done, Archie's presence must be secured if that were humanly possible. Often in the carly days Archie used to play as "A. Centre," in order that it might appear to certain of the outside world that he had not spent his Saturday half-holiday on the football field.

Archie Hunter was a born leader. He had a subtle influence on the Aston Villa team, and he was the idol of the crowd. What a roar there used to be as, just when it looked as though the Villa were destined to commence the game with ten men, Archie would leap into the arena. When he first came to Birmingham he always wore the regulation football cap, a kind of skull-cap terminating in a point and a tassel. What a picture of health he looked! He was a well-built and indeed powerful man; like many young Scots he was raw-boned, and he was prodigiously strong about the hips. When Archie turned round and put his base into the ribs of an opponent the latter realised that there was a man about. Archie knew how to charge, too; he was a nasty player to adopt rough-and-tumble methods against. Occasionally unscrupulous opponents used to court a return charge, and usually they wished that they had not opened the debate.

Archie was a mild-mannered man; indeed, his bright, boyish face was wreathed in perpetual smiles, but he was a man in earnest. Like Nick Ross of later times, Archie Hunter went on the field "to play fitba," not to loll and dawdle about. He was loved by all honourable and sportsmanlike opponents, and even the few less reputable adversaries he met did not like to risk a second exhibition of that manly scorn which used to flash from Archie's eye when an illegal and underhand trick was played upon him.

Archie Hunter was a prince of dribblers. It was not an unusual performance of his to start at the half-way mark, and dribble through the whole of the opposing team! He would not lose the ball until he had literally dribbled it between the posts. I have seen him do that many times. The way in which, when apparently circumvented, he would turn round and keep the man off with his hind-quarters while he adroitly put the ball back to a colleague, used to mystify every one; his opponent seemed at a loss to know what to do. Archie was a deadly shot too, while he knew all the tricks which made for effective combination. People marvelled last year at the skilful way in which Hampton, the young Villa centre, screwed the ball out to the wings. Why, Archie Hunter did that as no man has ever done it since. A dozen times in the course of a single game have I seen Archie, when going at full speed, suddenly swing the ball out to Andy or Eli Davis. It would go to an inch where it was intended that it should go.

But great as he was as a placer, he was much greater as a captain. "Now, lads!" was his invocation, and it seemed able to transform a mediocre performer into an enthusiastic expert. He seemed to know how to treat every one, and he got the maximum amount of work out of every colleague. I often wonder what modern defenders would say if they had to deal with a dozen shots in the course of a match such as Archie and Olly Whateley used to get in? Goals are harder to get to-day than ever they were, I admit, but the shooting is paltry compared to what it was in Archie's day. There is no player in Great Britain who has any conception of the pace and directness with which Whateley used to shoot.

Earnest, terribly earnest, was Archie when leading an attack, but what a grand fellow he was at the festive board! There used to be a convivial gathering after every match in those days; that was part and parcel of the art of football. Whatever friction had occurred on the field of play, it was never (or rarely) carried further. Archie was not a great singer, but, like most men of character, he could make his hearers feel that he was interpreting something to them. He could sing many good old Scotch melodies well, but who among his friends of those days will ever forget Archie's great song, "Where are all those bright hearts now?" Let me give you a stanza; the words and sentiment are a shade above some of the modern ditties one hears at festive gatherings. It was sung to the tune of "Do you ken John Peel?" Here is a verse of Archie's favourite contribution: —


"Whaur are a' these bright hearts noo
That were then sae leal and true?
Some hae left life's troubled scene,
Some still are struggling through,
And some hae risen high
In life's changeful destiny;
For they rose wi' the lark in the morning."


Some of the men hwo heard that song were rough in their way, but the voice of levity was hished when Archie was on his legs giving that in true Scottish style. There was more pure enjoyment in the football and the football gatherings of that day than there is to-day or evern will be again. We are all too mercenary now.

Poor Archie lies at rest in the Villa Corner at Wilton Cemetery, Birmingham. Eli Davis lies there too, so do other Villa worthies. There is a handsome tombstone to the memory of the greatest leader the Villa have ever possessed; it was erected by the Villa Club in conjunction with the Old Villans' Society. Archie died at the Royal Exchange, High Street, Aston, and form his window he could see the crowds making for Perry Barr. Gaunt as a skeleton, he was an Aston Villa man when he could scarcely draw a breath. He would have his bed wheeled to the window on Saturday afternoons, and there he would watch the eager throng bustling towards the scene of his many triumphs.

It was infinitely pathetic to see that wasted frame and to think what an indomitable spirit it confined. Archie played with the Villa until he was a long way behind his best form. He played until he had a species of stroke while acting in a League match at Everton. That was the warning-note that he must give up the pastime; he accepted the hint and became a member of committee, but he was not the power in the council room that he had been on the field.

The refusal of the Scottish Football Association to recognise the claims of the Anglo-Scots deprived Archie of his international cap; it also deprived Scotland of a great player; still it must be admitted that Scotland's need was not acute then. There were plenty of giants in the land in Archie's day. But what would Scotland say to a centre of Archie's class to-day!