There are few footballers better worth watching than the little man who for so many years has acted as captain of the Sheffield United team, and who incidentally has had so much to do with the building up of its fortunes. The name of Ernest Needham, cricketer as well as footballer, and genuine sportsman in everything that he does, is a household word amongst those who take any sort of interest in the great winter pastime. To see him on the field is to see a veritable puzzle; to see him off it is to discover the most modest of men, and one who is especially hard to draw with regard to his own deeds. Few men have a mightier career to look back upon, few are more disinclined to talk about it than he.

But one day I was fortunate enough to catch the half-back in kindly humour, and he readily acquiesced when I asked him a question or two. His opinion on the relative difficulties of centre and wing half-back's position? On that point he simply wished to point out that, whereas the centre half must always be running about pretty hard, the wing halves are necessarily kept on full strength, and are called upon for a far greater turn of speed, for the simple reason that they are opposed to the speedy men in the opposing attack. "I never cared for playing centre half," he said, "though I have had to play there more than once. My preference is clearly for the position in which I have almost always played, left half." Yet, singularly enough, it was a centre half-back who first set Needham on the way to his present fame. That was Willy Hendry, the volatile Scotsman, who acted as captain to Sheffield United prior to Needham's succession, and who subsequently migrated to Brighton, and who died down south some few years ago.

Hendry was not only a great half-back himself, but he was the cause of others becoming great as well. Those who knew both men in their prime have often seen in the little Staveley man glimpses of Hendry; touches which were part and parcel of the Scotsman's tricks, and bits of eminently brilliant footwork which Needham learned from his mentor. But Hendry, fine half-back as he was, never rose to the level of his pupil. Needham cut out for himself a career which few in his position have equalled, certainly no one has surpassed. I had the satisfaction of seeing him take part in his first International against Scotland at Glasgow, when the crowd behaved itself so badly as to sweep away the tables on which the press men were supposed to be sitting, and cause an exodus to the opposite side of the ground. Few of all those press men saw much of the game save myself, for, hoisted on a table top which was in turn held in place by my colleagues against the surging crowd's encroachments, I saw sufficient of the game to be able to dictate something of its progress to those beneath, and who wrote for dear life under supreme difficulties.

Needham hardly did as well as those of us had expected who knew him best on that occasion, though one shot, a genuine curling shot, which barely cleared the bar, had the custodian beaten all the way. Since then he has played many a great game in Internationals; nor shall I ever forget the perfectly brilliant combination which subsisted between him as half-back and Spiksley and Fred Wheldon as the wing at Glasgow in 1898. Nothing in International football has been finer than that. The three men fitted into one another's methods like hands into their proper gloves, and all the brilliance of the Scottish defence was dumfounded and beaten. England won that game by 3 goals to 1. How much of the victory belonged to the magnificence of the left wing cannot now be properly appreciated. But I never saw a finer exposition of complete confidence and understanding as the three men went up the field in a brilliant triangle time and time again.

Needham's terse summing up of a half-back's duties is, "Keep an eye on your wing man, and lend what help you can to the centre half now and then. But it is the outside man who must be your first consideration." How Needham effects his purpose in this way is not to follow the example of other halves of lesser fame. He does not necessarily lie on to the winger, he prefers to hover parallel with him in his flight down the wing midway between him and his partner, knowing right well that the pass is almost certain to come, and then, in case the winger in despair makes a final dash for the corner flag for a centre into goal-mouth, Needham is ever near enough to join in the rush, and defeat him in his new-found object. It is calculation all through, the nicest knowledge of what his winger is going to do, coupled with such a turn of speed as enables him also to change his methods so soon as his quarry has done so.

A winger weakens with the ever present sight of the lithe little figure hovering betwixt himself and his partner; many a time he makes the pass despairingly, only to find a foot outstretched and the ball's progress stayed, and in turn given to the half-back's own forwards. There is on thing which has made Ernest Needham stand out of the common run of halves: he is neither a constructive nor a destructive half-back alone; he is both at once. One moment you will see him falling back to the defence of his own goal, or checking the speedy rush of his wing; the next, and almost before the possibilities of such a speedy change has dawned, he is up with his own forwards, feeding them to a nicety, and always making the best of every opening. Where he gets his pace from is a mystery. He never seems to be racing, yet he must be moving at racing pace; he never seems to be exhausted, yet in a big game he is practically doing three men's work. And therein lies another attribute which he claims for himself. It has often been urged that he is too prone to wander from his proper place. His answer to that is the number of times that he has contrived to save his goal by falling back well out of his real place to the relief of his backs. How often in days that are past Needham was able to relieve Peter Boyle, when that full-back had rushed out to stop an advance and was unable to get back it is impossible to say, but many a time when the full-back was yards away up the field Needham seemed to come from nowhere, and head or kick the threatening ball away.

It is not easy to accurately sum up the measure of his usefulness. He is a fine shot, taking the ball in any position, always getting plenty of pace on it, sending in a greater proportion of those awkward curling shots which, in any kind of wind, are so supremely difficult to judge; he dribbles like a forward, keeping the ball wonderfully close, and yet never at a loss for the pass when the time comes; he seems to have no need to watch the ball at his feet, his very feet seem to control it without any other help, and thus his eyes are free to watch the movements of those who seek to rob him. This, in reality, is one of the secrets of his greatness, for very seldom when he has the ball is he deprived of it, whilst the accuracy of his wing passes, and the telling force of his punches straight across the field to an unprotected wing, spell danger to any kind of defence. The very closeness with which he dribbles adds to the possibility of accident, and Needham has often come down badly, one toe being so badly mauled by repeated injuries as to make him particularly careful with it. But with all his accidents, with all his stress of big matches, he remains what he has ever been, the most modest and unassuming man who ever grew into the first rank, and will be remembered for years, in Sheffield at all events, as the finest left half-back that English football has known.