The first player to be featured on the Soccer Anzacs website that records the Australian footballers, "soccer" players, who served and in some cases died in The Great War is Alexander George William Strang born in Sittingbourne, before playing his football as a winger for Hindmarsh in Adelaide, South Australia, reaching with his brother, George, but losing two local Cup Finals. But understandably the name caught the eye. An Alex Strang is not an obvious man of Kent and so it was to prove.

Alexander Strang had indeed been born in The Garden of England and sailed for Australia probably in 1907, his brother following on in 1911. But in George lay the clue to their real origins. He had been born in Scotland as had seven of the two boys elder siblings. And the reason was simple. Their father, also Alexander, was a secretary-Manager in the Co-operative Movement, born in Whitburn. Their mother was from Carluke, the family carrying the Scottish footballing contagion almost as of right.