He is said to be William Brown Hunter but "ah ha m doots". And why he is important it that not only was he a player, a football coach, never in Britain but in at least three countries, Holland, Switzerland and Turkey, and also manager, never of a Home Nation, but of not just one but two national teams, but because of the time he was active, with Turkey it was a first, and with whom he seems to have been associated.
William "Billy" Hunter is said to have played for two professional clubs, Millwall, Millwall Athletic that is, and Bolton. If his birth date of 1884 or 1885 is correct he was just twenty when he arrived in London and twenty-eight when he left the Wanderers. The former suggests he came straight from Scotland, for that is where he is said to have been born. The latter suggests a playing career cut short by injury.
And that is where much of the speculation begins. And that it has to be because about Billy Hunter, footballer, there has been a single, probably reliable source. It is the 1911 English census. It shows a William Hunter, professional footballer, married but living in digs in Bolton, aged twenty-six and born in Alva, Clackmannanshire. Aside that it is slightly strange, having joined Bolton Wanderers two years earlier in 1909, he still has not been joined by his wife and they are not living together, the other details bear up. There was a William Hunter born in Alva on 2nd April 1885. The 1911 census took place on 2nd April so on his 26th birthday so he is unlikely to have got the details wrong. His father was Henry, a coal miner, just as Billy would be before senior football. His mother was Betsy, nee Maxton. They had been married in 1868 again in Alva and they lived at 28, Stirling Street.
Now that is all fine and dandy but there is a problem. The William Hunter in question was not, as maintained elsewhere, William Brown Hunter. That William Brown Hunter existed there is no doubt. He was also born in 1885 not in Alva but neighbouring Tillicoultry, he was there in 1891, still in 1901 and most importantly also in 1911, still single. He was not our Bolton man.
In fact tracking the life of the William Hunter in Bolton proved to begin with quite a problem. He seemed to be nowhere but eventually there was a breakthrough. It was suggested his wife was a Catherine Fox and a William Hunter and a Catherine Fox had been married on 18th July 1906. She was also from Alva, they both gave addresses on Erskine St. there, but they had taken their vows not in their home village but the Catholic Church in Alloa, she a weaver and he a "professional footballer". And that wedding provided an explanation for much else. Their first child was born a year later. Their second a year later still. In fact they would have four children in all, all born in Scotland, in Alva and raised there, Catherine staying put, whilst south of the border her husband ploughed his trade.
At Millwall on arrival from the junior game with Alva Albion Rangers he would have learned his craft, a "dashing" forward, perhaps best on the left-wing, in a hundred and fifty games and forty-three goals over five seasons. In his three years at Bolton there were fewer appearances, fifty-three with just fifteen netted but it was there too his path crossed with a certain
James (Jimmy) Hogan. Hogan would arrive a year earlier than Hunter and leave a year later but during his stay he would also begin to coach and in Holland and with in 1910 the Dutch national team. Four games were played that year, all impressively won. And it was, when Hunter had, he thought at the time, to pause playing because of a knee injury, that to coaching and in Holland that he also turned. On 1st August 1912 he joined Dordrecht, replacing his erstwhile club secretary/manager, John Somerville, a fellow Scot, and from January the following year he was also coaching in the same league with out apparent issue at Velocitas Breda. With Dordrecht he was to win the KNVB Cup in 1914 and that same year also took charge of the international squad; two wins against Belgium, a draw against Germany and a loss in Copenhagen.
Of course the Great War proved disruptive for football everywhere. Holland's next international matches would not be until 1919. And where Hunter was in those years remained and to an extent remains unclear. It had been thought perhaps he simply returned to the pit. It would have been a reserved occupation. But it is more likely he enlisted and was posted away. His and Catherine's third child had been born in 1913, their fourth not until 1920. Indeed Tijs Tummers, a reader and football-writer from Holland, confirms that Hunter actually asked Dordrecht if he could be released to join the British Army, the club agreed and even wanted to throw him a farewell party.
However, it seems on being demobilised Billy Hunter was intent on getting back into the game, something he would achieve in 1921 but abroad once more, first in Austria with Hakoah Vienna, finishing second in its league, and then in 1922-23 with Lausanne Sports in Switzerland. There he would stay a season and again finish second behind Servette in the West division, a position higher than the club had achieved the previous year. And perhaps again he was helped by or even helped Jimmy Hogan. Hogan had coached Young Boys in Berne from 1918 to 1920 and appears still to have been in or around Switzerland. In 1925 he took over the coaching at Lausanne and in the meantime in 1924 he would be recruited by Teddy Duckworth, who had played for Blackburn as Hogan had been at home-town Burnley, and was joined by the Hungarian, Dori Kruschner, who Hogan had during the War coached at MTK in Hungary, the three taking the Swiss team to the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris, indeed to the silver medal. This as Hunter had also been recruited, to go to the same competition also as the coach but of Turkey.
So it was that on 25th May 1924 Turkey took on Czechoslovakia. It was a team part coached by another Scot, indeed ex. Celtic and Scottish international, Jake Madden. And it was Madden's charges that came off better. They would be three up in thirty-seven minutes and then be in control throughout. Turkey would score twice but was eliminated as their opponents hit five. However, following the Games other results were not bad. Over two years there were victories over Finland, Estonia and Latvia and Romania all away plus Bulgaria at home. It was really only against the USSR and Poland that there was struggle, two games played away in 1924, the two at home the next year, all lost, at which point Hunter turned his full attention to the club he had been managing at the same time, Galatasary. On arrival the Istanbul club had ended the previous season as runners-up to Betsiktas in the newly formed Istanbul League. In Hunter's first year, 1924-5, Betsikas was beaten 6-1 in the semi-final and the championship taken. Then in 1925-6 it was Fenerbahce that was trounced by the same score on aggregate in the final and it would be the same result the following one, at which point something seems to have gone wrong, not with Hunter but the league itself. If it had started it seems never to have finished, perhaps because of demands placed on its major teams by participation in the 1928 Olympic Games, for which Hunter was overlooked in favour of the Hungarian, Bela Toth. Seven of the nineteen-man squad were from Hunter's club and eight from Fenerbahce.
So it was that on 28th May 1928 at the Olympics Toth's Turkey was thrashed 1-7 by Egypt in the only game it played, by which time Hunter appears to have reacted and may well have been already on his way from Istanbul but not back to Britain, at least not to stay. On the 23rd November that same year he left Southampton, with Constantinople, Turkey given as his previous address. He travelled as a Football Coach and he was heading for America, presumably to find work in what seemed at the time to be a booming game. And it was there he stayed, Catherine and children, joining him the following year. However, his timing could not have been worse. The aftermath of the American Soccer Wars and the Wall Street Crash caused the partial collapse by 1930 of the professional game there and its total implosion by 1934. Billy Hunter clearly failed to find permanent football work and seems to have struggled through The Depression. In 1930 and in Queens in New York he was working as a petrol-pump attendant and by 1937 still in New York he was dead, in fact dying in hospital of pneumonia and a burst ulcer in January that same year aged just fifty-one and buried in St. Johns Roman Catholic Cemetery still in Queens. He is another footballing Scot never to return but one remembered. I have recently been contacted by his great granddaughter, who lives in New Jersey and still has and cherishes his Millwall medal and Olympic badge.