As a pupil at King Edward VI School in Southampton, Alec Campbell not only captained both the football and cricket XIs but played for England, at the amateur level, in a football international against Holland – the only recorded example of a schoolboy representing his country at that level. He began the first of his three spells with Southampton as an 18 year-old debutant in November 1908 and quickly emerged as one of the club’s brightest-ever prospects.

In September 1909, though, he was one of several amateur internationals who opted to join Mr. Hill-Wood’s Football League Division II outfit at Glossop. After four seasons there, he returned to Southampton, to take up an appointment as district manager of Messrs Welsh and Co’s Hyde Abbey Brewery and to re-sign amateur forms for the Saints. Having turned professional a month later, he soon left for Hampshire League Boscombe. He came back to The Dell for a third stint but “official” football was now suspended in favor of war-time competitions. Having joined the Artists Rifles, Alec trained at Romford, whence he guested for West Ham. He was duly offered terms at Upton Park, but Southampton would not entertain the idea. He later moved to the Artillery Cadet School in Exeter and was given a commission in the 127th Heavy Battery as a Sub-Lieutenant. On the resumption of League action in 1919, Alec became the club’s captain. A distinctive figure on the pitch, with

his film-star, looks and “telescopic legs”, he afforded ample material for caricaturists (see scrapbook section).

Undoubtedly one of the club’s best-ever centre-halves, Alec played for Saints until 1926, when he joined Poole, helping them – for the only time in their history – to reach the Third Round of the FA Cup, in which they lost 3-1 at Everton. In 1927 he became, briefly, the manager of Third Division Chesterfield, before reverting to non-league football as a player. The following year, he was declared bankrupt, as a director of a fruit-importing company that had unwisely invested in Brazilian bananas.

Secretary of the Docklands Settlement in the late 1930s, he served, during the Second World War, as an officer in the Royal Artillery but, after contracting pneumonia, he died in Queen Alexandra’s Hospital, Cosham, in June 1943, with the cause of death listed as pneumonia. But he had been poorly for some considerable time as this letter written in May 1942 from his sanitary ward in Middlesex to his old mentor at Southampton, George Carter explains  “I am glad to say, in one way, that they are going to stop experimenting and see if the improvement I have made of late is genuine. You see, I was so ill in Belfast Military Hospital, that they let me come to England and gave me three months to live. I have been a mystery as doubtless you know, the surgeons here are the best lung specialists in the world. Well, I have had every mortal test and nothing indicates the root of the trouble, and I have that rotten feeling that they are not satisfied”.

His name is recorded on the war memorial at South Stoneham Garden of Rest. Alec’s father – who worked for the Royal Ordnance in Ipswich before moving the family to Southampton just before Alec’s birth – was a renowned sailor who won the West Quay Regatta in 1913.