with ever increasing velocity, and endless. To-day footballers are picked for pace. Physique counts, too, but speed is the essential for artist of our winter game. When Tom Banks glittered, pace told also; but men were burlier, heavier. In the nineties, those halcyon days of football with champions in profusion, there were more good big men than now. The rules have tightened, and speed increased. The little man has now more scope. Weight is useful still, of course, but in the days of which write, surging waves beat the weaker to the ground. Metaphorically, the light-framed were trampled under foot. I have in mind, the wild charges of Sonny Elms, southern skipper, and Eddie Fox,<ref>[http://www.boylesfootballphotos.net.au/Eddie+Fox Boyles Football Photos: Eddie Fox.]</ref> a Melbourne captain, whose muscles were tough as the iron he welded. Boliver Powell, of South Melbourne, Peter Williams, Jigger Moorehouse, and Danny Hutchison, of Carlton, Tom Parkin and Joe Marmo, of Geelong, Charles Pearson, of Essendon, W. Proudfoot, of Collingwood, and Herbert Fry, a squat giant whose tremendous strength was the keystone of the Melbourne ruck. Built on the lines of Sam Langford, the colored American fighting machine, Fry, so to speak, broke the ground for the movements of McGinis, Moysey, Moodie, and Christy, and completed that famous combination. A HERCULES WAS HE. These were all big men, and strong, but Banks was a Hercules. I never knew Clarence Whistler, the mighty American mat-man, but I saw Sandow, the German, and Hackenschmidt the Russian wrestler, and in my view Banks paralleled with these as a perfect specimen of athletic humanity. He was built like a bullock, and yet he is dead at the age of 52 years. Ailing for a few months, he underwent an operation at the Melbourne Hospital. From the surgeon's knife he never rallied, leaving a wife and scores of friends in grief. Deep-chested and thick, "with arms on which the standing muscles sloped", Banks carried his 14 stone or so [i.e., 89kg+] with ease. Perhaps slow from the mark, but when in full momentum his pace was terrific. From his tremendous rushes men sprayed as sparks fly from an anvil. Banks was a demon, in defence. With a greater aptitude to meet wet-day conditions, he would have ranked with the most illustrious footballer who ever played. And him marking! On, a bright, sunny day, with sweat gleaming on set, stern face, muscles rippling with the