Player #81 for Aston Villa, J. William Dunning, known as Bill Dunning played as a goalkeeper for the club.

Bill represented Villa between 1892-93 and 1894-95 making 70 appearances.

Bill was born in Perth, Scotland on 2nd January 1865 and made his debut as a 27 year old on 5th September 1892.

Villa had signed Bill from Bootle FC for £100 and he went on to win the 1893-94 League Championship with Villa whilst not finishing outside the top four in his three seasons with the club.

Bill was the thirteenth custodian of the Villa goal in League and Cup football and the second ‘keeper to be considered as a regular number one over successive seasons following Jimmy Warner.

Bill made 70 appearances, conceding 124 goals at a ratio of 1.77 over his 3 seasons with the club and kept 15 clean sheets.

Not content with being renowned as a league title winning goalkeeper, Bill has gone down in history for an episode, albeit disputed, on 12 September 1892.

So the story goes Villa playing a game against Stoke were leading 1-0 when, two minutes from the end, a penalty kick was awarded to Stoke.

Bill is alleged to have then kicked the ball out of the pitch and, during the fruitless search for the ball, the referee whistled the end of the game (having now past the regulation 90 minutes which was the ruling at the time).

As a result the victory was awarded to Villa.

Subsequently, the regulation was amended in order to allow the adding of additional time for the taking of penalty kicks.

Bill played in 26 of Villa’s 30 games in the 1893-94 Championship winning season.

Bill’s final game for Villa came on the 17th January 1895 aged 30 after which he retired.

Bill played under the George Ramsay led Management Committee.

Bill passed away from tuberculosis in Southampton on the 4th January 1902 aged just 37.