Walter H. Price

Walter Price was one of the 'Four Founding Fathers' of Aston Villa Football Club and the club's first captain notable for playing for the club in Aston Villa's early history.

In 1873 Price was a member of the Aston Villa Wesleyan Chapel. Their Bible meetings consisted around 200 young men some of whom had set up a cricket team. Price was athletic being able to throw a cricket ball 120 yards. On 28 June 1873, Aston Villa Cricket Club played Wellington at Aston Park. They were defeated 59-49. Opening the batting, Price scored 4 while fellow founder, Jack Hughes managed just a single run. Co-founder George Matthews too scored but a single with the bat. William Scattergood excelled for Villa, scoring 15 not out. Against Aston St Mary's in July openers Hughes and Price made 4 runs each, Scattergood 20 with Matthews out for a duck. On 11 July 1874, in a 66-39 defeat against Small Heath Zingari, Price made a single wicket and a single run. They were not the only team to carry the name. In 1874 and 1875 the newspapers carried reports covering an unrelated cricket team, Aston Villa United.

The cricketers were keen to find an outlet for their energy in the off-season, they were initially undecided between rugby and association football but one member, W.B. Mason, was playing with the Adderley Park Grasshoppers rugby team and four members, Price, Scattergood, Hughes and Matthews, were tasked with watching him play.

Co-founder Hughes' view was that Aston Villa Football Club was really formed later by the players who attended the first kick-about on waste ground on Westminster Road, now the RCCG Salvation Theatre. They hired a football for 1s 6d (roughly 1⁄3 the daily wage) from Clapshaw & Cleave. The sixteen then each contributed a shilling and elected Price as their first captain and Charlie H. Midgley as club secretary. James Wilson allowed the game to be played at his building plots on Wilson Road, Birchfield. St Mary's played rugby so a compromise was reached whereby, using the round ball, Villa played rugby in the first half and soccer in the second. In later years Charlie Johnstone reminisced "Hack him down - sit on his head, was the cry for one half the game, and You must not collar-charge him, was yelled for the other". Under the Sheffield Rules up to fifteen players were allowed at the time. Ramsay later described the newly formed club's approach to the game as 'a dash at the man and a big kick at the ball'. Word spread about how fine a player Ramsay was, spectators began turning up to watch the little man nicknamed 'Scotty'. He also took charge of training which saw dramatic improvement that showed in the results, introducing what was known as the "passing game". This had become the main style of play in Scotland whereas in England most teams relied on what was known as the "dribbling game".

In 2014, in front of the Holte Suite, the Founding Lamp was unveiled, a three-metre structure set on a plinth with brass plates commemorating the story of Scattergood, Matthews, Hughes and Price.