There is no evidence that William Gordon ever played football but as a Scot and one born in 1870 it seems highly likely. But it is not for any skill he might have displayed on the field that he is remembered. It is for a Cup, one that is said still to exist but of which there seems to be no picture. It, the Gordon Cup, was first presented in 1914 to Manaos Athletic, the winner in the Brazilian jungle-city of the same name, of the first Amazonian Championship. Its donor is often referred to as an "English" merchant, of whom there were a number in trade on the Amazon river. But then Gordon, by then in his mid-forties, William Stewart Gordon, was a Scot, indeed one born in Elgin. His mother was a local girl, his father, Thomas, from Ross-shire, from the village of Fodderty, half way between Dingwall and Strathpeffer. 

In 1871 the family, Gordon Snr. a clerk, is living in Elgin. In 1881 it does not seem to be in Britain. In 1891 they are back but now living in London, Thomas the Secretary/Accountant of an Oil and Coal company, and William a Tea Merchant's Clerk., the family also seemingly having connections with India and beyond. Moreover, whilst in 1901 the family, he included, is still in London, in Camden by 1911 he is not. Instead, certainly from 1910 onwards an Elgin-born, London-based William "Stuart" Gordon, at times described as a "Merchant" at others specifically as a "Rubber-Merchant" can be seen regularly travelling, from Manaos (now Manaus) and Belem at the mouth of the River Amazon to Britain and an address in Hatch End in Middlesex, from and to the States and crucially to Malaya and Singapore and back. 

Thus it seems rubber or its transfer from being a wild South American plant to a cultivated Asian crop might just have been the key, with Gordon perhaps central to it. The first wild rubber-tree seeds had been carried from Brazil to Britain in 1876, yet at the turn of the century Brazil still accounted for 50% of World production. However, by 1914 it was 30% and 1918 just 20%. The Gordon Cup was first competed for in 1914. By 1922 the competition had ceased. The timings are at the very least intriguing.   

As to William Gordon himself the name-change from Stewart may also provide the clue to his death. In 1943 a William Stuart Gordon passed away in wealthy Kensington in London, leaving a widow, Ethel Burns Gordon, Burns also being, coincidentally or not, the surname of one of Manaus' early, British, on-field, footballing pioneers, by name perhaps also a Scot.