Arsenal in the London Charity Cup

By Tony Attwood

The London Charity Cup was a London FA County Cup.  The original trophy was donated by the Rt. Hon. Reginald Harrison.

Over the years a number of London’s larger clubs have entered the competition, including Charlton, Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Fulham, Leyton Orient, Millwall, QPR, Tottenham H, WHU, Wimbledon, and of course Arsenal.

Although the competition run until 1975 Arsenal only appear to have competed twice with their first team – in the 1889/90 and 1890/91 competitions playing as Royal Arsenal.

I haven’t found a formal statement anywhere showing when the first playing of the competition was, but I suspect it was 1890, given that Arsenal are recorded as having played in the first round and the final with nothing in between.

Here are the full results.

Round	Date	Against	Venue	Score	Crowd
1	1 Feb 1890	Great Marlow	Home	4-1	5000
Final	5 Mar 1890	Old Westminsters	Leyton	3-1	10000
1	14 Feb 1891	Crusaders	Home	1-0	7000
SF	4 April 1891	Old Carthusians	Away	1-1	6000
SF replay	8 April 1891	Old Carthusians	Away	2-2	3000
SF replay	11 April 1891	Old Carthusians	Away	1-2	6000

And given that Fred Ollier, that master of all knowledge, doesn’t seem to mention the LCC, at least not in my edition, that would be that, except for a reference on a Wimbledon site of “3 October 1960… a London Charity Cup match against Arsenal”

One would imagine that this would be Arsenal Reserves – although again Ollier doesn’t mention it, and our statistical pages provided by Andy Kelly don’t have any record of this.

So if you know what happened to the London Charity Cup, especially if Arsenal played in it in later years, please add a comment.

• Woolwich Arsenal: The club that changed football – Arsenal’s early years
• Making the Arsenal – how the modern Arsenal was born in 1910
• The Crowd at Woolwich Arsenal

Anniversaries appear here