By Tony Attwood
One hundred years ago today, on 23 February 1913, Tottenham Hotspur went on the attack, demanding that the Management Committee of the Football League state that Woolwich Arsenal could not move to Highbury.
The story of Woolwich Arsenal’s move to Highbury had broken in the press on the day before (for details see the previous article), and Tottenham, having heard all the rumours, were ready.
Tottenham were aided in this by Clapton Orient and on one front it looked like they might have a case, since clearly the region already had two clubs. Clapton Orient had joined the League in 1905, and Tottenham had joined the League in 1908. A third in the area, it was argued, seemed like overkill.
But although that seemed logical on the face of it there were other issues to be considered.
The first was, why on earth was Henry Norris deliberately bringing a club to within a few miles of two existing clubs? Yes he had found a good plot of land to build the new stadium, but surely in the whole of London there had to be other good plots of land he could have taken.
Henry Norris in fact had two major reasons for choosing Gillespie Road in Islington for the new ground, other than the fact that the space was there and available.
First, he relished the transport links. Although he had actually opposed the introduction of trams to Fulham (as a Unionist mayor of Fulham he was obliged to listen to his party, and they were resolutely against the move), he knew that the transport issue was key. Even 100 years ago, the days of the fan walking along a couple of streets to see his/her local team had gone. Now fans were travelling by train, underground and bus. Indeed an important part of Woolwich Arsenal’s support in Plumstead came from a group of fans in Rotherhithe.
Gillespie Road had transport options ready-made: Finsbury Park rail and underground services were working by 1913, as was Gillespie Road (later Arsenal) underground station.
But Henry Norris had also seen a rise in football interest in Fulham, once Chelsea created their club in 1905, and he felt that putting three clubs together in one small area could really bring football to the top of the agenda. Although we have no reference to him saying this, my belief from what we do know is that he felt that having the three clubs in one area would force football onto the daily local newspapers’ agenda every day of the week. And Norris did know a lot about newspapers, not least as a regular contributor of a column in his local Fulham paper.
In this he was right – and although it is often forgotten the fact is that Tottenham and Arsenal both had significant increases in their crowds from September 1913 onwards.
That then was Norris’ logic for the move. But there was something else. Norris knew that Tottenham had no ability to object to the move, because Tottenham had been down this road before. When both Chelsea and Clapton Orient had applied for places in the Southern League in 1904 and 1905 respectively, Tottenham had objected. The Southern League, having accepted Clapton in 1904, rejected Chelsea in 1905, after those Tottenham objections. Clapton and Chelsea then jointly applied to join the Football League and were accepted and here Tottenham could have no objections since they played in the Southern League until 1908.
And what really made Norris secure was the meeting in 1910 at the time of Arsenal’s fall into administration, from which Norris rescued them. Norris had discussed with the League, three proposals at that time. One was to merge Fulham and Woolwich Arsenal, one was to move Woolwich Arsenal to Fulham’s ground, and one was to keep Woolwich Arsenal where it was for a year, to allow the people of Plumstead to support their club by buying shares and coming to matches.
In these discussions the League made it quite clear that
a) they controlled which division a club played in but
b) they had no right to decide where the club played
These rules have of course now changed, but that was the state of play in 1913 as it was in 1910, so Tottenham had no case, and must have known they had no case.
Tottenham’s request for the League Management Committee to hear the case was rejected at once, since the Management Committee were perfectly aware that their rules, re-iterated in 1910, were clear: they did not control where clubs played.
Tottenham did not give up the fight – and the matter rumbled on for some time to come – but we’ll deal with that in later articles, on the 100th anniversary of each event.
22 February 1913 – Gillespie Rd named as new Arsenal stadium
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The books…
- 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 – crowd behaviour at the early matches
The sites…
- Untold Arsenal
- Referee Decisions – just what are the refs up to this season?
- The musical and lyrical review of Bob Dylan’s songs
- The weight loss programme: The only guaranteed way to stay fit
Same old Tottenham, always crying. Even when they WERE the more successful club — albeit not, officially speaking, IN London, North or otherwise — they were afraid of us.