Norris at the Arsenal: Arsenal Players in the wartime league, 1916/17

by Tony Attwood

With thanks for the list of players and their games played in 1916/17 to Andy Kelly. The figures for games played and goals this season come from TheArsenalHistory website.

1916/17 was the second season for the wartime leagues, and the first in which a London league (known as the London Combination) had been organised to run all the way through the season.

Arsenal played 40 games in the League of 14 clubs, and used 44 players during the season – a remarkably similar number to the previous season when 46 players were used during the two league campaigns of that season.

14 of the 44 players who turned out for Arsenal played just one game for the club and a further five played two games. 11 of the players had appeared for Arsenal in the 1914/15 season – the last professional season before the league was abandoned for the duration of the war. The Arsenal 14/15 column shows how many games the player had played in that final professional season before the war. These Arsenal professionals are indicated in red.

The numbers in the left column are simply for convenience in trying to track all these players.

	Player	Guest’s Club	Games	Goals	Arsenal 14/15
1	MWA Allman	Croydon Common	18	4
2	J Bailey		1	–
3	WJ Baker		4	–
4	W Blackmore	Southampton	1	–
5	WN Blyth		1	–
6	F Bradshaw		31	–	29
7	MA Broderick		2	–
8	CS Buckley		2	–	29
9	JJ Chipperfield	Luton Clarence	29	12
10	HL Cockerill		8	1
11	ES Cockle		1	–
12	A Ducat	Aston Villa	2	1
13	J Elkington		13	–
14	JT Flanagan		2	3	26
15	GM Grant		12	–	28
16	FW Groves		27	6	2
17	HG Groves		8	2
18	HTW Hardinge		20	9	12
19	W Hibbert	Newcastle United	1	–
20	AV Hutchins	Arsenal from 1919	32	2
21	J Johnson	Brentford	1	–
22	HE King		10	6	37
23	F Knowles	Manchester City	6	–
24	E Liddell		13	–	2
25	R Little	Hamilton	4	–
26	A McKinnon		20	–	21
27	W Madge		6	–
28	A Melville		1	–
29	R O’Neill		1	–
30	RC Pearson	Southampton	1	–
31	J Rutherford		28	6	26
32	V Sanderson		1	1
33	JE Shaw		12	–	38
34	E Silto		1	–
35	D Slade		1	–
36	WA Spittle		7	2
37	WJ Stapley	Glossop	24	–
38	J Thomas		1	–
39	FA Tyler		2	–
40	JA Weaver	Croydon Common	10	2
41	W Wilkins		18	1
42	D Williams	Notts County	16	4
43	EC Williamson	Croydon Common	40
44	CW Wright		1	–

Ernest Williamson, the goalkeeper through this season was registered with Croydon Common, but that club, from the Southern League did not compete in wartime football after the 1916/17 season and so he found regular games with Arsenal. Indeed he went on to play for Arsenal professionally after the war.

As far as I can tell Croydon Common had effectively gone into administration or receivership after the 1916/17 season, as I can find no record of them playing any further games after that season. They were the one Southern League team not to return to the League in 1919 when professional football resumed.

There is a slight indication that Henry Norris had an interest in Croydon Common FC, and it is interesting that three of the Common players were by now getting occasional games with Arsenal.

We are currently evolving a complete series on Henry Norris at the Arsenal. The full index to the articles that cover the period from 1910 to this point are given in Henry Norris at the Arsenal

Perhaps the most popular element in the Norris story is that of Arsenal’s promotion to the first division in 1919. Therefore we have separated that story out below. It raises in part the question of the validity of the chief critic of Henry Norris: the Arsenal manager from 1919 to 1925 who Norris sacked. Thus in the selection below we include articles which consider the question as to the validity of Knighton’s testimony.

For the complete index on Norris at the Arsenal please see the link above.

The preliminaries

The voting and the comments before and after the election

The Second Libel