This is our daily review of Arsenal anniversaries taken from the Arsenal day by day files prepared by the AISA Arsenal History Society.
Our headline is taken from 2012
Here are the stories from this day in history…
8 December 1863: First rules of football published. In 1862, J. C. Thring, head of Uppingham School had drawn up a set of rules the year before which were presented in London on October 26, 1863 and on 8 December the first rules of football were published. They allowed catching the ball and there was no rule on the maximum number of players per team!
8 December 1888: Arsenal beat Old St Paul’s in London Senior Cup. Apart from a reference to the club in the FA cup the following season, details are hard to find.
8 December 1906: Birmingham 5 Arsenal 1, leaving Arsenal with just two wins in seven, but despite the poor run Arsenal were still fourth in the league, a position which was solidified by three wins and a draw during the rest of the month.
8 December 1925: John (“Jack”) Butler’s only appearance for England (against Belgium), despite him being born in Ceylon. From 1935 to 1939 he managed the Belgium national team.
8 December 1926: Herbie Roberts joined Arsenal for £200 from Oswestry Town where he was a part time player at one of the oldest football clubs in the world. His “day job” was as a policeman.
8 December 1953: Rangers 1 Arsenal 2. The series of games created by Herbert Chapman continued until 1968/69.
8 December 1991: Jimmy Carter made his senior debut but he went on to make only 25 appearances. The result was Nottingham Forest 3 Arsenal 2.
8 December 1999: Ömer Rıza sold to West Ham. He never played for them but was loaned to Barnet and eventually sold on to Cambridge, before moving to Turkey. However in 2009 he returned to English football with Shrewsbury and continued to play in non-league football in England until 2015.
8 December 2010: Braga 2 Arsenal 0. Having won the home leg 6-0 Arsenal went down, as a result of some very strange refereeing decisions.
8 December 2012. If this were a movie it would be “How the season was saved by a seemingly insignificant win”. The result was Arsenal 2 WBA 0 and Arsenal were in 10th position when this win came along and it was followed by a period in which Arsenal beat Reading 2-5, Wigan 0-1 and Newcastle 7-3 and gradually climbed back up the table.
The latest post from our series on Henry Norris at the Arsenal
Autumn 1918: Arsenal winning, the war grinds to an end, crowds return
Yesterday’s anniversaries: Arsenal’s most prolific scorer dies in a car crash
Special feature:
Highbury: from start to end with previously unseen pictures of the end of the stadium.
What’s on the Arsenal History Society site
An index to the various series that contain over 1,700 articles on this site concerning the history of Arsenal appears on our home page.