Arsenal’s ground to be shut for the rest of the season

The latest post from our series on Henry Norris at the Arsenal

November 1919: Arsenal solid but in debt, Labour advances, another goalscorer, Norris honoured.


 

Below is our daily review of Arsenal anniversaries taken from the Arsenal day by day  files prepared by the AISA Arsenal History Society.   We expect to add 1000 new anniversaries to our files this year.

If you spot an error please do write in with the correction and as much detail as possible so we can keep enlarging and upgrading what is the largest database of Arsenal events that has ever been produced.

The headline story comes from 1895

26 January 1889: St Luke’s 5 Arsenal 0 – a reminder that Royal Arsenal were strong but certainly not invincible in the early days.

26 January 1891: Royal Arsenal 0 Everton 5.  After three games in which Arsenal scored a total of 16 goals the club (which was playing its final season as amateurs) was brought down to earth by first division Everton.

26 January 1895: Crowd incidents in the Woolwich Arsenal v Burton game led to the ground being closed by the FA for two games.  The original sentence proposed was that the ground would be closed for the rest of the 1894/95 season. However, on appeal a “compromise” of 6 weeks suspension was agreed upon by the FA.   See also here.

26 January 1918:  Tottenham 0 Fulham 1 at Highbury (as Tottenham’s ground was closed for the duration).  Sir Henry Norris attended with his daughter who took her dog into the directors’ box.  The dog then escaped and then ran on the pitch and play was stopped while it was rounded up.

26 January 1925: WHU 1 Arsenal 0 (at Stamford Bridge).  The second replay of the FA Cup match that was the scene of the Arsenal drugs scandal.  Curiously the only source for the story is the man who dished out the drugs to the team: the Arsenal manager who claimed he didn’t know the man who offered him the pills.

26 January 1957: Ex player Freddie Cox DFC started his most famous FA Cup run as a manager of Bournemouth, beating Wolverhampton Wanderers and Tottenham Hotspur before narrowly losing to  Man U.

26 January 1969: James Ramsey died.  He went to Arsenal from Kilmarnock in 1924, and returned there in 1926, leaving Arsenal after 75 games.

26 January 1971: The journey to the Double was held up by a waterlogged pitch for the 4th round cup replay at Portsmouth.

26 January 1980: Arsenal beat Brighton And Hove Albion 2-0 in the cup with 43,202 in attendance.  After some poor performances Brady and Rix were back to their best and Arsenal could have reached double figures, except the Brighton keeper had the game of his life.

26 January 1985: York 1 Arsenal 0 (FA Cup).  Having taken two attempts to beat Hereford, Arsenal went down to York in front of a packed house of 10,840.

26 January 2005: Jackie Henderson died in Poole, Dorset.  He played for Scotland and was a great favourite at Portsmouth, but couldn’t pull Arsenal through on his own.

Yesterday’s anniversaries: 

The manager who simply walked out on Arsenal, and the goal fest that followed



“Woolwich Arsenal, the club that changed football” and “Making the Arsenal” are both available on Kindle, and we have a small number of copies of the printed edition available at £10 each.   Details are here.

What’s on the Arsenal History Society site

An index to the various series that contain over 1,800 articles on this site concerning the history of Arsenal appears on our home page.  Our current series is “Henry Norris at the Arsenal”

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