Which Arsenal player went from village football to playing for his country in 5 years?

Latest article published by the Arsenal History Society…

Arsenal in January 1927: Sir Henry Norris acts strangely

Below are the Arsenal (and for historical context, occasionally one or two non-Arsenal) anniversaries for today taken from the complete files of over 6000 Arsenal anniversaries which appear on the Arsenal History Society website.  An index to the monthly Anniversary files can be found in the right column of this site under “Pages” on the right of the screen.

The current historical series on this site is Henry Norris at the Arsenal.   An index of all our main series can be found on the home page.


Today’s headline comes from 1976

7 October 1908: Debut of Angus McKinnon in game against Rest of Kent.  (Woolwich Arsenal won 3-0).  Having signed from Petershill he went on to play 211 league games for Arsenal.

7 October 1909: Having lost the previous game 7-1 with the injured McDonald in goal, Fisher took over, but despite being fit was little improvement as Arsenal lost 5-1 to mid-table Notts County.

7 October 1916: Dicky Roose, Arsenal goalkeeper, and one of the most flamboyant of players of the era was tragically killed in action in the Battle of the Somme serving his country in the first world war.  See also here.

7 October 1920: Knighton purchased Harold Walden – Bradford City’s top scorer in their 1911/12 campaign.  In many ways this was a publicity stunt as the man was also a music hall entertainer. It’s a fascinating but rarely told story and (in my opinion) well worth following the link to read the detail.

7 October 1922: The Prince of Wales was the first member of the royal family to do a radio broadcast.  Meanwhile Arsenal beat West Bromwich Albion, 3-1 which lifted the club from 20th to 16th.

7 October 1931: Arsenal beat WBA to win the Charity Shield at Villa Park.  

7 October 1933: Final match for Alf Haynes.  He moved to Crystal Palace two months later, where he played for three seasons before suffering a very serious injury.

7 October 1947: Birth of Patrick Howard near Barnsley.  He played for Barnsley and Newcastle before being brought in as an emergency central defender for Arsenal by Terry Neill, during Neill’s first season as manager.

7 October 1972: Debut for Jeff Blockley in Sheffield United 1 Arsenal 0.  He came in as a replacement to Simpson and Roberts who had been alternating at playing at 6.  However later in the season he did move across to the number 5 shirt. See also here

7 October 1976: Gilberto Silva born.  He started as a footballer in 1997 with a tiny local team, and by 2002 he was playing all of Brazil’s games in the World Cup finals.  It was quite a rise to success in five years.

7 October 1986: Arsenal drew 1-1 away with Huddersfield in league cup, Martin Hayes scoring.  However Arsenal had already won the first leg 2-0 and so went through.

7 October 1992: Arsenal drew with Millwall in the league cup but went through on penalties, Campbell scoring the goal in open play.  It was cup match 2 of Arsenal’s Cup Double season

7 October 2014: Brian McDermott returned to Arsenal as a scout and eventually became chief scout having managed Reading and Leeds Utd.

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