Feeder clubs – clubs which have a direct link with another club in a higher division – are outlawed within England, but it has not always been so. In 1934 Arsenal became one of the first clubs to join forces with a much smaller team, giving them somewhere that they could send promising young players and watch their development in competitive games.
But the link was not huge – Arsenal provided the manager, one scout and paid 60% of the club’s wages. The rest had to come from gate receipts, and certainly for a while these were much higher than might otherwise have been expected. There is more on this situation in the link for 16 June 1934.
Here are the anniversaires.
16 June 1917: The local newspaper in Fulham started a long running series of attacks on the Borough’s mayor, Henry Norris following the flooding of local sewers caused by a lack of repair (itself caused by a lack of manpower to carry out the repairs). The campaign continued for a staggering six years.
16 June 1934: Margate became Arsenal’s feeder club. With the school leaving age of 14 but league clubs prohibited from signing players until 17 the nursery idea allowed Arsenal to train youngsters as amateurs and monitor their development.
16 June 1982: Graham Rix and Kenny Sansom became the first Arsenal players to play for England in the final stages of the World Cup. In April 2017 Rix suffered a heart attack while in 2018 Rix was accused by multiple Chelsea trainees of racism and physical assault. Samson suffered from multiple addictions, but recent reports and occasional media work suggest that he is now on the road to recovery.
16 June 1986: Danny Clapton died aged just 51. He moved to Luton Town in September 1962 and lived (and for a while played football) in Sydney from 1963 to 1970 before returning to London to run a public house in Hackney.
16 June 1994: Lee Harper signed from Sittingbourne. He only played once for Arsenal before moving on to QPR. In his career he played over 100 times each for QPR, Northampton and Kettering.
16 June 2000: Lauren signed from Real Mallorca. He had already played for four pro clubs by the time he joined Arsenal, but it was Arsenal where he made his real mark, playing 159 league games. In recent years he has occasionally worked as a pundit.
