After two home defeats (against Notts County and Newcastle) in the Christmas period, 1909, Woolwich Arsenal finally managed to salvage a point from a home game, drawing one all in front of 15,000.
It was the very least needed, given that the next match on January 1 1910 was Liverpool away.
The only surprise in the Arsenal team was the sudden return of M T McKeller who had not played since the 1-1 draw away to The Wednesday on November 13th.
Matthew McKellar had come from Kirkintilloch Harp, and this was his one and only season at Woolwich. We may guess that he came for a job at the armaments factory, and managed to get himself a total of three league games. Indeed not only was this his one and only season, and there is no record of him moving on to any other club afterwards.
He scored just the one league goal – and it was the goal that earned the draw with Liverpool. He also played twice in the FA Cup – his final game being a 0-5 defeat away to Everton in the second round of the Cup in February.
As for Kirkintilloch Harp, it is another of those clubs of which I have virtually no knowledge at all. In fact that only knowledge that I do have is from a single web site that suggests that Kirkintilloch Rob Roy (another club, not a person) took over the ground that Harp played on in the 1920s. So maybe the club died at that time. If they are still around they don’t seem to have a web site.
Thus we have it. A draw, and just a fraction of hope for the next game on January 1, 1910.
We’re now getting closer and closer to the period covered by the novel MAKING THE ARSENAL. You can order the book over the Xmas period on www.amazon.co.uk or from January 4th 2010 from the publishers.
Making the Arsenal – review of the book by A Cultured Left Foot
Untold Arsenal – the blog of Arsenal in the current day
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