Chapman, the player who moved from club to club to club…

The article below, by Tony Attwood, is part of our series, “100 Years Since Herbert Chapman Joined the Arsenal”.

In relation to this series, you might also find interesting the article Henry Norris, the founder of the modern Arsenal.

The story so far…

As the title of the last article (Why Knighton had to go) indicates, Arsenal in general and Sir Henry Norris in particular had every reason to want Knighton out of the club in 1925. In the last four years, Arsenal had finished 17th, 11th, 19th and 20th in the 1st Division of the Football League (the 21st and 22nd placed clubs going down) and had only once got beyond the second round of the FA Cup. True, they had won the London Challenge Cup twice, each time beating second-division teams in the final, but this was very much an inferior mid-week competition in which clubs often tried out reserve players.

Worse for three of these last four seasons the goals scored in the first division by Arsenal were in the 40s – that is averaging around one goal a game, while the goals against exceeded those scored in each of those last four seasons.

The goal scoring by the top scorer had also declined. In 1925 Jimmy Brain came top with just 15 goals, the year before being even worse with Harry Woods coming in as top scorer with a paltry 12. In short, leaving aside some success in the London Challenge Cup (which was played generally on Wednesday afternoons) there was nothing to cheer about at all. Indeed if one wanted a single measure of Arsenal’s parlous state after the First World War, it could be measured by the fact that in not one of Knighton’s seasons in charge, did Arsenal score more goals than they conceded.

Indeed, if we wanted just one point of contrast between Knighton’s teams and those of Chapman, it would be the fact that in 1924/5, Chapman’s last season in Yorkshire, Huddersfield Town scored more than twice as many goals as they conceded.

Which thus raises the question, Why? Why would Chapman leave the most successful Huddersfield Town side ever up to that point (and is it turned out, the most successful ever in the history of football, at least up to today) to go to a club that had never won anything? After all, at this time Herbert Chapman was just about the most famous person in the town (having won the club their first three trophies in his last three seasons as their manager). True, his reputation would have carried forth to London, but even so, the prejudice of London club owners against those from the north, was seemingly particularly strong in the early decades of the 20th century. Londoners, in the most general terms, saw their city as sophisticated and modern; everything that they perceived “the north” not to be.

In seeking an answer to this question of why Chapman would leave unprecedented success at Huddersfield for uncertainty in London, the first point to note is that which has already been mentioned: he was used to London, having played for Tottenham Hotspur. Although, we must also note that the Tottenham Hotspur that Chapman knew was that of a Southern League, not a Football League, club.

And indeed Chapman had no reason to feel positive about Tottenham, since his time as a player had faded there, as in 1906/7 he played far fewer games than he had previously in his career, and scored just three goals. Tottenham finished fifth, as they had the season before. (It is of course quite possible that Chapman was injured for part of this time, but I have not been able to find the records that would confirm this.)

But certainly, something happened in Chapman’s final season at Tottenham. For although Chapman was still young enough (being 28) to be a player (some players in those days continued to play into their late 30s, a few even later), he decided (quite reasonably I would say) that as a form of employment, being a footballer was too risky a business. And thus it was that he chose to leave playing football for good, and develop a career in engineering. And although there is no information on this, we may well imagine family and others adding voices of discontent in relation to the uncertainties that playing football as a career would bring. Besides which, as a career choice, it was hardly a long-term proposition.

But it is also possible that these plans to leave football were made with annoyance, or at least regret, and quite possibly Chapman blamed Tottenham in some way for his playing career coming to a premature end. This is speculation of course, but it might have been a reason for Chapman to be encouraged to return to oversee the fortunes of Tottenham’s biggest rivals when he began to think of leaving Huddersfield.

But before then, as we have seen, there were plans to leave football completely, and Chapman was only drawn back into the game when he was recommended to Northampton Town (also, like Tottenham, of the Southern League) as their potential new manager.

Thus it was that Chapman did not abandon football but instead became Northampton’s player-manager – a common concept in those days. Indeed the notion of player-manager was fairly common in the lower divisions of the Football League in England until the 1960s

Now at this point, we must take into account the fact that football, and in particular the notion of players moving from club to club, were completely different from today where contracts hold a player in place for a number of seasons. And to see just how much movement there was of players between clubs, we need to go back to Chapman’s earliest days as a professional player.

For in his playing career, Herbert Chapman is recorded as having been registered with no fewer than 13 clubs between 1895 (and possibly earlier – the records are incomplete) and 1909. Indeed the number of moves between clubs was even greater than that because he registered with Northampton Town three times, twice through a transfer and once on loan!

Sadly records of the number of appearances Chapman made for each club have not been preserved (or at least I’ve not been able to find them), but we do have some data. As far as I can tell, his first four clubs, starting in 1895 (although possibly a year or two earlier) were Kiveton Park, Ashton North Edn, Stalybridge Rovers and Rochdale. That takes us up to 1898.

These clubs are by and large not still in existence – although Kiveton Park for example are, I believe, in the Sheffield & Hallamshire County Senior League Division One. Aston North End on the other hand, ceased playing a couple of years after Chapman left. Stalybridge Rovers ceased playing at the end of the 19th century as did Rochdale (who had no connection with the club of the same name now in the National League).

But we should not think that Chapman’s appearance for clubs brought with it a curse. This is how things went in the late 19th century. Indeed we should remember that in 1910, had it not been for the last-minute intervention of Henry Norris, who settled the club’s debts and made arrangements for the building of and move to Highbury, Arsenal likewise would have collapsed prior to the First World War.

As for Chapman, by the time he reached Northampton Town in 1909, he had played for eight different clubs already. And thus indeed at this point we may wonder why.

The answer appears to be that Chapman was keen on improving his income and working conditions and so was in no way averse to moving from job to job to get both. And having moved he then signed up with the local football club as a part-timer.

However this was an era in which clubs and their finances were even more fragile than we sometimes see over 100 years later. Additionally, at Asthon North End, the second Chapman club we know of, there was also player-poaching on a grand scale and certainly it would not have been the only case of this.

Yet as we look back through Chapman’s career as a footballer we can see interesting links to his life. Kiveton Park was built around a shallow coal mine and as the coal ran out, so did the jobs. Stalybridge Rovers had financial troubles perhaps through joining the Football League with more ambition than financial stability or income.

The Rochdale that Chapman played for was not the current Rochdale club, but one that only survived between 1896 and 1900 – although in this case Chapman had moved on before its financial demise. At Grimsby, the crowd seems (according to the reports that have survived) to have been more intent on deriding the efforts of their own team’s players.

And so it went on, with Chapman finding a new club each year, or sometimes more than that, for between 1896 and 1903, Chapman is recorded as having played for no less than ten different teams: Kiveton Park, Aston North End, Stalybridge Rovers, Rochdale, Grimsby Town, Swindon Town, Sheppey United, Workshop Town, Northampton Town, Sheffield United. But then finally he signed for Notts County – a contract of note for Chapman the player, since he stayed with the club for two years; an absolute record for him as a player at that time. Also we may note that here he was a professional player.

Our view of Chapman as a player of no mean ability is bolstered by the fact that Notts County paid a fee of £300 to Sheffield United for him as a player, and this transfer made it quite clear that he was now a professional player of a certain standing. He had been through ten clubs to get to this level, and he was progressing. Now he had reached the stage of being a professional of a certain standing.

Chapman stayed at Notts County for two years, although in the second year he was loaned to Northampton Town and here for once we have details of his achievement: 22 games and 14 goals.

And it was then as a result of these endeavours that Tottenham Hotspur moved in, and signed him on £4 a week in 1905. He stayed there two years played 42 games and scored 16 goals – and we’ll continue with this next time.

But for now to return to our question at the start: why would Chapman leave the success he was having at Huddersfield Town and take the risk of joining a failing club in north London, we can find at least part of the answer in his past. As a player, he had always been looking for something better. That, it seems, was his nature.

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