FA Cup 1st round replay. Jan 15th 1913. Croydon Common Home. Won 2-1 Crowd 9000.
The crowd for this match and the original drawn match which caused this replay were in total 17,000 compared with 35,000 in 1909. So what had gone wrong? Why were Arsenal crowds so down in 1913?
First, for the earlier games, Arsenal’s two FA Cup semi-final appearances were still fresh in the memories, and they seemed to be advancing up the league.
Second, for 1913 the memory was of a first round defeat the previous year, and the certain realisation that Arsenal were heading for relegation weighed heavily on the fans. In fact this was the first home game Arsenal won all season, and they only won one other.
But this game reminds me of the anniversary on January 16th 1909 which has, for many years, vanished into the history books without any significant comment but which is itself a very interesting moment in Arsenal’s history.
But during the writing of the book “Making the Arsenal” it became clear that Croydon Common, the club, and the meeting of Croydon Common FC with Woolwich Arsenal, was something of significance.
Which is why it already has a major article on this site, and why it also features heavily in our book “Woolwich Arsenal, the Club that Changed Football”
I won’t try and go over the whole thing again – the article already on this site says just about everything we know regarding the match.
So here are the references:
The articles…
- Jan 15 v Croydon Common (the final years in the FA Cup for Woolwich Arsenal)
- Croydon Common v Woolwich Arsenal
- Henry Norris, Arsenal and Croydon Common
The books…
- Woolwich Arsenal: The club that changed football – Arsenal’s early years
- Making the Arsenal – how the modern Arsenal was born in 1910
- The Crowd at Woolwich Arsenal – crowd behaviour at the early matches
