8 October 1930: Arsenal won the Charity Shield beating Sheffield Wednesday 2-1 in front of a crowd of 25,000 at Stamford Bridge. It was Arsenal’s first appearance in the annual match, and started a run of five wins in the 1930s.
The team for the first match was
Keyser
Parker Hapgood
Seddon Roberts John
Hulme Brain Lambert Jack Bastin
Hulme and Jack were the scorers.
Indeed this match wasn’t just the start of a good run in the 30s – Arsenal have won the shield in each of the following years:
1930, 1931, 1933, 1934, 1938, 1948, 1953, 1991*, 1998, 1999, 2002, 2004 – the 1991 shield being shared.
The Community Shield came out of an earlier competition which started out in 1899 as a professionals vs amateurs annual cup. After the amateurs had a falling out with the FA there was a change over to the winners of the Football League playing the winners of the Southern League. As such Herbert Chapman got an early taste of the competition, when Northampton Town became champions of the Southern League for the first and only time under Chapman in 1909 and so went on to the Charity Shield match.
The idea of Cup winners v Champions started in 1921 but it was not consistently in this format until 1930. But even since there have been times when it has not been played in this way. In 1950 England played an “FA XI”, in 1961 Tottenham having won the double played the FA XI again.
In 1971 after winning the double Arsenal had a real problem. So unlikely had a cup or league win seemed earlier in the season, they had arranged a pre-season tour – and were unable to break the contract. So Liverpool played Leicester!!!
This set a trend and the following year both Derby (league champions) and Leeds (FA Cup winners) refused to play so Man City played Villa.
Then, with the FA in its usual state of incompetence and disrepute, in 2002 the Charity Commission found that Football Association had failed to meet its legal obligations under the Charities Act as it failed to say where the money was going, and had regularly delayed paying out anything at all. Instead of being honourable and sorting out the mess, the FA did what we might expect: it simply renamed the trophy the Community Shield. Arsenal were the first winners.
Arsenal have won the trophy the second largest number of times (11, compared with Man U’s 16. The highest scoring game was Man U 8 Swindon 4 – with the money going to the Titanic Disaster fund.
- The Anniversary Files: January to June
- The Anniversary Files: July to September
- The Anniversary Files: October to December
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 FC: crowd behaviour at the early matches
