AISA Arsenal History Society: preserving Arsenal's heritage
By Tony Attwood Lycurgus Burrows was born in Ashton under Lyne, Northumberland, on 26 June 1875, and is first found playing for Melrose in Glasgow, and then in Sheffield, before playing for Woolwich Polytechnic while a student there. The cause of these moves were the family moving home, presumably in search of work, and it …
Read More “Lycurgus Burrows: played for Tottenham and Arsenal at the same time.”
By Tony Attwood Edwin Raymond Bowden was born on 13 September 1909 in Looe in Cornwall and played for his local team as an inside forward. Throughout his life he was known as Ray. On leaving school he started out as a solicitor’s clerk but his goal scoring with Looe (in one match he scored ten) …
Read More “Ray Bowden: the final member of the brilliant forward line of the 1930s.”
Saturday 28 February 1959 Arsenal v Manchester United – the programme The programme is shown as being Volume XL number 20 (ah those were the days when they actually kept count) and as always it started with the Voice of Arsenal. And this is how it went. (I would add that in those days they …
Read More “Injury problems as great as those ever faced by an Arsenal manager”
By Tony Attwood It is reported that sometime in the 1982-83 season, Ajax got a penalty, Johan Cruyff strode up to take it, but instead of taking it as a shot passed the ball to Jasper Olsen who scored past the bemused keeper. On 22 October 2005 Pires and Henry tried the same thing. But …
Read More “The day Henry and Pires tried a fancy penalty – and screwed it up”
By Tony Attwood We have recorded on this site the way in which Herbert Chapman set up a series of friendly matches with Racing Club de Paris, and then with Rangers of Glasgow. Of far less glamour and lasting just for three consecutive years there was another recurring friendly series: Northampton Town v Arsenal. I …
Read More “Arsenal v Northampton: the forgotten Chapman friendlies”
By Tony Attwood On 28 April 1934 Arsenal went into their penultimate match as firm favourites to win their second trophy in a row, but still needing a point to secure the championship. P W D L F A G Av Pts 1 Arsenal 40 24 8 8 71 45 1.58 56 2 Huddersfield Town …
Read More “Chapman had gone but we still won the 2nd of the 3 consecutive league championships”
I’ve already written a piece about Arsenal’s road to the cup final in 1950. It was a journey, just like that of 2014, in which Arsenal never left London – something that the press then, as in 2014, noted. But in 1950 there was no rampant anti-Arsenal agenda in the press, and the coverage of …
By Tony Attwood It’s Arsenal against Hull on 18 October so I thought I would take a wander back through the events that we have recorded in the Anniversary Archives for events linking these two clubs. Perhaps the most memorable event of recent years had nothing to do with the actual 90 minutes but came …
Read More “Arsenal and Hull: the fun and games through history”
Leslie Jenkin Jones wa born on 1 July 1911 in Aberdare in Aberdare and started playing with Aberdare Athletic. This is the same club that the subject of my last article Reg Cumner played for (the club also known at times as Aberaman Athletic). The two players had paths that crossed several times. Les worked for his father …
When I write about 19th and early 20th century players I expect to have difficulties in finding much out about them. Sometimes even the name can be a problem, such as John George Coleman (known as Tim). Sometimes we know nothing beyond the dates he played for Arsenal. Reginald Horace Cumner however causes all sorts of …
Read More “Reginald Horace Cumner: the player historians trip over”
By Tony Attwood Dr Leigh ‘Dick’ Roose was born 27 November 1877 and died in action on 7 October 1916 He joined Woolwich Arsenal as a goalkeeper from Aston Villa in September 1911 – it was his final season in football. His transfer was as much a publicity stunt as anything else, for Dick …
Read More “Leigh Roose; war hero, dare-devil Arsenal goalkeeper”
By Tony Attwood It is easy to forget both how hard it is to keep a team that has not been used to playing at the top, at the top, and how easy it is to slip into the relegation mire. Such is the way of football memory. Arsene Wenger is berated by a small …
Read More “How relegation loomed just four years after the Double”
By Tony Attwood In the season 1904/5 Arsenal won promotion from the second division, and did so in some style. There were eight straight wins at the start of the season including, quite amazingly, two 8-0 wins. In fact Arsenal scored 35 in those eight games,and let in three. It was a great moment in …
By Tony Attwood Richard Ian Wright was born in Ipswich on 5 November 1977 and gained a league winners’ medal with Arsenal as a goalkeeper in a season when we had three keepers get a medal. Here’s his list of clubs… Years Team League Games 1995–2001 Ipswich Town 240 2001–2002 Arsenal 12 2002–2007 Everton 60 …
Horace Walter Cope, who played at left back for Arsenal in the Chapman era, was born on 24 May 1899 in Treeton, a village in South Yorkshire. He started his working life as a miner while playing also for Treeton United and then moved to Notts County (although I can’t find any dates or details) before …
Read More “Horace Cope: an important early Chapman signing, but now lost to history.”
Ian James Robert Allinson was born 1 October 1957 in Hitchin and played over 100 games for Arsenal between 1983 and 1987. Of these he had 60 starts to league matches and came on 23 times as a sub in league games scoring 16 goals. Although he only played 60 league games for Arsenal he has …
Read More “Ian Allinson; hero of the league cup, and recipient of administrative cock-ups”
Here is just a selection of events relating to Tottenham in September, taken from the Anniversary archives. 1889 21 September 1889: Arsenal beat Tottenham 10-1 in a friendly 1922 23 September 1922: Tottenham 1 Arsenal 2, FA warn Tottenham about crowd violence 1931 10 September 1931: Jimmy Brain sold to Tottenham for £2,500 1949 13 …
By Tony Attwood Geoffrey Colin Barnett was born on 16 October 1946 in Northwich,Cheshire. He is rather unusual as a footballer in history in that although he played in a relatively recent era no one seems to know what he did in later life. What we do know is that Geoff Barnett started out with …
by Tony Attwood It sounds exceedingly odd I know but it is quite true. Arsenal once played Liverpool in Hornsey. The occasion was 25 February 1895, and the match was a friendly and it really as played on the ground of Crouch End FC in Hornsey. Better still the Crouch End club is still going …
Today we play Southampton in the league cup. Here’s a look back to some other events involving Arsenal and Southampton in the late summer of previous years. August 1947 11 August 1947: Dan Roper signs from Southampton (See background article here) 1992 21 August 1992: Perry Groves sold to Southampton for £750,000. 1997 23 August …
Read More “Arsenal and Southampton in late summer – a historical review”
I’ve done a review of 1926/7 as part of the series that looked at Chapman’s life and work at Arsenal year by year. But here’s a chance to focus on one moment in that season, thanks to the publication of a newspaper report on the excellent web site “Arsenal on this day”. Here’s a bit …
By Tony Attwood Arsenal won the league in 1953, securing the championship on the last game of the season. The previous season we’d been losing FA Cup Finalists, and since winning the league in 1948 in spectacular style, and the 1950 FA Cup, we’d always been considered one of the top teams, ready to do …
Read More “1958/9 Tottenham 1 Arsenal 4 and the championship is in sight”
by Tony Attwood In what is becoming a bit of a series, I’m selecting a few events involved this weekend’s opponents that took place in the early part of the season. It gives us a chance to remember the last of the 49, as much as anything else. The Prelude… 1952 23 August 1952: Arsenal …
By Tony Attwood Samson Haden, appears to have been known as Sammy (which is how both Charlie Buchan and Bernard Joy refer to him) although for some reason Wikipedia want to call him Sam – as does one of the Peterborough United web sites I’ve consulted. He was born in Royston, Barnsley on 17 July …
Read More “Sammy Haden: the winger who crossed for Buchan’s first goal”
George Wood was born 26 September 1952 in Douglas in Lanarkshire and played as a goal keeper for Arsenal between 1980 and 1983. The story is that at Lanark Grammar he was an outfield player but his PE teacher converted him to goalkeeping duties. He went on to play junior (ie non-league – the use of the …
