A ticket for the match between a village side and Arsenal has caused the raising of memories of this game played in 1960 to mark the opening of a new clubhouse.
The ticket was found by Mr Bree, who managed the Chalfont St Peter reserve team in the 1970s.
The match took place on 8 September 1960, and Arsenal clearly played in a charity match to raise money and pay for the new club house. Sadly Chalfont has now lost all knowledge of the game, and has no official log book recording it.
The game is not recorded in the Arsenal History Society log of all first team games (www.arsenalhistory.info) but then Arsenal would clearly have only sent their reserves or a youth side to the game and we only record first team affairs.
But the club, which now plays at Mill Meadow in the town, is being researched by its trustee and lifelong fan Benny Goodman, 58, who now lives in Switzerland.
He said Arsenal would have visited because of the club’s connections rather than Chalfont St Peter’s match results. The club played in the 60s in the Spartan League – the League that Wood Green Town FC played in.
WGT is significant here because they played in White Hart Lane, just a couple of miles from Arsenal. (Tottenham H as you may know, don’t play in White Hart Lane). So it is possible that a connection at WGT might have helped spark the link with Arsenal. But then again Chalfont is the sort of place where directors of Arsenal might well have pitched up.
Mr Goodman said that Chalfont’s ‘absolute low’ was in the early 70s but it did win the Berks and Bucks Benevolent Cup in 1966. It also reached the FA Vase semi-finals in 2009, when the village team lost to Glossop on penalties.
“We were literally three seconds from going to Wembley,” said Mr Goodman. “If anyone asks who I support, I say Chalfont St Peter – it is my club. We are here for the community and we want to be able to offer everybody in the community the opportunity to play sports.”
The match ticket against Arsenal had the admission price as one shilling (5p).
If you know about the match, please do write to me (Tony.Attwood@aisa.org) If you want to be very helpful you could also write to bucksnews@trinitysouth.co.uk which is the paper that ran the story.
