This is our daily review of Arsenal anniversaries taken from the Arsenal day by day files prepared by the AISA Arsenal History Society. I am sorry the service is intermittent at the moment, as I am in Cyprus rather than England, but I will try and get some days’ anniversaries up while I am absent.
Our headline is taken from this day in 1938
27 November 1877: Leigh Roose, one of the most famous players of the age, and at Arsenal player at the end of his career, was born. He was educated in Wrexham where it is said, in the course of one football match, Roose’s brother Edward kicked H.G. Wells, then a teacher at the school, so hard in the back that he ruptured the author’s kidney. Leigh was the player who was singled out from Arsenal’s first world war heros at the Remembrance Ceremony before the Arsenal Tottenham game in November 2016.
27 November 1909. Bury 1 Woolwich Arsenal 2. After just two wins in the first 14 Arsenal were bottom of the league. With this and two subsequent wins the club rose to 15th after the 11 December game, leaving Bolton and Tottenham stranded.
27 November 1938: Racing Club de Paris 1 Arsenal 1. The landing of the planes going to France for the Remembrance match was affected by fog and the two planes carrying the Arsenal players missed each other and one went on to miss a hanger by a matter of feet.
27 November 1972: Henry White (known as “Bert”) died. After playing 101 league games for Arsenal scoring 40 goals, between 1919 and 1923, and being a member of the London Challenge Cup winning side of 1922, he moved on to Blackpool, and also played first class cricket for Warwickshire. See also this second article.
27 November 1984: Martin Hayes first game – a friendly v Australia at Highbury. He had joined Arsenal as an apprentice in June 1982. .
27 November 1996: Arsenal 2 Liverpool 4 (League cup round 4). In three league cup games Arsenal scored eight goals, of which five were scored by Ian Wright.
27 November 2000: Sebastian Svard bought in from Kjobenhavns Boklklub. He did not play a league game for Arsenal but won the Youth Cup and after a series of loans went on to play for Borussia Mönchengladbach.
27 November 2001: Only 16,917 turn up for Arsenal v Grimsby in the league cup, although 3rd division Grimsby had just knocked out Liverpool. Edu and Wiltord scored. This crowd influenced the decision to offer League Cup games for £10 (lower) and £20 (upper) at the Ems.
27 November 2002: Roma 1 Arsenal 3, Henry’s first European hat trick.
27 November 2007: Arsenal lost 3-1 to Seville and thus ended a 28 games unbeaten sequence.
Special feature:
Highbury: from start to end with previously unseen pictures of the end of the stadium.
The latest post from our series on Henry Norris at the Arsenal
April 1918: the third wartime league ends; Ireland rebels against conscription.
Coming later today: Arsenal in the summer of 1918.
A full index of the various series of articles on this site appears on the home page.
