A career horribly hampered by injury; a life cut short by war.

The Arsenal Anniversary Files

Here are the Arsenal (and occasionally one or two non-Arsenal) anniversaries for today taken from the complete files of over 6000 Arsenal anniversaries which appear on the Arsenal History Society website.  An index to the Anniversary files can be found in the left column of this site under “Pages”

The current historical series on this site is Henry Norris at the Arsenal.   An index of all our series can be found on the home page.

You can find an index to all the anniversary files in the Pages section on the left… just scroll down.


 

 

19 June 1913: Wally Hardinge joined from Sheffield United.  He was a first class cricketer scoring 33,519 runs and playing in one test match.  He played the two pre-war seasons at Highbury and the first post-war season and retired in 1921.

19 June 1921: The annual census was undertaken in Britain.  For the first time individuals in a household could make separate confidential returns if they wished rather than have the “head of the household” answer for everyone.

19 June 1933: Len Julians born.  His first club was Walthamstow Avenue, followed by Leyton Orient whom he joined in 1955. After 66 games and 35 goals, it was not surprising that Arsenal would come knocking.

19 June 1944: Death of Herbert Roberts aged just 39.  He worked as a trainer for Arsenal’s reserves and then joined the Royal Fusiliers in the war.  He died while on active service and was buried at Southgate Cemetery.

19 June 1998:  David Grodin signed from AS Saint-Étienne.  He only played one league game with Arsenal and went on a series of loans before being sold to the last of these: Dunfermline.   

19 June 2001: Gio van Bronckhorst signed from Rangers for £8.5m.  He played 42 games for Arsenal before going on loan then permanently to Barcelona.  He ended his playing career with Feyenoord with whom he then moved into management.

19 June 2007: Jeremie Aliadiere sold to Middlesbrough for £2m.  He played 78 times for them before moving on to Lorient.  In 2014 he moved onto the  Qatari side Umm Salal.

19 June 2009: Thomas Vermaelen signed from Ajax.  He went on to play 110 league games for Arsenal and became club captain, but then injuries struck and after the 2014 Cup victory (for which he was an unused sub) he moved to Barcelona.

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