Quite how mid-week games were organised 100 years ago has always been beyond me.
March 2nd 1910 was a Wednesday and Woolwich Arsenal were away at Forest. This being long before the era of floodlighting the match kicked off in the afternoon – probably 2.30pm although I can find no formal record of that.
Forest were 13th in the League to Woolwich Arsenal’s 19th (out of 20) and in a safe midtable position. The one thing that might have given Arsenal hope of their terrible run of late was that Forest had a far worse home record than they had an away record.
Forest were a club who alternated between Divisions I and II and were destined to go back down again in the following season. They had twice got to 5th in the First Division, but until 1910 that was the height of their claim.
This season, at home they had won only 3, drawn 4 and lost 5, scoring 15 goals . Away from home they had won six and scored 25. It was not that much to get excited about but it was something.
In the end it was 1-1 and Buckingham (our number 9) scored his first goal since mid-January. and the point was enough to take Arsenal out of the relegation zone. There is a report that because of crowd trouble the referee took the teams off for a few minutes – and this is mentioned in Jacko Jones’ report for the Chronicle. The story is revealed in full in Making the Arsenal.
Arsenal did perhaps benefit a little from having a more settled side. It was nothing like the team they had started the season with – but it seems to have been a more solid performance, and gave some hope for Everton away on March 7th – playing once more the club that had savagely knocked us out of the Cup
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Recent financial stories from Untold Arsenal
- Complete review of EPL clubs’ debts, and why it is getting worse.
- EPL owes more money than rest of Europe put together
- You don’t know what you’re doing
- Financial stability or ambition. Which do you want?
- Arsenal’s own liquidation, and their rise from the grave
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ARSENAL IN THE PAST…
- The days when football journalists could write, entertain and make us laugh (a true newspaper report about Arsenal in the 1930s)
- Charlie Buchan’s first appearance for Arsenal.
- Why did Arsenal move to Highbury and not somewhere else
- Chelsea get into the league – the biggest fix in Football League history
- How Arsenal got into the 1st Division in 1919, and why it wasn’t a fix
- “Making the Arsenal” – the novel. The most extraordinary book about Arsenal ever. And that’s unofficial. Available from Amazon.co.uk and from the publishers direct.
