A Red, Red Robin

It smacks in a way of the big boys looking for revenge pretty damn quick. In 1969 Arsenal lost 3-1 to Swindon Town in the League Cup Final; as shocking then as it sounds now. Within 6 months we were inviting the Robins to Highbury for revenge, sorry, a friendly.


Stinks, doesn't it? Sounds rather like the school bully and alpha male, you know the one who got all the girls and none of the acne, got beaten up behind the bike sheds and he wanted a piece of revenge...in his back garden.

Swindon would have been onto a hiding to nothing. Make a bit of cash yes but then have the Arsenal say look, we can beat you!

But it was only  meaningless friendly. It was to be 10 years and a bit before the Arsenal met Swindon again and that too was also in the League Cup. The first game at Highbury was a draw before Swindon, then in the 3rd Division, or was it the 4th, won the replay at the County Ground 4-3.

So it was that we entered the last decade of the century and Swindon still had the upper hand over us. And if we're weren't meeting in Cup games there was little chance of ending that hoodoo. Until Swindon went and got promoted to the Premier League. We played them twice of course in 1993/1994 and beat them twice. It's taken a long time but even now has the slate been wiped clean? Those twin defeats still appear in the record books, they will never be eviscerated from our memories.


There is another team nicknamed the Robins who have a hex over us...but let's not go there eh?