For The Arsenal, Charity Begins At Home

With the Arsenal no doubt counting their coffers after a highly lucrative pre season tour of Australia and China now seems a good time to look back at a tour from a different age and what happened to those proceeds. 

For Arsenal fans in the late 1950s we were no longer the power we had once been and we were in a trophy drought that would extend right through to 1970 when we lifted the Fairs Cup on that famous night at Highbury against Anderlecht. But while we may not have been challenging for trophies our exploits in the pre war years meant Arsenal was still a name to be reckoned with in Europe and most years saw us heading across the channel, none of this private, branded aircraft.

In 1959, for the second year running, we spent part of the pre season in the Netherlands where we played a couple of friendlies against local opposition before beginning our league campaign with a home loss against Sheffield Wednesday. 

8 August v Sparta Rotterdam 2-2 (Danny Clapton, Gerry Ward)

12 August v ADO Hague 7-0 (David Herd 3, Danny Clapton, John Barnwell, Joe Haverty, OG)

Nearly GBP 1,000 was raised on the tour and the above image shows how the money was spread around a number of charities with a fair whack going to military and police charities as well as schools, youth clubs and churches. 

Nowadays of course the Arsenal have their own charity foundation with its work being felt far beyond North London with club ambassador Ray Parlour recently in Indonesia opening an all weather pitch in North Jakarta but it's good to know the Arsenal have a fine, long tradition of giving back to local communities. Indeed just last week the football club hosted a number of fireman who had been kept busy in the recent Grenfell Tower fire.

Bloody Technology

Nothing new with technology or people's reactions to it. How many times have you been to a game and been surrounded by people filming, snapchatting, vlogging or whatever. A whole generation growing up focused as much on their gadgets nestling in their palm as the action, if there is any, on the pitch.

It seems like football clubs have conceded the terraces, ok the stands, to the corporates and the techies and the rest of us, that is those who actually wanna watch the ebb and flow of the game and even create a bit of atmosphere come way down the list of priorities. Gripe against the modern game over. For now.

Back in 1962/63 it seems people were less tolerant of the latest technology invading their terraces. Some supporters it seems had the temerity to take their transistor not only into the stadium but also listen to the damned thing. For those who think the 60s were people who voted for Theresa May the transistor radio was a small portable tinny sounding radio people would press against their ears to keep up with the latest news. Or, on match day, the results from around the country.

In the days before ear plugs the noise could be quite annoying and I imagine older fans would tut-tut at the uncouth youth with their trannies and moan about the young generation, hence the request in the programme, this clip comes from Wolverhampton Wanderers on 27/10/62. 

One wonders how they moaners would view the selfie generation. Scratch that. How would the trannie holders view the selfie mob?

To be fair fans had good reason to have their minds elsewhere while watching the Arsenal. We had won the first two games of the season before embarking on a hapless run of one win in 12 games. How bad were we? We had even lost at home to Sheffield Wednesday. We haven't lost at home to them since.

For the Wolves game the programme is considering the FA Cup and opines 'There is an equally strong view that never again will a second division team win the Cup.' Shut up!

Elsewhere in the programme a special mention goes to the Chief Honourary Steward Claud Stevens who had recently celebrated his golden wedding anniversary meaning he had got married back in 1912. A marriage that had survived two world wars plus god knows what else. I wonder how he felt about transistor radios/ 

I'll close with one of the Do You Know questions that were a feature of those pre Google days

'Father and son who followed each other in the same paid position with a football league club had 82 years of aggregate service with the club. Can you name them?