22 March is the day on which the clubs that went on to be founder members of the original football league came together for the first time, to discuss how things were going to be done. Arsenal of course were not part of it – it took Arsenal another five and a half years to join, not least because the clubs that formed the league were all based in the north and the midlands. But Arsenal did become the first professional team in the south.
Interestingly, the clubs that joined together to form the League were unable to agree how to run the league table – there not having been a league before.
Various proposals were made including ranking clubs by the number of goals they scored, or by the number of wins. There was even a proposal of two points for a win and one for a draw – and that of course was the proposal that won through.
We’ve also got a note on this day of Clem Voysey playing his first game for Arsenal. When the League and the FA turned their firepower on Henry Norris, Voysey was one of the routes they chose, suggesting that he was somehow paid illegally, or transferred illegally, or if neither of those then something else illegally. Arsenal’s chairman denied it all, and despite three separate enquiries the FA and the League, were never able to show anything was wrong about Voysey joining Arsenal.
Speaking of Norris this is the day in 1920 when he made a speech in Parliament, in favour of reduced train fares for commuters and for football fans going to away games, and said that increased salaries for workers were a fact of life that should not be opposed. He had earlier opposed the maximum wage for players, but his ideas were defeated.
And it was the day in 2005 when Jens Lehmann’s record of 853 minutes without conceding a goal in the Champions League began.
On a more negative note it is also the day in 2014 when in an Arsenal defeat to Chelsea, the referee sent off completely the wrong player, by mistake, despite protests by both players. In fact there should have been no sending off as the handball in the area was of a shot that was destined to miss the goal had it not been touched.
But of course it was ever thus.
You can read all the anniversaries for Arsenal on this day on the daily anniversary list published by the Arsenal History Society
Today’s anniversaries are here.
