On this day, the first Arsenal match at Highbury was played

Compiled by Tony Attwood

• Day by Day the videos – An Arsenal video for (almost) every day of the year in order. 
• Day by Day the stories– a key moment in Arsenal and footballing history for each day of the year
• Details of some more series can be found at the foot of his article and others are on the home page

Today’s headline comes from 1913.

6 September 1620: The Mayflower set sail from Plymouth.  The debate continues as to whether that was a good idea.

6 September 1890: Royal Arsenal played their first match at the Invicta ground – a friendly against the 3rd Highlanders, and drew 1-1 in front of a crowd of 7,000.

6 September 1902: League debut for Tim Coleman against Preston North End.  He had joined after periods with Kettering and Northampton Town.

6 September 1905: Morris Bates died from TB aged 41.  He was the captain when Royal Arsenal won their first two trophies and played 73 first team games for Royal Arsenal between 1896 and 1890.

6 September 1913 First match at Highbury.  Arsenal beat Leicester Fosse 2-1 in what was the first opening day victory since 1906.  20,000 present.  George Jobey scored the first Arsenal goal at the ground but was later taken off injured.  See also George Jobey,  The Day it Began and Season Ticket Prices.

6 September 1913: Arsenal released a picture of the players in maroon shirts as their justification for the shirt colour change for the final season at Highbury, saying it was taken on this date, but at least three players in the picture were not at the club in September 1913.  In fact the club did not play in those colours through the first Highbury season and the research suggests this was probably in an away game.

6 September 1919: Newcastle beat Arsenal for a second time 3-1 in front of 45,000.  Curiously, after three games not one team had a 100% record, and only one of the teams that had played their first two games at home had won both of them (Sheffield United).  Everyone, it seemed, was having trouble settling down in this first post-war season.

6 September 1923:  Jock Rutherford returned from being manager of Stoke for a few weeks and to get fit turned out for Arsenal reserves who were the reigning Football combination champions.  Arsenal reserves however lost against Brighton and Hove Albion.

100 years ago today

6 September 1924: Arsenal beat Liverpool 2-0, Woods getting both goals in front of 45,000.    This was the first time in the club’s history that they had won the opening three league games of a season in the first division and they had done it without conceding a goal!

6 September 1926: Bolton 2 Arsenal 2.   As Chapman got into his second season he responded to a 0-4 defeat to Sheffield United in the third game of the season by giving debuts for Wally Hardinge, Joe Lievesley. Jack Lambert and Jack Lee

6 September 1933:  Arsenal played their third game – home to WBA.   West Brom had come fourth last season, but in their openers this time had won one and lost one, and Arsenal seemed to have little difficulty brushing them aside, 3-1.

90 years ago today

6 September 1934: The BBC’s most powerful long-wave transmitter, Droitwich Transmitting Station, started transmitting at 200 kilohertz (1500m).  This transmitter took over the National Programme on which Saturday afternoon football commentaries were broadcast – and which until this season had often featured George Allison as commentator.  Allison however was now otherwise engaged having been made Arsenal manager.

6 September 1958.  Arsenal beat Everton 6-1 away.  Looking back it seemed like a freak result, (until 15 August 2009 when it happened again).  Herd scored four, Groves and Bloomfield the others.  Amazingly three days later Arsenal beat Bolton by the same score – the only time this has happened in Arsenal’s history.

6 September 1969: Eddie Kelly made his debut against Sheffield Wednesday. Eddie said at an AISA meeting that he had a nightmare game but was told by Bertie Mee that he would play the next ten games to see how things went.

6 September 1975: Arsenal had another home game ending Arsenal 1 Leicester City 1.  The attendance was again poor; just 22,005.  Stapleton played his second game for the club, in the place of the injured Radford, and showed great promise.  But aside from that Arsenal had little coherence and looked like a club in transition.

6 September 1986: Last game for Stewart Robson before moving on to West Ham and then Coventry City.  In five years he played 150 times for Arsenal in the league scoring 16 goals.

6 September 1995: The Colombian goalkeeper Rene Higuita saved a cross from Redknapp in a match at Wembley by performing a scorpion kick – the first such save seen in an international match – probably in any match.

6 September 2000: Chelsea 2 Arsenal 2.  This was the last time Arsenal played on this date as from here on Uefa designated early September as a time for (often pointless and meaningless) international matches.  Silvinho and Henry scored in what was part of a 15 match unbeaten run.