When I picked this book up from ALS Towers I have to say that I was looking forward to reading it. As a football historian it turned out that I made a good choice. Doesn’t matter whether its about Highbury and Arsenal or not as a Sunderland supporter I found it fascinating to read how the fortunes of the club and the ground were inextricably linked, something that to be honest had never really struck me about football.
The book is split into bite sized chunks so its very easy to pick up and put down.
Bruce Smith has done a good job of explaining the Highbury story in readable terms for the non Arsenal fan and at the end of the book it made me wonder why in an age of clubs moving football stadiums there haven’t been more of these publications. Strikes me as a real shame that Sunderland AFC haven’t yet commissioned a book about Roker Park.
Looks like Arsenal have had some larger than life characters at the club, either as a player, manager or and most interesting as Directors. A certain Sir Henry Norris springs to mind here, as I shall comment on in a minute.
Arsenal were formed in 1886 and originally played South Of the River Thames as Woolwich Arsenal. The move to Highbury wasn’t without controversy. In an effort to finance the club appropriately many a gamble was taken on improving the ground and on occasions those gambles nearly finished the club.
On the issue of Norris its not hard to come to a conclusion that he was a major catalyst for the club. His hard ball politics assisted Arsenal on seemingly many an occasion particularly when it came to pulling Arsenal out of a potential financial mire by swinging a vote that saw them promoted to the top flight in 1915 despite having nowhere near the league placing credentials to be so rewarded.
More to the point it looks like Norris’s status swung the initial debate that had doubts about Arsenal moving to North London in the first place. This was an area remember that was already graced by both Tottenham and Clapton Orient.
Then came the Chapman dynasty in the mid 1920’s when Arsenal took on all comers and by and large won, with of course Sunderland AFC being close rivals in terms of league placings well into the 1930’s.
As the club prospered so did Highbury’s and of course in mentioning Sunderland we shouldn’t overlook the fact that being such rivals back them we attracted to the old Gunners ground tits highest ever attendance of 73,295 in 1935.
Highbury also played host to England internationals, a Henry Cooper v Ali Boxing match, was the set for a famous film and of course the location of the stadium resulted in Gillespie road Underground Station being named “Arsenal”.
As the story winds on we end up quite simply with Arsenal being too big for the ground. For that they can thank Arsene Wenger, who along with Chapman is credited as being in the top 2 Gunners team bosses ever.
In the end it strikes you that you never quite appreciate what happens to football grounds. Some of the incidents, matches and events seem to get overlooked, quite naturally by the players on the pitch.
If you like your football history then this book is for you, if you don’t and you don’t much care for general football reading about clubs other than Sunderland then this probably isn’t for you.
I enjoyed it.
Paul Days |
