If I were to claim that Northampton Town and Arsenal had enjoyed a long and rich competitive on-pitch rivalry, I might be laughed out of town … and quite rightly so. Nevertheless, matches between the two clubs goes back further than many might imagine, all cemented by two immense connective personalities. Don’t believe me? Well read on.

Northampton Town’s earliest association of any note with Arsenal F.C. would seem to lie with Herbert Chapman, the great manager and innovator, who took the Gunners to two league titles and a single FA Cup final success in the early 1930s, while revolutionising certain elements of the game in the process. Twenty years or earlier, Chapman had actually played for the Cobblers, enjoying three separate spells on the pitch. When he returned for the final time, it was as player-manager towards the end of the dreadful 1906/07 season. His arrival marked the beginning of his most successful time with the club – just two seasons later and Chapman had transformed the Cobblers from bottom of the table no-hopers to Southern League Champions.

However, no matches were played between Northampton and Arsenal until the early 1930s and these games are seemingly long forgotten and effectively lost to the mists of time … until now. Pre-NHS, hospital charity matches were commonplace up and down the country and were played between various teams as fund-raisers. The earliest such match played by the Cobblers was in 1910 and a fixture against top-flight Nottingham Forest. Competing for the Hospital Shield, these one-off charity matches involved various teams and all of the annual games were played at the County Ground. With an eight year hiatus following the outbreak of WW1, matches were played against Fulham, Newcastle, Leicester City and Derby County, although Forest were the most featured opposition, appearing on five occasions. In May 1924, Herbert Chapman arrived with the league champions, Hudderfield Town, although it was a below-strength side that the Cobblers beat by 2-1.

For three consecutive years beginning in 1930, Northampton Town played Arsenal at the County Ground for the Hospital Shield. These friendlies were to benefit Northampton General Hospital and were well-supported by the local population, keen for a rare viewing of the great man and his talented team of internationals. As was the case when Huddersfield came to town, an assumption must be drawn that it was Herbert Chapman’s past connection to the Cobblers that proved to be the catalyst for the matches.

Northampton Town 0 Arsenal 7 – Hospital Shield Charity Match – 5th May 1930 – Arsenal had just won the FA Cup for the first time and a local newspaper advertisement told supporters to expect the appearance of the full cup team. Looking at the score line it appears that they turned up as promised but it’s probably fair to ask if the Cobblers were simply star-struck? The match is commemorated by a brass plaque held in the Historical Archive of Northampton General Hospital. The hospital received gate receipts to the tune of around £500, or the equivalent of just over £31,000 today.

Northampton Town 0 Arsenal 1 – Hospital Shield Charity Match – 4th May 1931 – This second charitable encounter was played in the wake of Arsenal’s first ever league title and a report on the match indicates that once again the Arsenal first team turned out. This time, the Cobblers seem to have given a better account of themselves, whilst the hospital received gate receipts of around £450.

Northampton Town 2 Arsenal 3 – Hospital Shield Charity Match – 10th May 1932 –  Arsenal had finished the season as runners’ up in both the cup and the league and once again the Cobblers ran them close.

So ended the Hospital Shield matches against Arsenal. Documented to a degree in the local press, no photos of match action seems to exist and if programmes were produced for the occasion (I have reason to believe they were) I’ve yet to see any. Broad proceedings around the first match along with a match review of the second game were published by the Chronicle & Echo and the Northampton Mercury. Unfortunately, the final game seems to have evaded press attention completely. The first two matches were also well attended (7503 is quoted for the second one) but I can’t imagine that there are any surviving memories amongst today’s Cobblers’ crowd. What became of the actual Hospital Shield I have yet to determine but the 1932 match appears to be the last of its kind to be played in Northampton.

Just over 18 months later and the final curtain came down on Herbert Chapman’s successful football career. Cramming three matches into the first few days of 1934, suggestions of a cold proved to be pneumonia and on the 6th January, Chapman suddenly passed away, just two weeks shy of what would have been his 56th birthday. His legacy was in safe hands and sufficient to propel Arsenal to even greater success as the decade unfolded.

Almost twenty years would pass before the sides met again and when they did it was another name associated with both clubs which would feature prominently … that of David Lloyd Bowen.

Dave Bowen’s career with Northampton and Arsenal was rather odd to say the least. Towards the end of July 1950, Bowen joined Arsenal for a fee of £1000. At that time he had played a mere 12 games for the Cobblers over three seasons but had clearly shown sufficient ability to warrant interest at a higher level. His progress was mirrored at Arsenal, where initially he struggled to make the first team. This was mainly due to the presence of the veteran Joe Mercer in his favoured wing-half position. It was only after Mercer retired at the age of 41, that Bowen became a regular during the 1954/55 season.

Arsenal 3 Northampton Town 2 – FA Cup 4th Round – 27th January 1951– No sign of Bowen for this thrilling cup encounter, which was played out in front of a season’s record crowd of 72,408, boosted by a following from the town believed to be in the region of 15,000. Arsenal led by a single goal at the break before the Cobblers equalised shortly after half-time. The Gunners regained and stretched their lead before Jack English bagged his second of the afternoon to ensure that the game was played out to a nervy finish. Lots of photographs exist from the match while live Pathe News footage can be found on You Tube, described in rich textured tones by Bob Danvers-Walker.

  Acrobatic action from Northampton’s Alf Wood during the cup match

Northampton 3 Arsenal 1 – FA Cup 3rd Round – 4th January 1958 – Just seven years later and the teams were rematched in the same competition. It was a season in which both teams were mid-table strugglers in their respective divisions and before kick-off, few gave the Cobblers much of a chance. By this time Bowen was an Arsenal regular and played in what became a famous giant-killing encounter. In the match photo below, Dave Bowen can be seen vainly attempting to prevent Bobby Tebbutt’s opening goal.

     Ken Leek celebrates as Dave Bowen fails to keep out Bobby Tebbutt’s opener           

A period caricature of Bowen by Trevillion

Northampton 2 Arsenal 3 – Floodlighting Inauguration – 10th October 1960 – Dave Bowen had returned to Northampton Town in July 1959, for a fee variously reported in the press as somewhere between £5000 and £7000. Like Chapman before, it was initially as player-manager and it’s fair to assume that his connections were instrumental in bringing Arsenal to the County Ground to celebrate the opening of the floodlights.

For the occasion, Northampton commissioned a special floodlit kit – an attractive and bright near all-white design but with a broad claret band across the chest and with additional claret trim to the shorts and socks. Floodlights had been used for certain matches at Highbury since October 1951 but nobody told Arsenal what was going on and they arrived with their own all-white change kit, presumably expecting the Cobblers to be in their normal home shirts. Arsenal were forced to don Northampton’s claret shirts and the ignominy of the situation no doubt spurred them on. Action from the only known photo of the game can be seen below with Arsenal on the defence.

Although floodlighting had first been trialled at Bramall Lane, Sheffield, in 1878, several decades passed before they would be permitted for English Football League games. The match between Portsmouth and Newcastle, played at Fratton Park on the 22nd February 1956, is recognised as the first official league match under lights. In this sense Northampton Town were not so far behind but until their installation, home games were played at all manner of times, depending on the available light. Thursday afternoons were sometimes favoured for mid-week fixtures, when it was half-day closing for much of the retail trade of the town. Unfortunately, any gains here would be more than negated by the loss of a fair chunk of the normal weekend crowd, along with all of the obvious school boys, while away support must have been close to zero on such afternoons.

Northampton 1 Arsenal 1 – Division 1 – 25th August 1965 – This was the season when Northampton briefly competed with the nation’s elite. Arsenal were the first visitors to the County Ground, the match kicking off on a late summer’s evening and finishing under the lights. The game in Northampton is particularly notable for the appearance of the first ever substitutes employed by both clubs (initially allowed for injury only, not tactical) – Vic Cockcroft for Northampton and Alan Skirton for Arsenal.

Arsenal 1 Northampton 1 – Division 1 – 28th September 1965 – With this early season draw double, Arsenal became the first of five teams who failed to record a league win over the Cobblers that campaign.

Northampton 2 Arsenal 3 – Dave Bowen Testimonial – 20th September 1977 – One of two testimonial games for Dave Bowen in the space of successive seasons (the first was against Liverpool) resulted in a rather familiar score line in Arsenal’s favour.

Northampton 3 Arsenal 1 – Dave Bowen Memorial Match – 13th August 1996 – Following his death towards the end of September 1995, Arsenal agreed to meet Northampton for a memorial match, which was played as a curtain raiser to the 1996/97 season. By this time Northampton had relocated to Sixfields and almost 7500 filled the ground to say farewell. The North Stand was subsequently renamed the Dave Bowen Stand in honour of the great Welshman who had served both clubs and his country with such distinction.

Afterword

The inspiration for this article lies in an on-line Arsenal fan blog, which referred to the three friendlies from the early 1930s but wrongly postulated that the matches were fund-raisers for the Cobblers, following the loss of the main stand in Abington Avenue to fire on the evening of 28th December 1929. Was there no insurance in place? Even if there was an issue, it seemed a little unlikely to me that Arsenal would extend a charitable venture beyond a single match. In search of the truth, I immersed myself for a day in the deepest vaults of the British Library and emerged with details of these forgotten events but found so much more. To set the record straight, I contacted the author and the correct information was absorbed into a slightly revised text but without acknowledgement. With an element of quid pro quo (as the Romans might have said) this expanded history was born but this time told from a Northampton perspective.

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