With Arsenal becoming the latest club looking likely to move to a new stadium we can doubtless start saving now for the souvenir programme that will mark the last match at Highbury as well as the one for the first match at Ashburton Grove. I would guess that the revenue from those two publications alone will go a long way to paying off a large slice of the cost of the new stadium!

Things were a bit more modest when the Gunners made their last move, from Plumstead to Highbury in the period just before the First World War. September 6th 1913 saw Woolwich Arsenal take on Leicester Fosse in the opening match of the Second Division campaign of the1913-14 season, a match which was to mark Arsenal’s first match at the Highbury Stadium. The programme was a 12-page affair which, although very small in comparison to current publications, probably contained a lot more reading than its modern counterpart as it did not include any adverts.

Incidentally, those of you who think that the plc is the scourge of modern football clubs may be interested to know that in that first programme Arsenal were doing their best to push the benefits of shareholding by getting fans to buy shares at £1 each. To make life a lot easier that £1 could be paid over four monthly instalments! They needed the income from the sale of shares to enable a new stand to be built – where have we heard that before! By the way season tickets were 21 shillings each (£1.05) although in those long-gone days before men gained sexual equality the fairer sex could buy their season tickets for 15 shillings (75p).

On the day Woolwich Arsenal defeated Leicester Fosse by the odd goal in three, a result which was to point the way to their respective fortunes that season. Arsenal lost only two matches in their first season at Highbury (to Bury and Huddersfield) to finish third in the Second Division table behind Notts County and Bradford (Park Avenue). Leicester, though, finished fourth from bottom, one place behind Glossop North End.

Regretfully I don’t have a supply of the original programme of that match but I do have copies. Ramsey Town, then of the United Counties League, reproduced a number of interesting programmes and included them with their own match-day programme back in the 1985/86 season. I have copies of all those programmes for sale including the Arsenal v Leicester programme which was included in the Ramsey v Burton Park Wanderers issue from October 1985. At just 50p for both the programmes, a bargain in any age!