On January 8th Arsenal played their first undisputed match. It is “undisputed” because the details of the game were carried in the press. It is the “first undisputed” because the game normally considered the “first” (against Eastern Wanderers) was played as Dial Square FC
The mentioning of Royal Arsenal v Erith in the press shows that the name of the club was changed BEFORE and not after that match.
There is no information about this Erith club that I can find, and the contemporary club with the same name was formed much more recently. Erith was a small town at the time of the match against Royal Arsenal, with a population of probably around 2,500 or so.
It was described in 1840 as ‘composed chiefly of two streets, one leading down to the water side, the other branching off to the left towards the church’ and was for a while a riverside resort with a pier and hotel catering for day-trippers. It did not become an urban district until 1894.
There is one fly in the ointment of this very neat story that Arsenal definitively started on January 8 1887 and that before that either had the name Dial Square Cricket Club – and played at most one game. This “fly” is Woolwich United.
There is a letter written much later which suggests that this club was the original Arsenal, and we have on January 2nd 1886 a mention in Leeds Mercury, of the match: Selby v Woolwich United. There are no details of the game – just a listing of it.
Of course our first question has to be, is it “our” Woolwich? Rather surprisingly there is only one Woolwich in the UK, so it looks like it must be. But then if that’s right what on earth were they doing in Selby? That may seem unlikely, but what we do know is that clubs did travel around and go for “days out”.
We can’t say for sure what this match was all about, but, if this newspaper report is true, it would require a certain amount of historical re-writing!