“That lot play in red because of us,” Nottingham Forest manager Brian Clough explained to a supporter prior to a clash between us and his side in 1980. “They nabbed a set of shirts off us years back when they were strapped for cash.”
Clough’s anecdote gave further credence to a long-held urban myth which is almost as old as Arsenal Football Club.
The oft repeated story - which has popped up in numerous history books and website - stated that goalkeeper Fred Beardsley, one of the club’s founding fathers along with David Danskin, wrote to his former side Nottingham Forest in 1886 to see if they could assist in helping our fledgling club, which was in the process of changing its name from Dial Square to Royal Arsenal. In response, Forest generously sent down a full set of Garibaldi red shirts, and as mentioned in some accounts, a ball.
The truth is rather different. Beardsley _\[above\]_ did indeed suggest to his teammates that they should wear red shirts (the suggestion was that he already owned one), but the shirts didn’t come from Beardsley’s former stomping ground.
In a _Coventry Evening Telegraph_ interview in June 1936, Danskin said that following the name change: “It was necessary that new shirts should be bought. It was then that I was instructed to get samples and prices, and as a result we changed our colours to the now-famous red shirts which have been worn ever since.”
This original kit comprised a dark red shirt with long sleeves, a collar and three buttons down the front. Danskin also revealed that they were bought from a gentleman’s outfitters in Wellington Street in Woolwich, which should have forever dispelled the urban legend surrounding the origin of our famous red shirts. But instead, it has been incorrectly passed down from generation to generation of Arsenal fans.
The tale was neatly flipped on its head in 1965. Forest, playing a friendly against Valencia to celebrate their centenary, played in a new kit specially made for the occasion, purchased and donated courtesy of Arsenal.
The minutes from an Arsenal board meeting held on July 26, referred to the fact that Gunners chairman Denis Hill-Wood would accept Forest’s invitation to attend and take the opportunity to present ‘one of the Arsenal ceramic guns and a set of Nottingham Forest playing kit shirts as already agreed.’
The confusion surrounding the origins of our shirts shouldn’t detract from Beardsley’s influence or love for the club. He played against the Eastern Wanderers, which was Arsenal’s very first game, later became vice-chairman, and worked as a scout for another two decades, before finally departing in 1910.
The red shirts from Nottingham Forest story may be a fabrication, but there is no doubt about the crucial role that Beardsley, an iron turner in the Royal Gun Factory, played in our formative days.
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