Our Team

Our Achievments

FA CUP WINNERS (14)

LEAGUE CUP WINNERS (2)

League Champions (13)

LEAGUE CUP WINNERS (2)

Our History

David Danskin, from Burntisland in Fife, worked at the Arsenal munitions factory in Woolwich. The Scot, a football man in an area dominated by rugby and cricket, founded a team with the help of friends Elijah Watkins and Richard Pearce. The arrival in Woolwich of Nottingham Forest player Fred Beardsley spurred Danskin into action.

Word got around and 15 men came forward, each prepared to pay sixpence to help start up a club. Danskin added another three shillings himself and the club bought a football. It was October 1886.

The club arranged its first game for December 1886 but had no name and nowhere to play. Danskin and company were referred to as Dial Square - after one of the factory's workshops - and crossed the Thames to play Eastern Wanderers on the Isle of Dogs.

Dial Square won 6-0 and met in the Royal Oak pub, next to Woolwich Arsenal station, on Christmas Day 1886. And as they sat in the Royal Oak, the founding fathers chose a new name - their place of work - Royal Arsenal. It was far grander than 'Dial Square' and would be the club's name until 1893 when Woolwich Arsenal was formally adopted. At the time the 15 men who had pooled their resources to buy a football wanted little more than a means of exercise and, no doubt, the social activity which accompanied it. Little did they know what they had started.