David Danskin
Encyclopedia
David Danskin was a Scottish
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 mechanical engineer and football
Football (soccer)
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a sport played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball...

er. He was a principal founding member of Dial Square FC, later renamed Royal Arsenal, the team that are today known as Arsenal
Arsenal F.C.
Arsenal Football Club is a professional English Premier League football club based in North London. One of the most successful clubs in English football, it has won 13 First Division and Premier League titles and 10 FA Cups...

.

Born in Burntisland
Burntisland
Burntisland is a town and former royal burgh in Fife, Scotland on the Firth of Forth. According to an estimate taken in 2008, the town has a population of 5,940....

, Fife
Fife
Fife is a council area and former county of Scotland. It is situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with inland boundaries to Perth and Kinross and Clackmannanshire...

, Danskin grew up in Kirkcaldy
Kirkcaldy
Kirkcaldy is a town and former royal burgh in Fife, on the east coast of Scotland. The town lies on a shallow bay on the northern shore of the Firth of Forth; SSE of Glenrothes, ENE of Dunfermline, WSW of Dundee and NNE of Edinburgh...

. He played as an amateur for Kirkcaldy Wanderers, and amongst their players were Jack McBean and Peter Connolly, two players who would later join Danskin at Royal Arsenal. In 1885 Danskin moved to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 to find work, and took a job at the Dial Square workshop at the Royal Arsenal
Royal Arsenal
The Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, originally known as the Woolwich Warren, carried out armaments manufacture, ammunition proofing and explosives research for the British armed forces. It was sited on the south bank of the River Thames in Woolwich in south-east London, England.-Early history:The Warren...

 in Woolwich
Woolwich
Woolwich is a district in south London, England, located in the London Borough of Greenwich. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London.Woolwich formed part of Kent until 1889 when the County of London was created...

. There he met several football enthusiasts, amongst them Jack Humble
Jack Humble
John Wilkinson "Jack" Humble was an English football player and club director, who was one of the principal founders of Arsenal Football Club....

 and former Nottingham Forest
Nottingham Forest F.C.
Nottingham Forest Football Club is an English Association Football club based in West Bridgford, Nottingham, that plays in the Football League Championship...

 players Fred Beardsley
Fred Beardsley
Frederick William Beardsley was an English footballer, chiefly associated with the foundation of Arsenal Football Club.Born at Nottingham, Beardsley started working in a government munitions factory. In his spare time he was a keen goalkeeper, and played for Nottingham Forest as an amateur...

 and Morris Bates
Morris Bates
Joseph Morris Bates , usually known as Morris Bates, was an English footballer.Bates first played as an amateur for Nottingham Forest, before moving south to London to take up work at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich...

. Together with Humble, Danskin is generally credited as the driving force behind the formation of a works football team, Dial Square FC.

Danskin organised a whip-round amongst his fellow enthusiasts and purchased Dial Square's first football, and captained the team in their very first match against Eastern Wanderers on December 11, 1886; Dial Square won 6-0. Danskin continued to play for Royal Arsenal, as the club were soon renamed afterwards, for the next two years. However after an injury incurred in a match against Clapton
Clapton F.C.
Clapton F.C. is an English association football club, who play in Forest Gate, in the London Borough of Newham, England.Founded by W.R. Davis at a meeting in his father's house at 11 Queensdown Road, Clapton in August 0f 1877. Downs F.C. started playing on Hackney Downs. They changed their name a...

 in January 1889, Danskin elected to step down from the side and only played a few more rare occasions after that.

Arsenal turned professional in 1891, and although Danskin stood for election to the club's committee in 1892, he did not succeed in getting elected. He ended his official association with Arsenal and later became associated with a new works team from the area, Royal Ordnance Factories
Royal Ordnance Factories F.C.
Royal Ordnance Factories Football Club were a football club from south east London, England,that existed in the late 19th century.In 1893, the former workers' team at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, Woolwich Arsenal FC, was by now a professional side and had joined the Football League...

, which folded in c. 1896. He also officiated as a referee in local matches. He was still fond enough of Arsenal to attend their games, and his son Billy used to sell programmes at their Manor Ground
Manor Ground, Plumstead
The Manor Ground in Plumstead, south east London was a football stadium which, between 1888 & 1890, and 1893 & 1913, was the home of the football club formerly known as Royal Arsenal, renamed Woolwich Arsenal in 1893, and later simply Arsenal F.C...

 as a child.

He later started up his own bicycle
Bicycle
A bicycle, also known as a bike, pushbike or cycle, is a human-powered, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, having two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A person who rides a bicycle is called a cyclist, or bicyclist....

 manufacturing business in Plumstead
Plumstead
Plumstead is a district of south London, England, located in the London Borough of Greenwich. Plumstead is a multi cultural area with large Asian and Afro-Caribbean communities, in similarity to local areas such as Woolwich and Thamesmead...

, before moving to Coventry
Coventry
Coventry is a city and metropolitan borough in the county of West Midlands in England. Coventry is the 9th largest city in England and the 11th largest in the United Kingdom. It is also the second largest city in the English Midlands, after Birmingham, with a population of 300,848, although...

 in 1907 to work for the Standard Motor Company
Standard Motor Company
The Standard Motor Company was founded in Coventry, England in 1903 by Reginald Walter Maudslay . The Standard name was last used in Britain in 1963, and in India in 1987.-1903–1914:...

. In his later life he was troubled by ill-health, caused by injuries to his legs in his footballing days, and took early retirement. Nevertheless, he was one of the few founding members of Arsenal to live to see the club's rise to success in the 1930s; he reportedly cheered the side's 1936 FA Cup
FA Cup
The Football Association Challenge Cup, commonly known as the FA Cup, is a knockout cup competition in English football and is the oldest association football competition in the world. The "FA Cup" is run by and named after The Football Association and usually refers to the English men's...

 win from his sickbed, whilst listening to the radio commentary. After many years of ill-health, he died in a hospice in Warwick
Warwick
Warwick is the county town of Warwickshire, England. The town lies upon the River Avon, south of Coventry and just west of Leamington Spa and Whitnash with which it is conjoined. As of the 2001 United Kingdom census, it had a population of 23,350...

 in 1948, at the age of 85.

In 2007, to commemorate his role in the club's history, the Arsenal Scotland Supporters Club dedicated a blue plaque
Blue plaque
A blue plaque is a permanent sign installed in a public place to commemorate a link between that location and a famous person or event, serving as a historical marker....

to Danskin, near his birthplace in Burntisland.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK