Morris Bates

Joseph Morris Bates (born May 22, 1864 in Nottingham , † September 6, 1905 in Woolwich , London ) was an English football player and in 1886 a founding member of the "Dial Square Football Club", the forerunner of today's world-famous Arsenal FC .

Bates learned to play soccer in his hometown near Nottingham Forest and later moved to London to take up a new job with his former teammate Fred Beardsley at the arms manufacturer Royal Arsenal . Bates met there on numerous football enthusiasts, including Jack Humble and David Danskin ; Together they founded the “Dial Square Football Club” in 1886, which was renamed “Royal Arsenal” only a short time later and is known today as “Arsenal Football Club” (German: “ Arsenal FC ”). At the Nottingham Forest games, he continued to serve as a referee (more precisely: as an "umpire", which served more as an "arbitration board") and during one of these trips to Nottingham he got together with Fred Beardsley a set of red jerseys and thus shaped the club's color scheme which is still valid today.

In total, the club's first captain played 73 games for Royal Arsenal, most of them as a defender . This also included the club's first FA Cup game against FC Lyndhurst on October 5, 1889 . One of the strengths of the "Iron Man" was the header and the first two titles in the club's history, winning the Kent Senior Cup and the London Charity Cup in 1890.

From the summer of 1890 Bates was no longer represented in the first team of Royal Arsenal and at the age of 36 he finally ended his career. In contrast to many other founding fathers, he did not stay with the club and instead worked in the armaments factory, where he specialized in Maxim machine guns . Bates died of tuberculosis at the age of only 41 .

Web links

• Information on the founding phase at Arsenal FC