Arsenal in China in 1995: two of the rarest post-war Arsenal programmes for the matches v Beijing Guoan 17th May and Tianjin 18th May, In 1995 Arsena

Arsenal in China in 1995: two of the rarest post-war Arsenal programmes for the matches v Beijing Guoan 17th May and Tianjin 18th May, In 1995 Arsenal toured the Far-East and played three matches in total during May 1995. On 17th May Arsenal played Beijing Guoan in the National Workers' Stadium and on 18th May Arsenal played Tianjin in the Tianjin Mingyuan Stadium before moving to Hong Kong, at the time under British rule, for the third and last match of the tour. The major sponsor of the 3 match tour was Rothmans Tobacco using the Craven A name. For the final match in Hong Kong a full official programme was issued and readily available which included cigarette advertising. However, shortly before the 2 matches took place in China the Government of that country decided to change the laws on cigarette advertising to become more restrictive. As the whole of the back page of the programme for Tianjin (the smaller of the 2 Chinese teams) advertised Craven Cigarettes, the sponsor thought it prudent that the programme was not issued. For the larger of the 2 teams, Beijing Guoan, a new back page sponsor was found at short notice, but unfortunately due to last minute technical problems, given late change of sponsor, it was impossible to print enough programmes to cover demand. Therefore the organiser decided not to commence a full print run. These two full programmes were printed in very small numbers as proof copies but were never issued. In addition they were destroyed without being released, so that these two have survived and no further copies will be available.