A Celebration Tour Round The Streets of Preston

It looks like we're going to make history on Monday night. And there's no better place to do so than Preston.

This is for those of you heading northwards tomorrow. If you arrive early, you'll have the chance to follow the Leicester History Trail around the streets of the city.

It's not something you'll find on any official tourist guide, but it's what I'm calling it here.

For a football fan, and a Leicester fan, Preston is full of historical landmarks. 

Let's take a look at them:

1)  Preston Guild Hall

Gary Lineker's debut for Leicester was on New Year's Day 1979 in a 2-0 win over Oldham at Filbert Street. He didn't have a great game, and Jock Wallace didn't pick him again until April - for a trip to Preston. Deepdale was the first away ground he played at.

It was a disaster. City crashed 4-0, their third defeat in four days over Easter, leaving them perilously close to a drop into Division Three. Thankfully we lost only one of the last five and stayed up.

Lineker, as you know, was best mates with Willie Thorne. Gary was best man at Willie's wedding in the spring of 1985, a ceremony held on a Wednesday because Gary was somehow always busy on Saturdays.

Six months later Willie was on the verge of the greatest triumph of his career.

Over the weekend of November 30th and December 1st, he faced Steve Davis in the final of the UK Championships at the Guild Hall in Preston (a place you'll pass on the walk from the Station to Deepdale). Gary wanted to be there to watch him. 

There was a slight problem. Everton had an away game down at Southampton on Saturday, so he wouldn't even make it for the evening session. 

But despite being 250 miles apart, they were both enjoying themselves. Just as Lineker was putting Everton ahead at The Dell, Willie was compiling a break of 112 to give him an early advantage at Preston. Everton went on to win 3-2, and Willie finished the day 8-6 up against the World Number One.

On Sunday, Gary made the short trip from Liverpool to Preston to see if Willie could see it through. He won the first four frames of the day to lead 12-6. At the end of the afternoon session it was 13-8, and he needed just three more frames for victory. 

Then came the key moment. In the first frame of the evening session, Willie was clearing the colours to go 14-8 ahead when he missed an easy blue. 'It's a ball I would have sunk 99 times out of 100', he said, 'But I had a brainstorm'. 

Davis said, 'I was just sitting in my chair, waiting for the crowd to applaud as Willie cleared the table. If he had won that frame, it would have finished 16-8 to him'. 

Davis took that crucial frame to make it 13-9, and slowly clawed back the deficit. He won it 16-14 , and as he lifted the second most prestigious trophy in the game, there were actually boos from the crowd inside the Guild Hall.

'People don't like someone who looks arrogant and wins all the time', Davis said. 'The more they boo me, the harder I get'.

Abuse from the crowd was something Gary Lineker was getting used to that season - from Liverpool fans at least. They had a special chant for him - suggesting that he and Willie Thorne were more than just friends. It wouldn't have bothered Gary - and he had a pretty emphatic answer anyway. When Everton went to Anfield that season, he scored in front of the Kop to seal a 2-0 victory. Shortly after that came World Cup glory and the move to Barcelona.

It wasn't quite the same for Willie Thorne.  After that collapse in Preston, he never won another big title in his career.

2) If you stand outside the main entrance to the Guild Hall and look across the road you'll see Preston Crown Court. It was here in 1895 that one of the most sensational trials in the history of English football took place.

We need a bit of background first. I'm not sure yet whether, if we win at Preston, we'll be presented with the trophy after the game. Perhaps it'll be held over until the Blackburn game. Either way, Jamie Vardy looks like getting his hands on that historic piece of silverware pretty soon. 

It's the trophy that used to be presented to the true Champions of England - the winners of the First Division. That is, until the Premier League was set up in 1992. That trophy was the idea of Mr. William Sudell, manager of Preston North End in the early days of the Football League. Preston were champions in the first two seasons, and Sudell thought the best team in the land ought to receive some tangible recognition of their success. The Football League agreed, and so from the following season, 1890/91, the champions received that beautiful trophy.

Preston came very close to a third title on the trot, but Everton pipped them on the line - and so became the first team to receive the pot. Preston kept trying and trying - but they were fated never to win the League again. Quite an irony.

Sudell was desperate to get his hands on what he may have considered 'his' trophy, and went to extraordinary lengths to do so. In 1895 it became clear just what he'd been up to. He was the manager of the John Goodair cotton mills, and in that position, huge quantities of cash passed through his hands. Sudell embezzled large amounts of that money to pay for expensive signings for Preston North End, and to cover their wages. 

Sudell appeared at Preston Quarterly Sessions on April 10th 1895. In court, 'he appeared to feel his position most keenly, keeping his face hidden in his hands'. He was charged with embezzling over 5,000 pounds - a huge sum at the time, ten years before the first four figure transfer fee. The prosecution said 'No doubt the prisoner will call witnesses to his character. But they are all good characters until they are found out'. He was found guilty,  handed a three -year jail term, and was 'greatly affected by the evidently unexpected severity of the sentence'.

3)  A quiz question:  In his career with Leicester, Everton, Barcelona, Spurs, Nagoya Grampus Eight and England, which manager did Gary Lineker play most games for? The answer is Gordon Milne. And he is the subject of two fascinating locations very close to Deepdale. The first is the tennis courts on Moor Park, just over the road from the ground. It was there, in the mid-1950s, that Milne was enjoying a knock-about with teammate David Kerry. Gordon takes up the story:

We were playing tennis one night - two young footballers so we think we’re the bees’ knees, poncing around. We saw these two girls playing on another court, and as you do, we were having a look and saying ‘They look alright!’ and their names were Edith and Barbara. It led to two weddings. David and Barbara were still together until a few years ago when he sadly passed away. 

You can see the courts here:

And top right on that map, between the ground and the church,  is another key location in the Milne story. His father Jimmy was a Preston player, and Gordon was brought up in a house owned by the club. In a similar house on the opposite side of the road lived his teammate Bill Shankly. When Gordon was just a toddler, Shankly used to play with him in the street. Jimmy later told Gordon that Shankly would look out of his front room window to check when the young lad came out to play, so he could rush out and join him.

The Milne house is marked on the map below. It's 6, Lowthorpe Road, with Shankly's house directly opposite:

Two decades after those kickabouts in the street, Shankly signed Gordon for Liverpool, and together they helped the Reds to lift Sudell's trophy - the one that, all being well, we'll be lifting shortly:

4) Heading For The Last Round-Up

Of all these places,  Fishergate, the main street in the centre of Preston, would be my personal choice for a blue plaque, though that's down to a fascination I have with chants and songs of bygone eras.

It's incredibly difficult to find details of what fans used to sing on the terraces in pre-war days. But we know that there was vocal backing, because newspaper reports quite often make reference to it. What is so frustrating is that those reports very rarely tell us details of what was being sung. 

One exception was  March 3rd 1934, when Leicester City traveled to Preston and did somethig they'd never done before - win an FA Cup Quarter-Final.  Arthur Chandler, aged 38, hooked in the winning goal and Leicester fans could be seen celebrating all the way back to Preston Station.  The Lancashire Evening Post's reporter told us how, on Fishergate near the station, he heard fans singing:

Get along Leicester City, get along Leicester City, get along Leicester City, get along.

I'm heading for the last round-up. 

The Last Round-Up was the big hit of the year, and the line 'heading for the last round-up' could easily be taken as a 'Journey to Wembley' reference. That interpretation quickly caught on, and led to headlines like this:

The real lyrics are:

Get along little doggie, get along little doggie, get along little doggie, get along

I'n heading for the last round-up

It seems to have become our song that year, for two reasons.

a) Of the four clubs in the semi-finals, we were the only one that had never reached that stage before. Cup fever in Leicester was greater than anywhere else. 

b) The words 'little doggie' can be so easily changed to 'Leicester City'.

So, the places covered so far form a trail from the station to Deepdale. But there is an alternative route to the ground which takes in a whole different set of locations.

5)   Seven Different Places - All In Preston

It so nearly happened. When the Football League were looking to find new headquarters in the late 1950s, they had their eyes on a place in Leicester. But the move fell through (I haven't been able to establish exactly which place they were after). They ended up instead in Lytham St. Annes.

From 1902 to 1959, the home of the greatest League in the world was Preston.  Not always at the same place, mind. You can see on this map the SEVEN different locations, with Deepdale visible top right:

They are, in chronological order: 

Notice how you can't see a white circle on a white background!

They're all pretty much in a line on that map, aren't they? With Deepdale at the end. And if any of you follow that route, perhaps you could check something out for me. For despite the Football League being one of the truly great ideas of Victorian Britain - one that has spread round the world, and led to the current situaiton in which the Premier League is the most popular sports league on the planet - as far as I know, there is not a single blue plaque at any of those seven locations. 

In Preston you can see such plaques for Dick Kerr's Ladies Team, and for Arthur Wharton, the first black player in the Football League, both of which are fully merited. But for the League itself? Nothing. How bizarre.

There are two additional places to mention, and you'll see both of these at the ground itself. 

Make sure you have a look at the Tom Finney statue, based on this famous photo:

It was taken at Stamford Bridge on August 25th 1956, in a game Preston lost 1-0. That was the game in which manager Jimmy Milne asked Finney to switch to centre-forward, a move that had huge repurcussions. It was from that central striking position that Finney led Preston on a glorious charge up the table that so nearly brought Sudell's trophy to Deepdale for the first time. In the end they couldn't quite overhaul the Busby Babes.

The other thing to appreciate is the ground itself - best viewed from over the road on the park. The story behind the modern Deepdale is fascinating. 

It started in the unlikely surroundings of a Manchester-based design consultancy, where lifelong Preston fan and graphics designer Ben Casey had been studying the 1990 World Cup stadiums in Italy. Frustrated by what he considered to be the dull designs being carried out post-Taylor report by most British clubs, he idly started sketching his own ideas of how Deepdale might be developed, based on the stunning Luigi Ferraris Stadium in Genoa. 

Casey then learned that Preston had not drawn up any of their own plans, and so humbly presented his. 

(from Simon Inglis, Football Grounds of Great Britain).

This is the Luigi Ferraris:

I wish I could be there tomorrow night.  I'd love it if you could take a few selfies at some of these places and put them on here.