The Second Greatest Season Ever

[kushiro]

April 24^th 2016.  Leicester City v Swansea City. What a day.

 

There's never been an atmosphere quite like those closing minutes, with the chants spreading round all sides of the ground, '4-0 to the one man team!’ merging into ‘Barcelona – we're coming for you!'

 

That carnival mood had been set two hours earlier, with this wonderful @Union FS tifo:

 

 

 

I was so impressed that I borrowed their idea:

 

 

 

 

Here though,  it’s not the shiny Premier League pot on the right I’m concerned with. It’s the rusty-looking shield on the left.

 

This season marks the centenary of that first silverware, and I want to try something I’m not sure has been attempted before. I’d like to recreate that season ‘in real time’, following it game by game, exactly 100 years ago to the day.

 

Of Fossils and Foxes has an excellent summary of that season, but the full story needs to be told.  If 2015/16 was our greatest ever season, 1924/25 is the second best. It marked the birth of Leicester’s first great side, the lifting of our first trophy - and nearly so much more than that. If, as the tifo said, History really does Make Us Who We Are, these events are right at the heart of the club's identity.

 

I'm going to approach each part of the story from the perspective of a different character - and we start with a 13-year-old boy who was about to enjoy an extraordinary eight months.

 

 

Saturday August 30th 1924

 

Harold Lineker was awoken by the familiar sound of his father’s early morning departure. George was up and out of the house before sunrise, heading for Leicester Wholesale Market. There were no trams running at that time of the morning. He’d cycle the two miles down Aylestone Road to Yeoman Street in the city centre, park his bike and begin the daily routine of carting fruit and vegetables to the stall in the Market Place, 300 yards away.

 

Harold was approaching his fourteenth birthday. He’d sometimes help his father on the stall, but there were other demands on his time. He was crazy about football, and he played outside right for his school team, St. George’s.

 

It was a very small world, as you can see on the map below. The circles mark the stall, the wholesale market in the middle, and the school, right next to the church from which it took its name. A few years later, Charles Street, which you can see was then just a minor road, would blast through those buildings on Humberstone Gate and the character of the area would be changed forever.

 

 

There was no football pitch in the cramped centre of the city, of course, and when the school had a game, the boys had to drag the goalposts all the way to Welford Road Recreation Ground. Good practice, no doubt, for future years when Harold would be the one hauling the fruit and veg cart through the streets.

 

The season began, as ever, with new dreams.

 

He was hoping his performances for St.George’s would get him selected for the Leicester Boys team. If so, perhaps he could help them achieve something no Leicester team had managed before, and make it through the qualifying rounds of the English Schools Trophy.

 

 

Harold loved to watch football too, and when school fixtures allowed, he'd be at Filbert Street to follow his heroes in the blue of Leicester City.

 

Perhaps this season they would be promoted for the first time in his life. Maybe they could even lift a trophy - something they hadn't managed in the 40 years since the club was formed. It was time they had a run in the FA Cup too. They’d never got beyond the quarter-final stage.

 

In the season just ended, Arthur Chandler had scored 24 times in his first season with the club, though we managed only a mid-table finish. Manager Peter Hodge was about start his sixth season in charge.

 

These were the twenty two teams in Division Two:

 

 

 Manchester United and The Wednesday, the only teams in the division who had won the League title, were favourites for promotion. Derby County and Chelsea were also strongly fancied. Not many mentioned Leicester.

 

Our season started with the toughest possible fixture - a trip to Old Trafford.

 

With regular full back Adam Black injured, this is how we lined up, in an orthodox 2-3-5 formation:

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the United team were Arthur Lochhead, future Leicester player and manager, and Sep Smith's older brother, Tom 'Tosser' Smith (his wikipedia page says he was called 'Tosher', but no - 'Tosser' is what his friends and teammates called him).

 

When the match kicked off, it was Lochhead who had the best early chance, his shot hitting 'the underpart of the bar', as the report put it. Then United got a dodgy penalty when Joe Spence 'fell over Johnny Duncan's feet'. The Leicester Evening Mail reporter, failing to hide his disgust, described it like this:

 

Spence fell with dramatic effect. He then limped to the side with the trainer's aid, as though he'd been seriously hurt. He remained inactive until the goal had been scored, then recovered.

 

In the second half, we laid siege to United's goal:  In pace, craft and combinaiton, Leicester outplayed the home eleven. At least four times, shots flashed across the United goal with the defence utterly beaten  (that's from the Athletic News,  the paper based in Manchester). 

 

We couldn't score though, and 1-0 was the final result. Everyone agreed that United had been lucky to win.

 

It's unclear how many Leicester fans were at Old Trafford - probably just a couple of hundred. At Filbert Street that afternoon it was a different matter. Almost 10,000 turned up to see the Reserves beat Peterborough and Fletton United. The local press thought it might be the highest ever gate for a second team match. 

 

That gate needs a bit of explaining. For a brief period in the mid-20s our Reserves played in the Southern League Eastern Division, and our visitors that day were the reigning champions. We'd finished just a point behind in second place, so this game was the clash of the big two. 

 

At Reserve games there was the added bonus of finding out how the first team got on as soon as the game finished. At 4.40, the bad news from Manchester was announced, and fans would have streamed out of the ground thinking 'It's the hope that kills you'. 

 

Many would have headed for the centre of town, passing through the market, George Lineker picking up the news by word of mouth and hoping it wouldn't ruin Harold's weekend too much.

 

By 5.30, people would be snapping up copies of the Sports Paper, eagerly scanning the results:

 

 

Stand-out scorelines were the impressive away wins for newly promoted Portsmouth and Wolves, and Derby's ominous looking trouncing of Hull CIty. 

 

Leicester had started with a defeat, but everyone who saw the game at Old Trafford could see the potential in the side. The directors, who had final say in team selection, had no doubts. They immediately decided to stick with the same XI for the next game. That was just two days away, on Monday evening, with Chelsea the first visitors to Filbert Street.

 

 

 

 

[Gazza3]

Good work . Keep it up

Thanks

[Death by Football]

I love these trips back into history.  Please keep up the good work.

It's also time to bring back the orthodox 2-3-5 formation and go balls out for the title.

Edited 30 August by Death by Football

[davieG]

 

Charles St. 1920s

 

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/524950900317974458/

[ramboacdc]

One of the only games I missed that season because I was ill....

[kushiro]

8 hours ago, davieG said:

 

Charles St. 1920s

 

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/524950900317974458/

Presumably that's not George Lineker pushing the fruit and veg cart!

[Permafrost]

Looking forward to the rest of the season 👍

[Trav Le Bleu]

10 hours ago, kushiro said:

April 24^th 2016.  Leicester City v Swansea City. What a day.

 

There's never been an atmosphere quite like those closing minutes, with the chants spreading round all sides of the ground, '4-0 to the one man team!’ merging into ‘Barcelona – we're coming for you!'

 

That carnival mood had been set two hours earlier, with this wonderful @Union FS tifo:

 

 

 

I was so impressed that I borrowed their idea:

 

 

 

 

Here though,  it’s not the shiny Premier League pot on the right I’m concerned with. It’s the rusty-looking shield on the left.

 

This season marks the centenary of that first silverware, and I want to try something I’m not sure has been attempted before. I’d like to recreate that season ‘in real time’, following it game by game, exactly 100 years ago to the day.

 

Of Fossils and Foxes has an excellent summary of that season, but the full story needs to be told.  If 2015/16 was our greatest ever season, 1924/25 is the second best. It marked the birth of Leicester’s first great side, our first trophy - and nearly so much more than that. If, as the tifo said, History really does Make Us Who We Are, these events are right at the heart of the club's identity.

 

I'm going to approach each part of the story from the perspective of a different character - and we start with a 13-year-old boy who was about to enjoy an extraordinary eight months.

 

 

Saturday August 30th 1924

 

Harold Lineker was awoken by the familiar sound of his father’s early morning departure. George was up and out of the house before sunrise, heading for Leicester Wholesale Market. There were no trams running at that time of the morning. He’d cycle the two miles down Aylestone Road to Yeoman Street in the city centre, park his bike and begin the daily routine of carting fruit and vegetables to the stall in the Market Place, 300 yards away.

 

Harold was approaching his fourteenth birthday. He’d sometimes help his father on the stall, but there were other demands on his time. He was crazy about football, and he played outside right for his school team, St. George’s.

 

It was a very small world, as you can see on the map below. The circles mark the stall, the wholesale market in the middle, and the school, right next to the church from which it took its name. A few years later, Charles Street, which you can see was then just a minor road, would blast through those buildings on Humberstone Gate and the character of the area would be changed forever.

 

 

There was no football pitch in the cramped centre of the city, of course, and when the school had a game, the boys had to drag the goalposts all the way to Welford Road Recreation Ground. Good practice, no doubt, for future years when Harold would be the one hauling the fruit and veg cart through the streets.

 

The season began, as ever, with new dreams.

 

He was hoping his performances for St.George’s would get him selected for the Leicester Boys team. If so, perhaps he could help them achieve something no Leicester team had managed before, and make it through the qualifying rounds of the English Schools Trophy.

 

 

Harold loved to watch football too, and when school fixtures allowed, he'd be at Filbert Street to follow his heroes in the blue of Leicester City.

 

Perhaps this season they would be promoted for the first time in his life. Maybe they could even lift a trophy - something they hadn't managed in the 40 years since the club was formed. It was time they had a run in the FA Cup too. They’d never got beyond the quarter-final stage.

 

In the season just ended, Arthur Chandler had scored 24 times in his first season with the club, though we managed only a mid-table finish. Manager Peter Hodge was about start his sixth season in charge.

 

These were the twenty two teams in Division Two:

 

 

 Manchester United and The Wednesday, the only teams in the division who had won the League title, were favourites for promotion. Derby County and Chelsea were also strongly fancied. Not many mentioned Leicester.

 

Our season started with the toughest possible fixture - a trip to Old Trafford.

 

With regular full back Adam Black injured, this is how we lined up, in an orthodox 2-3-5 formation:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the United team were Arthur Lochhead, future Leicester player and manager, and Sep Smith's older brother, Tom 'Tosser' Smith (his wikipedia page says he was called 'Tosher', but no - 'Tosser' is what his friends and teammates called him).

 

When the match kicked off, it was Lochhead who had the best early chance, his shot hitting 'the underpart of the bar', as the report put it. Then United got a dodgy penalty when Joe Spence 'fell over Johnny Duncan's feet'. The Leicester Evening Mail reporter, failing to hide his disgust, described it like this:

 

Spence fell with dramatic effect. He then limped to the side with the trainer's aid, as though he'd been seriously hurt. He remained inactive until the goal had been scored, then recovered.

 

In the second half, we laid siege to United's goal:  In pace, craft and combinaiton, Leicester outplayed the home eleven. At least four times, shots flashed across the United goal with the defence utterly beaten  (that's from the Athletic News,  the paper based in Manchester). 

 

We couldn't score though, and 1-0 was the final result. Everyone agreed that United had been lucky to win.

 

It's unclear how many Leicester fans were at Old Trafford - probably just a couple of hundred. At Filbert Street that afternoon it was a different matter. Almost 10,000 turned up to see the Reserves beat Peterborough and Fletton United. The local press thought it might be the highest ever gate for a second team match. 

 

That gate needs a bit of explaining. For a brief period in the mid-20s our Reserves played in the Southern League Eastern Division, and our visitors that day were the reigning champions. We'd finished just a point behind in second place, so this game was the clash of the big two. 

 

At Reserve games there was the added bonus of finding out how the first team got on as soon as the game finished. At 4.40, the bad news from Manchester was announced, and fans would have streamed out of the ground thinking 'It's the hope that kills you'. 

 

Many would have headed for the centre of town, passing through the market, George Lineker picking up the news by word of mouth and hoping it wouldn't ruin Harold's weekend too much.

 

By 5.30, people would be snapping up copies of the Sports Paper, eagerly scanning the results:

 

 

Stand-out scorelines were the impressive away wins for newly promoted Portsmouth and Wolves, and Derby's ominous looking trouncing of Hull CIty. 

 

Leicester had started with a defeat, but everyone who saw the game at Old Trafford could see the potential in the side. The directors, who had final say in team selection, had no doubts. They immediately decided to stick with the same XI for the next game. That was just two days away, on Monday evening, with Chelsea the first visitors to Filbert Street.

 

 

 

 

I can't help but think that football would be a lot more exciting if teams still played 2-3-5 formation.

[sylofox]

I heard the baby squad got a right battering.

[kushiro]

 

Match 2     Leicester City v Chelsea       Monday September 1st 1924         

 

1924/25 would be full of bright spots for Leicester, but several dark shadows would fall across the season. We'll learn shortly about the collision that ended the career of Leicester's keeper, and ended the life of the opposition striker. We'll unearth the forgotten story of the expert stone mason who, having worked on the Cenotaph in London, was invited to Leicester to display his talents on the city's own war memorial, only to be caught up in another tragic and fatal accident.

 

Work on that magnificent memorial in Victoria Park had only just begun, and as the season progressed, the structure gradually grew in size, drawing gasps from people heading into town from the south.  It would be completed in the spring as the season reached its climax, ready for the official opening in the summer of 1925. 

 

The solemn mood was there right at the start of the season. As Leicester City ran out for their first home game, two days after the defeat at Old Trafford, the atmosphere of excitement was tempered by events of recent days. On Saturday night, a crowded bus in Nuneaton caught fire as the driver was trying to refill the petrol tank through the nozzle under his seat. He was not using a funnel, and a passenger lit a match, thinking it would help the driver to see where he was pouring.

 

Eight people perished in the flames. The tragedy would hasten legislation requiring all buses to have emergency exits at the rear that can be opened from both sides, and refilling nozzles placed on the outside of vehicles.

 

A week earlier, England international footballer Tommy Meehan had died from inflammation of the brain, at the age of just 28. It was a devastating blow for everyone at his club - Chelsea, who were Leicester City's visitors for this Filbert Street opener.

 

You can see Meehan on the right, with Chelsea's other England internationals Benjamin Howard Baker (the amateur keeper) and Jack Cock.

 

 

Before the match at Filbert Street there was a collection for Meehan's family, while at the same time twenty miles away, a collection for relatives of the victims of the bus tragedy was held before Nuneaton's friendly match against Coventry City.

 

Chelsea had just been relegated, and had started life in Division Two with a 1-0 win at Highfield Road. 

 

When the match kicked off, Leicester continued the form they'd shown on Saturday, and a Chelsea handball gave Arthur Chandler a chance to put City ahead from the spot. Howard Baker was facing him. He was famous not just for his goalkeeping, but also for representing Great Britain in the high jump at the Olympics, and he made a 'spectacular leap across his goal' to reach the kick. Still we awaited our first goal of the season.

 

Then just before half time, Hugh Adcock finally made the breakthrough:

 

 

 

Twenty minutes into the second half, Channy made it two:

 

 

 

George Carr added two late goals and it finished 4-0.  'But for the brilliance of Baker in goal' said the Mail, 'Chelsea would have been made a laughing stock'. 

 

The ground was 'crowded as for a Cup tie', said the Mail, estimating the gate at 25,000. That same afternoon, just a few hundred spectators were at the Aylestone Road cricket ground where Leicestershire were playing their last fixture of the season in the County Championship against Essex. Many would have left the ground early and made the short walk down Brazil Street in time for the kick-off at the football.  One local journalist did the same:

 

 

 

 

This was how the two venues looked at that time, with the 'wings' still to be added to the Filbert Street Main Stand:

 

 

Here's a close up that shows the wonderful old Spion Kop with those 'herrings in a barrel' (the photo is from January 1923, with the Leicester v Fulham FA Cup tie in progress -  another game when West London opponents were handed a 4-0 hammering):

 

 

The Kop would be packed again five days later. Middlesbrough, the other relegated team last season, would be the next visitors to Filbert Street. 

 

Edited 2 September by kushiro

[davieG]

I wonder why the ground was set up so close the the houses on Burnmoor Street when there looks like there's plenty of space behind the main stand to build that further back. Who'd have thought it would be a significant reason we had to move.

[kushiro]

5 hours ago, davieG said:

I wonder why the ground was set up so close the the houses on Burnmoor Street when there looks like there's plenty of space behind the main stand to build that further back. Who'd have thought it would be a significant reason we had to move.

 

Now that's a very good question. 

 

We were already hemmed in because the land between the old Main Stand and the canal was not ours to develop. It was Filbert Street Recreation Ground, which around the turn of the 20th century was considered a key element in the council's plans to provide more places for young people to play around the town. 

 

There was no way we'd have been allowed to move closer to the canal back then and in fact it very nearly got much worse than that. We leased the land from the council and when the Recreation Ground was opened there was talk that it would soon be expanded to include the space occupied by the football ground - i.e. no more footy at Filbert Street! We were nearly made homeless (again).

 

It was only through the efforts of certain members of the council that Leicester Fosse (as we were then) were allowed to extend the lease.

[Foxmeister]

Brilliant as always 👍

 

Own up if you laughed at Tom Tosser Smith.

[kushiro]

 

Match 3    Saturday September 6th  1924      Leicester City v Middlesbrough

 

A week after an unlucky defeat at Old Trafford in the opener, we lost out against United again today, even though we weren't actually playing them.

 

The game against Boro' at Filbert Street turned on an incident early in the first half when the referee, Mr. Slater of Blackburn, made what the Leicester Mail called 'the mistake of a lifetime'. Arthur Chandler took a free kick from just outside the box. His shot flew into the top corner, hit the iron support at the back of the goal and bounced back out.  No goal was given.

 

Leicester players surrounded the ref and 'for some minutes he was subjected to considerable barracking'. But he wouldn't even consult his linesman.

 

It wasn't Channy's day. He later missed several chances and the match finished 0-0. 

 

At the Victoria Ground that afternoon there was another controversial incident. Stoke got the ball in the net and the referee signaled a goal. Manchester United players surrounded the referee and urged him to consult his linesman. This he did, and the goal was chalked off, the ball judged to have crossed the goal line before it was crossed. It finished 0-0 there too. 

 

Had those decisions gone the other way we'd have been two points ahead of the promotion favourites. Instead, we were side by side, as fans discovered in the sports paper that evening where the first League table of the season was published:

 

 

It was Derby's draw at Portsmouth that made them the early leaders, with no team having a 100% record, and every team having at least a point.

 

Leicester's next fixture would be on Monday evening - the return fixture against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. We wouldn't be wearing our blue shirts, of course. We'd have to change to our red away kit. 

 

That's a good moment to show you the home colours of every team in Division Two that season:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(thanks to the marvelous historicalkits.co.uk)

[Foxdiamond]

6 hours ago, kushiro said:

 

Match 3    Saturday September 6th  1924      Leicester City v Middlesbrough

 

A week after an unlucky defeat at Old Trafford in the opener, we lost out against United again today, even though we weren't actually playing them.

 

The game against Boro' at Filbert Street turned on an incident early in the first half when the referee, Mr. Slater of Blackburn, made what the Leicester Mail called 'the mistake of a lifetime'. Arthur Chandler took a free kick from just outside the box. His shot flew into the top corner, hit the iron support at the back of the goal and bounced back out.  No goal was given.

 

Leicester players surrounded the ref and 'for some minutes he was subjected to considerable barracking'. But he wouldn't even consult his linesman.

 

It wasn't Channy's day. He later missed several chances and the match finished 0-0. 

 

At the Victoria Ground that afternoon there was another controversial incident. Stoke got the ball in the net and the referee signaled a goal. Manchester United players surrounded the referee and urged him to consult his linesman. This he did, and the goal was chalked off, the ball judged to have crossed the goal line before it was crossed. It finished 0-0 there too. 

 

Had those decisions gone the other way we'd have been two points ahead of the promotion favourites. Instead, we were side by side, as fans discovered in the sports paper that evening where the first League table of the season was published:

 

 

It was Derby's draw at Portsmouth that made them the early leaders, with no team having a 100% record, and every team having at least a point.

 

Leicester's next fixture would be on Monday evening - the return fixture against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. We wouldn't be wearing our blue shirts, of course. We'd have to change to our red away kit. 

 

That's a good moment to show you the home colours of every team in Division Two that season:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(thanks to the marvelous historicalkits.co.uk)

Thank you for another brilliant piece. Looking back even further to 1903-04 I see historicalkits has us as red shirts in this single season but I've not seen any further info on this elsewhere. With your marvellous knowledge and research do you have any clue please

[Great Boos Up]

Enjoyed that. What was the year we would have won the league if it was 3 points for a win?

[kushiro]

6 hours ago, Great Boos Up said:

Enjoyed that. What was the year we would have won the league if it was 3 points for a win?

 

Don't think there's been one. In 1928/29 when we finished second we'd have actually finished third with three points for a win. 

 

In 1922/23, two years before this one, we'd have been promoted instead of missing out on goal average. There are probably othe examples too from promotion / relegation fights across the years.

[kushiro]

20 hours ago, Foxdiamond said:

Looking back even further to 1903-04 I see historicalkits has us as red shirts in this single season but I've not seen any further info on this elsewhere. Do you have any clue?

 

Thanks for spotting that. I've looked into it and it's such an interesting tale that it needs a separate thread. Coming soon.

[Foxdiamond]

11 minutes ago, kushiro said:

 

Thanks for spotting that. I've looked into it and it's such an interesting tale that it needs a separate thread. Coming soon.

Looking forward cheers

[Bourbon Fox]

This is awesome. You're building a wonderful history of the club on this forum, with a really great style and tone.

[Trav Le Bleu]

On 31/08/2024 at 07:41, sylofox said:

I heard the baby squad got a right battering.

That was the Old Baby Squad.

[Foxmeister]

On 06/09/2024 at 23:03, kushiro said:

 

Don't think there's been one. In 1928/29 when we finished second we'd have actually finished third with three points for a win. 

 

In 1922/23, two years before this one, we'd have been promoted instead of missing out on goal average. There are probably othe examples too from promotion / relegation fights across the years.

We'd have survived in 2008 under 2 points for a win.

[kushiro]

 

Match 4    Monday September 8th 1924    Chelsea v Leicester City

 

 

The current season,  2024/25,  kicked off shortly after the Closing Ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris. 100 years ago, it was just the same.

 

Back then the likes of break dancing and beach volleyball were not, of course, part of the Olympic programme, but there was a whole category of events that today seem equally exotic. Medals were awarded not only in sports, but also for the arts.

 

In the 'music' category, the judging panel was made up of a dazzling array of famous figures, including Bela Bartok, Gabriel Faure, Maurice Ravel and Igor Stravinsky. After spending hours and hours listening patiently to the compositions of lesser mortals, they decided that NONE of the entrants was worthy of a medal. 

 

Good on them.

 

What a pity that, along with the Olympic Arts programme, this approach to judging is no longer with us. How wonderful it would be if, after the World Cup Final or Champions League Final, a similar panel of judges had the right to declare that NEITHER side deserved the honours.  No trophy, no medals, no pyrotechnic presentation ceremony. 

 

Of course, 80, 000 people in the stadium might feel a little put out, but the long term benefits could only be positive.  No more cagey, ultra-defensive bore-draws followed by a tedious extra half hour and penalty lottery. Teams would have to come out and play, and show they were really worthy of the title 'Best Team in the World' or 'Champions of Europe'.

 

We can all think of matches that deserved this brutal assessment. And we'd all have our dream candidates for that judging panel. With allowance for a bit of resurrection, I'd go for Johan Cruyff, Bill Shankly and Cesar Luis Menotti.

 

The judges in the 'architecture' category in Paris 1924 were scarcely more charitable. They too decided that no entry was worthy of a gold medal, but they did hand out a silver medal to a pair from Hungary, who presented the design for a football stadium.

 

This was it:

 

 

 

Now if only Archibald Leitch had entered, there might have been a portfolio worthy of a gold medal. 

 

More than any other person, Leitch was responsible for the way British football grounds looked in 1924. In Division Two, the designs of more than half the grounds had come from his drawing board. Filbert Street itself had been given the Leitch treatment back in the Fosse era (though it's not the case, as is claimed on his wikipedia page, that he designed the Double Decker).

 

When we ran out for the opening game of the season, it was at the Leitch-designed Old Trafford. That same day in South London saw the opening of the ground Leitch had laid out for Crytal Palace: 

 

 

 

Leicester City would be one of the first visitors to Selhurst Park, the fixture scheduled for October.

 

But now on September 8th, for our second away trip, we headed for another of Leitch's colossal arenas - Stamford Bridge, which like Old Trafford had recently staged the FA Cup Final. 

 

 

It's A Funny Game

 

Chelsea were hoping to get instant revenge for that 4-0 defeat at Filbert Street seven days earlier. On Saturday they'd won 5-0 at Oldham, with Bill Whitton getting a hat-trick. Whitton would be the central character again today.

 

Twenty minutes into the game, he was involved in a collision with keeper Bert Godderidge, leaving the City man badly hurt. He decided to stay on the field, though 'he could barely move across the goal' (the quaint idea of substitutions was still four decades away).

 

Whitton soon put Chelsea one up with a header that Godderidge would normally have stopped.  Then at the other end Chandler was through one-on-one with the keeper and looked certain to equalise. That is, until Chelsea captain Jack Harrow stetched out both arms and cynically hauled him to the ground. All City got was a free kick (the quaint idea of professional fouls meriting a sending off was still six decades away). 

 

1920s football did have something going for it, though. The home supporters responded to this incident in a way we'd never see today. The Chelsea captain was roundly booed by his own supporters.

 

That free kick came to nothing, and shortly after, Whitton added a second with a shot that, once again, Godderidge might have saved had he been fully mobile. 

 

2-0 was the half-time score, and Godderidge, like Mark Wallington in 1982, decided there'd been enough heroics. He didn't appear for the second half and we played the rest of the game with ten men, left half Norman Watson taking over in goal.

 

Whitton added two more in the second half, taking his tally to seven in just 48 hours. We had our chances, but couldn't get past that Olympic high-jumper in goal. This is how Benjamin Howard Baker was portrayed on the cover of the match programme that day:

 

 

4-0 is how it ended - an exact reverse of the score at Filbert Street. 'It's a funny game', the Leicester Mercury commented.

 

But not funny ha-ha. With just three points from four games, our promotion campaign had got off to a miserable start. In three out of the four games we could point to bad luck, but in each of those games we'd failed to score. Channy had managed just a single goal so far.

 

With Stoke due at Filbert Street five days later, the pressure was on.

 

[davieG]

Not to be too disingenuous  but it didn't look like much of a task to design those early stadiums most having just one significant stand. I'll stand corrected if they were more.

[Trav Le Bleu]

On 06/09/2024 at 05:42, kushiro said:

 

Match 3    Saturday September 6th  1924      Leicester City v Middlesbrough

 

A week after an unlucky defeat at Old Trafford in the opener, we lost out against United again today, even though we weren't actually playing them.

 

The game against Boro' at Filbert Street turned on an incident early in the first half when the referee, Mr. Slater of Blackburn, made what the Leicester Mail called 'the mistake of a lifetime'. Arthur Chandler took a free kick from just outside the box. His shot flew into the top corner, hit the iron support at the back of the goal and bounced back out.  No goal was given.

 

Leicester players surrounded the ref and 'for some minutes he was subjected to considerable barracking'. But he wouldn't even consult his linesman.

 

It wasn't Channy's day. He later missed several chances and the match finished 0-0. 

 

At the Victoria Ground that afternoon there was another controversial incident. Stoke got the ball in the net and the referee signaled a goal. Manchester United players surrounded the referee and urged him to consult his linesman. This he did, and the goal was chalked off, the ball judged to have crossed the goal line before it was crossed. It finished 0-0 there too. 

 

Had those decisions gone the other way we'd have been two points ahead of the promotion favourites. Instead, we were side by side, as fans discovered in the sports paper that evening where the first League table of the season was published:

 

 

It was Derby's draw at Portsmouth that made them the early leaders, with no team having a 100% record, and every team having at least a point.

 

Leicester's next fixture would be on Monday evening - the return fixture against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. We wouldn't be wearing our blue shirts, of course. We'd have to change to our red away kit. 

 

That's a good moment to show you the home colours of every team in Division Two that season:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(thanks to the marvelous historicalkits.co.uk)

We're the players at South Shields, Southampton, Stockport, Stoke, Sheffield Weds and Wolves much bigger than the other teams, or did they just have very baggy kit?

Edited 8 September by Trav Le Bleu