The Second Greatest Season Ever

[kushiro]

12 hours ago, davieG said:

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.

 

The biggest take from Simon Inglis' book 'Engineering Archie' was that those huge terraces at football grounds, that you wouldn't think had anything to do with architecture, were actually an advanced form of engineering - it took decades of trial and error (and tragedy, with the Ibrox disaster of 1902) before that form of terracing became standard. 

 

This also relates back to your point above about why Filbert Street couldn't expand. We hired Leitch in the Fosse era and he went over every inch of the available space, lowered the level of the pitch, reprofiled the primitive terracing, introduced crush barriers, and a series of other improvements that, even though there was no new stand to alter the basic appearance of the place,  hugely increased the capacity and safety of the ground.

[davieG]

18 minutes ago, kushiro said:

 

The biggest take from Simon Inglis' book 'Engineering Archie' was that those huge terraces at football grounds, that you wouldn't think had anything to do with architecture, were actually an advanced form of engineering - it took decades of trial and error (and tragedy, with the Ibrox disaster of 1902) before that form of terracing became standard. 

 

This also relates back to your point above about why Filbert Street couldn't expand. We hired Leitch in the Fosse era and he went over every inch of the available space, lowered the level of the pitch, reprofiled the primitive terracing, introduced crush barriers, and a series of other improvements that, even though there was no new stand to alter the basic appearance of the place,  hugely increased the capacity and safety of the ground.

Interesting. I wonder if lowering the pitch was the reason we suffered from quagmire pitches with river nearby?

[kushiro]

9 hours ago, davieG said:

Interesting. I wonder if lowering the pitch was the reason we suffered from quagmire pitches with river nearby?

 

Every comment you make opens up a whole new can of worms! (perhaps literally in this case). 

 

The question of flooding from the river / canal and its impact on the history of the football club is a huge topic that I'm hoping to write about soon. Just to say here that the club believed in 1948 that installing a proper drainage system would solve the problem of a pitch that resembled a 'Burma rice field', and to some extent it worked.

[Foxdiamond]

11 hours ago, davieG said:

Interesting. I wonder if lowering the pitch was the reason we suffered from quagmire pitches with river nearby?

Would the double decker at south end of stadium with casting a long shadow added to the problem too.

[davieG]

7 minutes ago, Foxdiamond said:

Would the double decker at south end of stadium with casting a long shadow added to the problem too.

I'm sure it did it was always worse that end.

 

The KP however is nearer to the water and has high stands but I guess the technology involved in it's pitch has moved on a lot.

[Foxdiamond]

45 minutes ago, davieG said:

I'm sure it did it was always worse that end.

 

The KP however is nearer to the water and has high stands but I guess the technology involved in it's pitch has moved on a lot.

Yes. Amazing when you look at matches around the country now compared to say the 70s during autumn and winter. Filbert Street we know was full of clarts but others too suffered 

[davieG]

30 minutes ago, Foxdiamond said:

clarts

wow a new word for me - thanks

[Foxdiamond]

14 minutes ago, davieG said:

wow a new word for me - thanks

My mum was a geordie so sometimes a word or two seems to fit the bill

[kushiro]

 

 

 

Match 5   Saturday September 13th 1924     Leicester City v Stoke 

 

 

For a short time after World War 1, Leicester could boast something that Stoke could not  - it was officially a 'city'. After King George V's visit to Leicester in 1919, the change was announced, with the name of the football club following almost immediately afterwards.Then in 1925 the King visited the Potteries and he himself broke the news of a similar change in status. Shortly after that, the local football club became 'Stoke City'.

 

So this was the last time they visited Filbert Street as plain old 'Stoke'. 

 

Before the game, we were 14th, Stoke 15th - we really needed two points to start moving up the table.  Rain kept the crowd down to about 15,000 - and the ones who did turn up were in for a miserable afternoon.  Ten minutes into the game, the rain suddenly got much heavier, and thanks to defective guttering on the roof of the Main Stand, people standing below were drenched. 

 

It was goalless at half time, and though we had most of the play, we were still suffering from 'that fatal habit of hesitation before goal'. Then Channy had the chance of the game. He was right through - but 'slipped on the wet grass' and the chance was gone.

 

Stoke then broke away and with their only chance of the game, Len Armitage put the ball in the net. 'By every rule of chance or probablility they deserved nothing', said the Mail. But they won 1-0.  We couldn't blame the awful weather. In Derby and Manchester conditions were the same, but the Rams beat Fulham 5-1 and United beat Coventry by the same score. This was how the top of the table looked that evening:

 

 

 

Leicester slipped to 17th. A relegation battle now looked more likely than a challenge for promotion. Two days later another Monday evening fixture was scheduled - away to Stockport County, who'd made a fine start, as you can see from that table.

 

The directors knew something had to change - and they were about to make a crucial decision. 

 

 

[kushiro]

 

 

Match 6   Monday September 15th 1924     Stockport County v Leicester City

 

We don't know who really took the decision. The directors had ultimate responsibility for picking the team, but it's hard to imagine that manager Peter Hodge, with his experience, didn't have some say in the matter. He was the man, after all, who had brought Johnny Duncan to Filbert Street two years earlier. For this game at Edgeley Park, Duncan was moved back into the forward line, so when we ran out on this Monday evening,  the famous five were in place for the first time. 

 

For City fans of that generation, the names had a magical ring - Adcock, Duncan, Chandler, Carr, Wadsworth. Our first truly great forward line:

 

 

 

Stockport County v Leicester City was the fixture which, three years earlier, had recorded the lowest ever atttencance for a League game - just 13! But that crazy stat, which used to be included in football annuals without an explanation, was due to the fact that the game was the second part of a double header at Old Trafford, after Edgeley Park had been closed due to crowd trouble. Thirteen people paid to watch the second game, but there were a couple of thousand others on the terraces who stayed on after the earlier game between Manchester United and Derby County, when both those clubs were in Division One. This season, they were rivals in the Division Two promotion race.

 

As we boarded the train for the north-west, League leaders Derby were heading the same way, for a fixture with second-placed Blackpool.

 

There were about 10,000 at Edgeley Park, and just as on Saturday, rain was falling at kick-off time and continued falling throughout the game. 

 

After twelve minutes, we finally scored our first away goal of the season. Wadsworth received the ball on the left wing and beat his man 'in brilliant style'. He was supported by Chandler, but 'when the latter was thwarted in his efforts to reach the ball, Duncan dashed through and the ball was in the net before Hardy knew where he was'. 

 

Our keeper George Hebden then kept us in front with a series of fine saves, before we went further ahead:

 

 

That was full back Billy Barrett's last contribution in a Leicester shirt. He was the only survivor of Leicester City's first ever match, five years earlier (after the reconstruction following Leicester Fosse's financial troubles). The penalty was just his second goal in 152 appearances. He was born in Stockingford, the area of Nuneaton that was still in shock following the bus tragedy two weeks earlier. The seven victims were all from that part of town, and this week, seven become eight when  17 year-old Mary Harvey lost her fight for life after two weeks in intensive care.

 

Barrett would sign for Derby at the end of the season, and the Rams' defensive frailties were exposed today in that top of the table clash at Bloomfield Road. Having conceded just three in five games before today, that total was doubled in just seventeen minutes, and the man behind the 'Blackpool Hurricane', as the Derby Evening Telegraph put it, was Matt Barrass. He played a similar role to Johnny Duncan at Leicester, and just like Duncan, he had been moved from the half-back line to inside forward for this game.

 

Duncan was happy to be back in the position where he could do most damage to opposition defences, and this was how the Mercury saw it:

 

 

 

 

Edited Sunday at 07:44 by kushiro

[kushiro]

 

 

Match 7

Saturday September 20th 1924

Coventry City v Leicester City

 

In the mid 1920s, the landscape of the south side of Leicester was changing rapidly. 

 

The Filbert Street Main Stand had been completed three years earlier, so fans on the way to the game now had that delicious sense of anticipation that comes with seeing the ground from a distance.

 

From the upper tiers of that stand you could see the War Memorial slowly rising above Viccy Park, and if you looked to the right, the electricity generating station was gradually expanding and blocking the view of the gas works. 

 

These were all major projects, but they were dwarfed in scale by the building program about to get under way a little further south. 

 

On Saturday September 20th,  Councillor Hallam of the Leicester Housing Committee performed a historic ceremony in front of scores of VIP guests - cutting the first sod at the council's first ever large scale housing project - the Saffron Lane Estate. 

 

The plan was to build 1,500 houses in just two years, meeting the enormous demand from city residents living in slum conditions in the centre of the city. 

 

The Mercury wasn't holding anything back that day. This was the front page:

 

 

 

And this was how it viewed the occasion:

 

Old John, that quaint and historic edifice that has looked down long enough to see every towering factory chimney rise as a sign of the commercial development of a great city, must have stirred at the sight of a great gathering of people signifying a new town, the physical and moral salvation of 10,000 people, and a vastly important epoch in the history of Leicester.  

 

The council had received a number of tenders for the plan, and settled on that of Messrs Henry Boot and Sons, though it wasn't the lowest submitted. Managing Director Charles Boot explained that:

 

We have overcome one of the great disadvantages of concrete houses by adopting the 'double wall' principle. There is a two-inch space between two walls throughout the house without a break thus avoiding the possibility of damp through the walls.

 

This shows how the area looked before building started, and when the project was completed, with the Aylestone Recreation Ground at the top of each map:

 

 

The notion of the Saff as a 'garden city' will no doubt trigger a few guffaws, but compared to what people were used to, those houses would have seemed like paradise - indoor toilets, room enough for all the family, a garden to play in, and green spaces nearby. 

 

As Councillor Hallam performed that ceremony, however, many of the future residents of the estate had their minds elsewhere. Twenty miles away at Highfield Road, Coventry, Leicester City were hoping to build on the impressive win at Stockport five days earlier. The Coventry paper reported that 'The influx of Leicester visitors was greater than anticipated'' and before kick off 'they made themselves known with a variety of war cries'.

 

The Bantams, as Coventry were then known, were 17th in the table, six places below Leicester, but in their line up was the legendary inside forward Danny Shea - 'the intellectual footballer' as he had been dubbed. He was a former England international, now 36. You can seen him below in a bizarre team group picture in which the Coventry players are decked out in suits. Shea is the little fellow right in the middle who you would swear must be the groundsman or one of the directors. But no - that's the man who played inside right against Leicester that afternoon - and he would be the game's central actor.

 

 

 

Just five minutes in, Shea's 'brainy pass' set up Fred Herbert to put Coventry one up.  But soon after, this happened:

 

 

Shea then got the second himself, 'diverting in a cross', and after half time his header put Coventry 3-1 up.  Duncan and Carr then combined to set Channy up for 'a fine shot' that reduced the deficit, and our centre forward had a great chance to complete his hat-trick when through on goal, but he shot straight at the keeper. 

 

Coventry then got a fourth through Fred Morris, their other ex-England international, and 4-2 is how it finished.

 

Once again, we had dominated, but had failed to put our chances away. This is how the Leicester Mail summed it up:

 

In the field, Leicester were completely masters of the situation, but when in front of goal they were guilty of the same fault that spoiled their chances last season. They dallied! They played for position and forgot the points where football is different from billiards. 

 

The Mercury reflected that 'Shea is older and slower, of course, but he is still the past master in the arts of the timely pass and the wise manoeuvre'.

 

Strangely enough, the most pertinent commentary on the club throughout that season came from a Nottingham based reporter called 'Kernel' who had a weekly column in that city's excellent 'Football Post' newspaper, which appeared every Saturday afternoon. This was how he saw the situaiton:

 

 

 

Prophetic words. But at the time, you could understand those 'impulsive' judgments.  We were lying in 17th place in Division Two, and every one of our rivals was looking down on us. Both Nottingham clubs were in Division One,  Derby had gone back to the top of Division Two that day with a 4-0 win at Wolves, and even Coventry had now moved above us.

 

But amid the gloom, there was already one ray of light. Two days earlier, on the Thursday afternoon, Leicester Boys had faced Nottingham Boys in a game staged at Filbert Street. At outside right that afternoon was Harold Lineker, 55 years before his grandson made his professional debut on the same ground. Harold's fine performances for St.George's School had earned him a call-up, and he contributed to an impressive 2-0 victory over Nottingham, with both the goals coming in the last five minutes.

 

That match was a prestigious friendly, but the real battle was about to start. The draw had just been made for the first round of the English Schools Trophy, that competition in which Leicester had never got beyond the preliminary stage. Their first opponents this time would be the boys from the county - 'Mid-Leicestershire'.