Blogs

What happened to this great team? The 30th anniversary of Leicester City’s greatest match:

|
Image for What happened to this great team? The 30th anniversary of Leicester City’s greatest match:

Its 2.30 in the morning, and I’m sitting here with my laptop and a coffee listening to and reminiscing  about the late Whitney Houston on one of those nights when no matter what you do you cannot get to sleep. 

Leicester City and Ivory Coast star Sol Bamba has just lost The African Cup of Nations final 8-7 or something ridiculous like that to another insignificant footballing nation. What’s more I’ve started to find it really hard to get excited about England these days so watching a bunch of teams from a far off continent play each other does absolutely nothing for me, even with a Leicester player involved – sorry Sol.

I had even opted for the re-run of The Bodyguard featuring the aforementioned Ms Houston than watch the final, but thanks to a certain LCFC group my Facebook news feed was jammed with every penalty scored and missed. The idea of one thread to update the score was way beyond the intellect of the admin of this group. So you may well  guess that it was not the best of evenings/mornings.So sat here in my caffeine induced alertness my mind started wandering and I started to think of the great games I have gone to in my time. Now this didn’t last long because as any Leicester City fan of a certain age will tell you there has not been that many in comparison to some of the so called bigger clubs. Then remembering that I had just bought a ticket to a certain reunion I started to think about the greatest game that I had NEVER been to.

Most people can tell you where they were when events of enormous magnitude happened, though these tend to be around deaths and bad news as in the shooting of Kennedy, Michael Jackson’s untimely departure, the twin towers et al.

But I can tell you where I wasn’t on the day of one of Leicester City’s biggest games – ever.

Let me take to back to Saturday 6th March 1982. City in what was then the old second division (that’s now the Championship for anyone under 20)  and ex Glasgow Rangers manager, the late & great Jock Wallace, was assembling a team mixed with youth & experience that would end the season in 8th place and go on to earn promotion to the top flight the following season.  This was the team of an ex school mate of mine, Gary Lineker (whatever happened to him?), Jimmy Melrose, Steve Lynex, Andy Peake, John O’Neill, Mark Wallington and a certain Scotsman up front called Alan Young.

Having been relegated from The 1st Division (for those under 20…well you know) the previous season after an all too short stay, this promising team was settling into mid table safety when come January the FA Cup run started.

A comfortable 3-1 home win with a brace from Young and 1 from Lineker saw us beat Southampton 3-1, whilst an away win by the solitary goal from Larry May in the next round over Hereford saw us get a  5th round home tie against Watford. There was a sneaky feeling amongst us optimistic City fans that something special might happen this season.The problem I faced, dear reader, was that I was not the only optimistic City fan where I worked. At the time I worked at WH Smith as Assistant Manager of their travel agency department. (Yes I did use to be responsible). But on the team was a young lady, whom age has robbed me of her name,  also a fanatical Foxes fan and the manager deemed that we could could not both be off on the same Saturday, this being our busiest day. Oh the joys of a staffing rota.

So we decided to draw lots to see who would go to which round, rock paper scissors seeming a bit childish for us!

Now as fanatical & optimistic as we both were, being a Leicester City fan we had both learnt to be realistic, and presuming that as a then 2nd Division side, we were unlikely to make it to the twin towers we were both deep down looking to draw the slip of paper out the hat, or whatever receptical  we used that would give us a trip to the semis (told you we were optimistic!)

Click HERE to head to PAGE TWO…

Share this article