Neville, King of the Midlands, Saved the Best Till Last

Neville Foulger's passing has brought quite a powerful reaction from Leicester fans. So many posts on the RIP thread here say how he was ‘the soundtrack to my early life’ or ‘the voice of my childhood’. I thought it would be nice to take a look at Neville’s own life, and present a few of the high points.

In a distinguished career he covered pretty much every major Midlands club  -  but he left the best till last, not moving to Leicester until he was nearly 50. Here are six stand out moments:

1)  I Could Play A Bit Myself, You Know

Neville was brought up in the Gedling area of Nottingham, and he was a decent footballer. Before his by-line ever appeared on a column in the sports pages, he made the news himself:

The Gedling Road Methodist Youth Club is in the grip of football fever and the reason is they are in the final of the national Methodist Association Youth Clubs five-a-side competition, and will meet Asquith Road Youth Club from Hull at the Royal Albert Hall next Saturday. The lads have bought new red shirts, similar to those worn by Forest, and are likely to be well supported. The game will be played before a 6,000 crowd as part of a special programme. The five are Geoff Hodge, Brian Hodge, Dick Sims, Ray Birch and Neville Foulger.       Nottingham Evening News, May 12th 1958

A week later, the result of the final was reported:

Gedling Methodist Youth Club won the match 1-0, the winning goal coming from Neville Foulger, who captained the team.

2)   Too Bad To Be True

Neville's first job was sports reporter at the Nottingham Evening Mail, and in his ten years at the company he would cover a huge variety of events. In his early days he was the paper's Mansfield Town correspondent, and in that capacity he was sent to Filbert Street for the first time in October 1960 for a League Cup tie. It was Leicester City's first ever game in the competition:

Neville was especially taken by the form of a young Scot:

Notice the fellow playing outside left for Mansfield that night:

Neville was soon covering the games of bigger clubs. Perhaps his own proficiency as a player was the reason, but he was never afraid to dish out criticism. Here's one example:

No-one from Portsmouth would have read that report,  of course. It was written for Derby fans.  But Neville wasn't scared of using the same language about local teams.  Here he uses exactly the same phrase:

He covered a lot of Forest games too, and in the 1962/63 season fans in the region were getting excited about the prospect of an all-East Midlands FA Cup Final. Forest, then in the top flight, were drawn at home to Second Division Southampton in the Quarter Final, while Leicester faced a trip to another Division Two side, Norwich City. This was how Neville looked forward to the big Cup weekend:

He wasn't so confident about Leicester, though, despite our famous 'Ice Kings' team being the darlings of several other football reporters:

Far from cruising through, Forest were held to a draw by Southampton then hammered 5-0 in the replay at The Dell. Leicester made it all the way to the final, with Mike Stringfellow, that man we signed from Mansfield, scoring fine headed goals at Norwich and against Liverpool in the semi. 

As we shall see, predicting FA Cup results was a skill Neville would develop later in his career - in quite spectacular fashion.

3)   The Greatest

Boxing was a sport Neville often covered, and he was sometimes dispatched to Leicester to report on bouts at the Granby Halls or the Belgrave Club. In 1963 he had the chance to talk to a young heavyweight from the USA who was making a few waves. 

"Man", he said, for something like the twentieth time, "I'm the greatest!".  

He was certainly an impressive figure. You could almost see his muscles rippling beneath his sports coat, and brightly coloured shirt. He paused to take a rare lungful of air and I dived into the gap to take an equally rare chance to ask a question.

"Why are you the greatest?"

"Because people are talking about me not only when I'm in the ring, but out of the ring as well.  I'm a personality".

This is just a brief sample of the Cassius Marcellus Clay talk-down given on a trip to Nottingham.

Neville went on to talk about how football could do with a few more personalities like Clay.  Here you can see the great man outside the Town Hall:

He paid a visit to the Nottingham Ice Stadium, arriving during a welterweight bout involving Leicester's Joe Falcon. Many in the crowd lost all interest in the fight, swarming round Clay to get autographs.  

He was in the UK to fight Henry Cooper, predicting, as you can see in the picture, that he would win in five rounds - which is exactly what happened.

The following year,  another man not known for his modesty rolled into town. In the 1964 Ashes Test at Trent Bridge, a young Geoffrey Boycott made his England debut. Neville was there to report:

4)   Wherever I Lay My Hat

Neville moved to the West Midlands in 1967 to take up a similar role at the Birmingham Mail and Sports Argus.  He would cover a different club each week, and in his reports you can trace the post-Leicester careers of two Filbert Street folk heroes of the 1960s:

The Doog report is from 1968, the Dave Gibson headline from 1971.

This was perhaps the highlight of his six year stay in the second city - 16 year-old Trevor Francis' spectacular four goal display against Bolton:

Neville was living the dream  - watching top class football every week and getting paid for it. But it was a different club every week - whichever press box he was sent to, that was his temporary home. What he really wanted was to settle down - at a club he could call his own. Soon, he would get the chance.

5)    Sky Blue 

 In September 1973 the 'Neville Foulger' by-line appeared in the Coventry Evening Telegraph for the first time. Over the next 14 years, he would adopt the Sky Blues as his own club, and Coventry fans would take to him in return. 

He arrived at an exciting time. Two weeks into his new job, Coventry made the short trip to Filbert Street. Gordon Milne's Sky Blues were lying third in the table after eight games, with Jimmy Bloomfield's Leicester in fifth. It was the top game of the week in England, and this was Neville's report in the Saturday evening sports paper:

That took Coventry up to second place, but the 'champion' tag was soon looking a bit far-fetched. They plummeted down the table and ended up just above the drop zone. 

The battle against relegation was the continuing theme of those years at Highfield Road. Gordon Milne kept them up year after year before his move to Leicester in 1982 (the switch coming in July when Neville was away on his summer holiday).  Shortly after, he was back to report on the shock player exchange between the two clubs:

In 1986/87  Neville told his bosses at the CET that he would move on at the end of the season.  His could not have imagined that his last ever report for the paper would be the biggest game in the club's history - their first ever FA Cup Final.

David Pleat's Tottenham were favourites at Wembley, but Coventry won a dramatic game 3-2. 

And that wasn't all. In his preview of the game in Friday's paper, Neville had written this:

6)   The Voice of Leicester

Neville became a freelance writer and broadcaster after that, and one of his roles was match commentator for Radio Leicester. That's how everyone on this forum remembers him, and the comments on the RIP thread show just how people felt about him. 

At home games, he would commentate from a box low down in the old Main Stand. This is how he described it:

A hot water pipe ran through it, so in winter it was the warmest spot in the ground. Sadly, the windows always steamed up, making it the worst view.

He also published a fine history of Filbert Street, which is beautifully illustrated. This shot from the early 1920s shows the press boxes of the three local papers of the time, the Mercury, the Mail and the Post, where the Neville Foulgers of the era would have worked:

And that ends this very brief run through of a distinguished career.   

RIP Neville.