Over the years we haven't exactly had the proudest record in opening day fixtures. But this is a celebration of the good ones - those first day games that left fans bouncing optimistically out of the ground believing anything was possible.
Looking at the whole history of the club, here's a top six:
6) Middlesbrough v Leicester City 2013/14
When things like the Deeney moment happen, there are two possible reactions. The shock can destroy everything. leading to the break up of a team, the sacking of a manager, and a downward spiral that takes years to recover from.
But Nigel Pearson wanted the opposite reaction. He wanted the experience to foster a new resolution. From adversity comes strength. He trusted his squad, and didn't bring in new faces for the following season.
But all Pearson's steeliness would have counted for little had we got off to a bad start. An opening day defeat would have brought on the predictable doom mongering - and when we went one behind early on, there was the traditional meltdown on the match thread (it's pretty funny reading it back). Thankfully, late goals from Drinkwater, and a fine Vardy finish turned it around.
The game never features in those 'What was the turning point that led to us winning the title?' threads, but it deserves at least a footnote in that conversation.
You can see the goals on this season review video. It's the first match (obviously):
5) Leicester City v Leeds United 1948/49
We had a brand new pitch - laid out at huge cost over the summer. We had a new chairman - Len Shipman. We had a new badge on out shirt - a fox - which would give us a new nickname. We also had a very special new supporter - a 14 year old called Bernie Henson, for whom this was a first trip to Filbert Street.
We ended up with a 6-2 win - the most we've ever scored on opening day. What followed was a 'stranger than fiction' season.
There's more about that in a separate thread coming soon about Bernie's life, based on his lovingly compiled scrapbooks. So for now let's move on to:
4) Stockport County v Leicester City 1922/23
Manager Peter Hodge had earmarked inside forward Johnny Duncan as the catalyst that would turn a team treading water in the Second Division into promotion challengers. In the summer of 1922, going back to his old club Raith Rovers, he signed not just Johnny but his brother Tommy, too.
The new season started at Stockport County. They had just won Division Three North, and had the meanest defence in the whole Football League. The previous season they hadn't conceded a goal until October, and their keeper was Harry Hardy, the only Stockport man ever to win an England cap.
Johnny was making his debut, while Tommy started in the reserves.
What followed had the Leicester Evening Mail's reporter in raptures:
Never have I seen a game that came anywhere near it, either for spectacular football, or for real excitement.
Stockport quickly took the lead, but Duncan then scored 'a lovely goal' to equalize. The home side then scored two more, and things looked bleak. City came back to 3-3, but County then scored a fourth before City equalized again.
With five minutes left, Duncan headed the winner, and City were off to a great start.
Duncan was indeed the catalyst for City's rise, the key man in our first great team. We just missed promotion that season, but golden years were on the way.
3) Leicester Fosse v Bolton Wanderers 1910/11
It's happened more than once in Leicester's history. We finally find a genuine goal scorer, we have to sell him, and what do you know, in the first game of the following season we're up against his new club.
Fred Shinton was the only player ever to score 50 goals for the Fosse. In 1909/10 he broke the club record with 32 - but a few weeks later ambitious Bolton, looking to get back in Division One, paid out a four figure sum to take him to Burnden Park.
Fosse's opening fixture just had to be a home game against Bolton.
We had spent the Shinton money on a forward called Jack Hall, from Middlesbrough, and he played alongside another debutant, George Travers.
Shinton's return to Filbert Street quickly turned into a nightmare - a 5-0 defeat, as relished by a local reporter:
Wanderers were absolutely routed. The wonder was that they didn't suffer an ever more crushing defeat. They were beaten out of all semblance of a first class football team, and long before the finish were a disorganised rabble. In the first half they were out played and out manouvered, in the second they were overwhelmed, demoralised and reduced to a hopeless collection of unfortunates.
If that's what the journalists were like back then, we can only imagine the taunts hurled Shinton's way by Fosse supporters.
Those two debutants Hall and Travers both scored twice in what is still our biggest margin of victory in an opening fixture.
Alas, unlike Duncan's debut, this result was not the signpost to a glorious future. We had a dismal season, finishing 15th. By contrast, Bolton quickly pulled themselves together and ended up getting promotion. Did they have a Pearson-like figure to shake them up? Maybe they just stuck that match report on the dressing room wall.
91 years later, in 2001, Leicester started the season with the same fixture - and incredibly Bolton reversed that historical result, walking off with a 5-0 away win. It was the nadir of the Peter Taylor era, when 'disorganised rabble', and 'a hopeless collection of unfortunates' were the appropriate descriptions of Leicester City.
2) Aston Villa v Leicester City 1933/34
Between the wars, we had two stunning opening day wins at Villa Park within the space of six years. We won 3-0 in 1927/28, but it is the later victory that really caused a sensation.
Aston Villa had been runners-up to Arsenal the previous season, and had splashed out big money on more star players in an attempt to wrest the title away from Highbury. The press called them the 'Wonder Team' - Charles Buchan predicted that Villa would 'probably open with a substantial victory, as Leicester rely largely on the team that narrowly avoided relegation last season'.
What actually happened was that City caused a substantial upset.
They went ahead when Arthur Maw finished off a fine team move, then:
Just on the interval, Maw scored an extraordinary goal. Keeper Morton kicked clear from a City attack, and the ball came straight to Maw who was standing forty yards out. Without hesitation he drove it straight into the corner of the net.
That 2-0 half time lead was shocking enough, but after the break Arthur Lochhead scored a third from 35 yards. Said the report:
This goal seemed to settle the issue, and for the next few minutes Leicester ran rings round their rivals.
Whatever the 1930s equivalent of the 'Same Old Leicester...' chant was, it must have been given a good airing that afternoon.
Perhaps we rubbed it in a bit too much, for Villa got their act together and scored two late goals. Still, we came away with the points.
This was the headline in the Birmingham paper that evening:
Leicester finished that season in 15th, with the 'Wonder Team' finishing just two places higher in 13th.
1) Leicester City v Everton 1985/86
Only the most wide-eyed optimists could have expected victory. We hadn't won our opening game in the top flight since 1958 - a truly abysmal sequence of nine draws and thirteen defeats.
And who were our first opponents this season? Only champions Everton, who'd just bought Gary Lineker (yes - the same situation as Fred Shinton in 1910).
The man to fill Lineker's shoes was Mark Bright, who had been signed from Port Vale the previous season, and had yet to show City fans any evidence that he was a real goal scorer. Up against him was Neville Southall, hailed as the best keeper in the world.
Everton took the lead in the first half and the pessimists were giving each other knowing glances.
Then just before the break, Bobby Smith equalized from a Bright knock down.
At half time, City substitute David Rennie told Bright something he'd spotted from the bench. 'Southall keeps coming a long way off his line'.
In the second half, the unbelievable happened. Mark Bright beat Southall twice with long range efforts, both floated over the keeper's head.
Meanwhile, Russell Osman, making his City debut, was keeping Lineker bottled up, leading to chants of 'What a waste of money' which got louder as the game went on.
It finished 3-1, and that dismal run was finally over.
Lineker didn't let it get him down - he ended that season with 40 goals for Everton, the Golden Boot at the World Cup, and a lucrative move to Barcelona.
Mark Bright added just another four to his total that season and didn't find sustained success until he moved to Palace. Still, he'll always be remembered at Leicester for that match - the only time we've beaten the champions on the opening day.
So that's our best ever first day victories. Please add your own special (or awful) first day memories below.
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