kushiro

Good interview. This passage really stands out: “There was a vital relegation battle against Sheffield United at Bramall Lane. Jock had put the teamsheet up and if you took me out, the average age was about 19 or 20. He’d selected young lads like Everton Carr and Neville Hamilton. “So I went to see him and said: ‘Gaffer, we’re fighting for our lives here. Surely you’ve got to go with experience rather than the young lads!’ He just turned to me and said: ‘Well Mark, it doesn’t matter what division we’re in next year, whether it’s the second or the third, these are the lads who’ll be playing.’ “I thought: ‘Gee! He has such a great belief in what he is doing.’ We drew the game 2-2 even though we were down to 10 men because I think Everton Carr got sent off. “In the end, we came through that and stayed up and, the next season, Jock’s approach obviously paid dividends because we won the Second Division title.”

Interesting that he skirts over the downside of that World Cup. In his book, he opened up about how miserable he was: I would walk the streets of South Korea, later Japan, and go into shops and buy DVDs. I was lonely, isolated. Most days the squad would get together and go to a local mosque. Most of the team are Muslim. I’m not a Muslim. My memories of that World Cup are me in a hotel room by myself, curtains closed, lying on my bed, watching another film. My biggest regret was that I never learned Turkish.

This is a pretty cool way to follow the full story:

Sure is. Mid to late 1940s before the Main Stand roof was repaired.

Likelihood is the photo was taken a month after the shop opened, in October 1991, when Blur played the Uni. When HMV opened in September, Kenny Thomas was the minor celeb they invited to the ceremony.

Interesting that he had to fly straight off for a WCQ against Mexico after we won the League Cup at Hillsborough. And even more interesting what happened to him in the first minute of that game:

That's OK, mate. The bits you attached were perfect. What was your research about the vote?

Thanks a lot. Two things from that Sheff Wed programme would be very useful .There should be a Jon Holmes column, and also, any reports on the 'Fosse or City'supporters ballot.

Time to get the begging bowl out again. I mentioned above that I had to get rid of all my old progammes and fanzines when I moved to Japan. I'm still trying to finish this book about Jon Holmes and the history of Leicester, and there are a couple of things that would really help. I need: 1) The programmes for the latter part of the 2002/03 season - especially the home game v Sheffield Wednesday in March. 2) Fox fanzine from March to June that season. If anyone has these and is willing to make a few scans I would be eternally grateful. PM me if you can help. Thanks.

What was the first record you ever bought? Mine was in December 1976, the month the Sex Pistols released Anarchy In the UK. But my first record wasn't that. It was Neil Sedaka's Make Your Own Sunshine, bought in Boots on Bell Street in Wigston. I used to tell that story as a form of self-deprecation. As the excitement of punk kicked off, I was busy listening to a washed up middle of the road singer-songwriter from the States. But as I got older I realised that I hadn't made such a bad choice after all. Sedaka was a very good songwriter, whose back cataloge you can spend ages on youtube exploring. One of his best was Love Will Keep Us Together, a title Ian Curtis reworked for a track that's become a staple of football crowds. Sedaka died yesterday, aged 86. One of his very best was an American number one from 1975 that didn't even make the charts in the UK. Bad Blood featured stunning but uncredited backing vocals from Elton John, and it's a track with a bite in the music and the lyrics. Here's a fairly poor quality recording of a great performance, and a better quality version of the same song.: Just listening to Make Your Own Sunshine again now, and it has a very 'When You're Smiling' feel - 'before you walk in the sun, you've gotta laugh in the rain'. I've just looked if he ever played in Leicester and he did so twice in the seventies - at Baileys in 1973 and the De Mont in 1975. Any memories?

Jon Holmes is at the heart of it. Originally, I simply wanted to tell his story, and I began speaking to him a couple of years ago about his journey from supporter to chairman. Heartbreak in 1963 as a 12 year-old boy when the Ice Kings were on course for the double but ended up with nothing. Setting up a sports agency and having Peter Shilton, Gary Lineker and David Gower as his main clients. On to 2002 when he and Gary led the consortium that rescued the club from the brink of oblivion, and then 2016 when he saw the Premier League trophy lifted, surrounded by members of that Ice Kings team, who he had invited to the match. It’s a great tale, but then he started telling me about his family history, and that’s when it got even more interesting. Jon really is one of our own – his roots are in Leicester, going back several generations, and his ancestors led equally interesting lives. Their stories are right at the heart of this city’s story, and when you see the whole picture, you see that however dramatic 2015/16 was, it was just part of a larger drama, stretching right back to the birth of the club in the 1880s. It’s taking a while to finish the writing, as the story needs to be told properly. No details yet of a publication schedule, but watch this space.

Thanks for asking, I still look in here regularly but haven't had time to post much recently. Working on a book at the mo.

Nice subtle reference to our early days.

Colin MacDonald has passed away, aged 95. He was the oldest living England international, our goalkeeper at the 1958 World Cup when he was at Burnley. Leicester connection? He was later a scout at Oldham, and spotted a centre-forward playing for Scotland schoolboys. His name was Alan Young. McDonald went up to Kirkcaldy to bring him south, and a few years later Young scored a hat-trick for Oldham against Leicester in the FA Cup, which prompted Jock Wallace to bring him to Filbert Street. That's him with the hat-trick ball.

Fascinating map, that. Looking closely you can see that the old Main Stand at Filbert Street was designated as one of the WW2 air raid shelters (blue arrow). The position of the green arrow suggests Tigers' ground. Between those two is Hazel Street school, which the guide tells us was to be used only 'after school hours': That chequered circle just below the Filbert Street circle is one of the buildings you can see on the shot below from just after the war, probably the Hosilco hosiery factory near the old SK1 turnstiles: Ironically, as you can see in that shot, the Filbert Street Main Stand wasn't the safest of places during WW2 - hit by a bomb in 1941, then suffering even worse damage in a fire a year later. The roof still hasn't been repaired in that picture, and wouldn't be until 1949 due to a shortage of building materials.

The date of that article is October 20th 1925 - exactly 100 years ago. The Knuts never really caught on as a nickname, despite the Mercury pushing it so hard (or perhaps because of that).

Fascinating picture. Quick delve in the archives produces this: That's from the Mercury, January 9th 1947. In the same issue, the paper explains that:

The prices for the Family Enclosure tell us it's 1992/93 - and the fence blocking access behind the Main Stand tell us that work to demolish it is already underway. So it's almost certainly the queue for Play-Off Final tickets v Swindon, when the queue stretched round three sides of the ground.

As suggested above, the photos relate to the placing of poles supporting overhead telegraph wires. In 1913, Leicester County Court was the scene of a case bewtween the Post Master General and Leicester Corporation. PMG said people in the Knighton area (including Battenberg Avenue and Welford Road) wanted telephone lines installed, but the corporation wanted them to lay the wires underground. PMG gave the relative costs: The verdict in the case was held over to a later date, which I can't find. Presumably the overhead lines were given the go-ahead,

The ones I know are Saxe-Coburg Street became Saxby Street Mecklenburg Street became Fortescue Street (a former vicar of St.George’s) Gotha Street became Gotham Street Hanover Street became Andover Street It was decided later that Mecklenburg Street should be an extension of Severn Street. But I never knew about Battenburg Avenue until your post. I wonder too - any others? Carisbrooke was a title in the family of the first Lord Mountbatten (who was formerly known as Battenberg - berg = mountain in German)

Here's a map from about 1910 where you can see Battenberg Avenue: And a letter to the Leicester Mail from March 1918:

This is a great topic. Here's a few highlights from down the years: 1955: Dave Halliday was appointed Leicester boss from a shortlist of three. One of the other candidates was Joe Mercer - who later led Man City to the title in 1968 and the FA Cup the following year (against us). 1968: After Matt Gillies stood down, we appointed Frank O'Farrell, who took us to that Cup Final v Man City. The other candidate was Allan Brown, the man who so pissed off Martin O'Neill as Forest manager that he was on the verge of givng up the game and going back to his Law studies. 1971: When O'Farrell left us to take the Man U job our first target was Don Howe. Thankfully he wasn't interested. We got Jimmy Bloomfield instead. Can you imagine Don Howe signing Frank Worthington and Keith Weller? 1978: We went down in 1978 and when Frank McLintock quit he laid the blame for the awful season at the players' door, saying they were 'completely devoid of passion' and 'a bunch of introverts'. Newspapers were speculating on who might replace him as boss. 'Possibles include John Barnwell of Peterborough, Gerry Summers of Gillingham, and Bobby Roberts of Colchester', said a report in early May. Not exactly a list to get fans rushing to renew their season tickets. What a shock it was when, in a Glasgow hotel, Jock Wallace, the man who'd just led Rangers to the treble, was announced as our new boss. 1991: Before we appointed Brian Little, we were after John Beck. He stayed at Cambridge so he could complete the journey from Division Four to the top flight. He so nearly made it - in the play-off semi-final they lost 5-0 in the 2nd leg - to you know who.

'If there was no Leicester, there was no me. That's why I was like 'We've got to do what we can do to help'.