kushiro

Now that's a very good question. We were already hemmed in because the land between the old Main Stand and the canal was not ours to develop. It was Filbert Street Recreation Ground, which around the turn of the 20th century was considered a key element in the council's plans to provide more places for young people to play around the town. There was no way we'd have been allowed to move closer to the canal back then and in fact it very nearly got much worse than that. We leased the land from the council and when the Recreation Ground was opened there was talk that it would soon be expanded to include the space occupied by the football ground - i.e. no more footy at Filbert Street! We were nearly made homeless (again). It was only through the efforts of certain members of the council that Leicester Fosse (as we were then) were allowed to extend the lease.

Match 2 Leicester City v Chelsea Monday September 1st 1924 1924/25 would be full of bright spots for Leicester, but several dark shadows would fall across the season. We'll learn shortly about the collision that ended the career of Leicester's keeper, and ended the life of the opposition striker. We'll unearth the forgotten story of the expert stone mason who, having worked on the Cenotaph in London, was invited to Leicester to display his talents on the city's own war memorial, only to be caught up in another tragic and fatal accident. Work on that magnificent memorial in Victoria Park had only just begun, and as the season progressed, the structure gradually grew in size, drawing gasps from people heading into town from the south. It would be completed in the spring as the season reached its climax, ready for the official opening in the summer of 1925. The solemn mood was there right at the start of the season. As Leicester City ran out for their first home game, two days after the defeat at Old Trafford, the atmosphere of excitement was tempered by events of recent days. On Saturday night, a crowded bus in Nuneaton caught fire as the driver was trying to refill the petrol tank through the nozzle under his seat. He was not using a funnel, and a passenger lit a match, thinking it would help the driver to see where he was pouring. Eight people perished in the flames. The tragedy would hasten legislation requiring all buses to have emergency exits at the rear that can be opened from both sides, and refilling nozzles placed on the outside of vehicles. A week earlier, England international footballer Tommy Meehan had died from inflammation of the brain, at the age of just 28. It was a devastating blow for everyone at his club - Chelsea, who were Leicester City's visitors for this Filbert Street opener. You can see Meehan on the right, with Chelsea's other England internationals Benjamin Howard Baker (the amateur keeper) and Jack Cock. Before the match at Filbert Street there was a collection for Meehan's family, while at the same time twenty miles away, a collection for relatives of the victims of the bus tragedy was held before Nuneaton's friendly match against Coventry City. Chelsea had just been relegated, and had started life in Division Two with a 1-0 win at Highfield Road. When the match kicked off, Leicester continued the form they'd shown on Saturday, and a Chelsea handball gave Arthur Chandler a chance to put City ahead from the spot. Howard Baker was facing him. He was famous not just for his goalkeeping, but also for representing Great Britain in the high jump at the Olympics, and he made a 'spectacular leap across his goal' to reach the kick. Still we awaited our first goal of the season. Then just before half time, Hugh Adcock finally made the breakthrough: Twenty minutes into the second half, Channy made it two: George Carr added two late goals and it finished 4-0. 'But for the brilliance of Baker in goal' said the Mail, 'Chelsea would have been made a laughing stock'. The ground was 'crowded as for a Cup tie', said the Mail, estimating the gate at 25,000. That same afternoon, just a few hundred spectators were at the Aylestone Road cricket ground where Leicestershire were playing their last fixture of the season in the County Championship against Essex. Many would have left the ground early and made the short walk down Brazil Street in time for the kick-off at the football. One local journalist did the same: This was how the two venues looked at that time, with the 'wings' still to be added to the Filbert Street Main Stand: Here's a close up that shows the wonderful old Spion Kop with those 'herrings in a barrel' (the photo is from January 1923, with the Leicester v Fulham FA Cup tie in progress - another game when West London opponents were handed a 4-0 hammering): The Kop would be packed again five days later. Middlesbrough, the other relegated team last season, would be the next visitors to Filbert Street.

Presumably that's not George Lineker pushing the fruit and veg cart!

Match 1 Saturday August 30th 1924 Manchester United v Leicester City April 24th 2016. Leicester City v Swansea City. What a day. There's never been an atmosphere quite like those closing minutes, with the chants spreading round all sides of the ground, '4-0 to the one man team!’ merging into ‘Barcelona – we're coming for you!' That carnival mood had been set two hours earlier, with this wonderful @Union FS tifo: I was so impressed that I borrowed their idea: Here though, it’s not the shiny Premier League pot on the right I’m concerned with. It’s the rusty-looking shield on the left. This season marks the centenary of that first silverware, and I want to try something I’m not sure has been attempted before. I’d like to recreate that season ‘in real time’, following it game by game, exactly 100 years ago to the day. Of Fossils and Foxes has an excellent summary of that season, but the full story needs to be told. If 2015/16 was our greatest ever season, 1924/25 is the second best. It marked the birth of Leicester’s first great side, the lifting of our first trophy - and nearly so much more than that. If, as the tifo said, History really does Make Us Who We Are, these events are right at the heart of the club's identity. I'm going to approach each part of the story from the perspective of a different character - and we start with a 13-year-old boy who was about to enjoy an extraordinary eight months. Saturday August 30th 1924 Harold Lineker was awoken by the familiar sound of his father’s early morning departure. George was up and out of the house before sunrise, heading for Leicester Wholesale Market in Yeoman Street, a short distance from their house in Northampton Street. There he would begin the daily routine of carting fruit to to the stall in the Market Place, 300 yards away. Harold was approaching his fourteenth birthday. He’d sometimes help his father on the stall, but there were other demands on his time. He was crazy about football, and he played outside right for his school team, St. George’s. It was a very small world, as you can see on the map below. The circles mark the stall, the wholesale market at the top, the school next to the church from which it took its name, and his home just below that. A few years later, Charles Street, which you can see was then just a minor road, would blast through those buildings on Humberstone Gate and the character of the area would be changed forever. There was no football pitch in the cramped centre of the city, of course, and when the school had a game, the boys had to drag the goalposts all the way to Welford Road Recreation Ground. Good practice, no doubt, for future years when Harold would be the one hauling the fruit cart through the streets. The season began, as ever, with new dreams. He was hoping his performances for St.George’s would get him selected for the Leicester Boys team. If so, perhaps he could help them achieve something no Leicester team had managed before, and make it through the qualifying rounds of the English Schools Trophy. Harold loved to watch football too, and when school fixtures allowed, he'd be at Filbert Street to follow his heroes in the blue of Leicester City. Perhaps this season they would be promoted for the first time in his life. Maybe they could even lift a trophy - something they hadn't managed in the 40 years since the club was formed. It was time they had a run in the FA Cup too. They’d never got beyond the quarter-final stage. In the season just ended, Arthur Chandler had scored 24 times in his first season with the club, though we managed only a mid-table finish. Manager Peter Hodge was about start his sixth season in charge. These were the twenty two teams in Division Two: Manchester United and The Wednesday, the only teams in the division who had won the League title, were favourites for promotion. Derby County and Chelsea were also strongly fancied. Not many mentioned Leicester. Our season started with the toughest possible fixture - a trip to Old Trafford. With regular full back Adam Black injured, this is how we lined up, in an orthodox 2-3-5 formation: In the United team were Arthur Lochhead, future Leicester player and manager, and Sep Smith's older brother, Tom 'Tosser' Smith (his wikipedia page says he was called 'Tosher', but no - 'Tosser' is what his friends and teammates called him). When the match kicked off, it was Lochhead who had the best early chance, his shot hitting 'the underpart of the bar', as the report put it. Then United got a dodgy penalty when Joe Spence 'fell over Johnny Duncan's feet'. The Leicester Evening Mail reporter, failing to hide his disgust, described it like this: Spence fell with dramatic effect. He then limped to the side with the trainer's aid, as though he'd been seriously hurt. He remained inactive until the goal had been scored, then recovered. In the second half, we laid siege to United's goal: In pace, craft and combinaiton, Leicester outplayed the home eleven. At least four times, shots flashed across the United goal with the defence utterly beaten (that's from the Athletic News, the paper based in Manchester). We couldn't score though, and 1-0 was the final result. Everyone agreed that United had been lucky to win. It's unclear how many Leicester fans were at Old Trafford - probably just a couple of hundred. At Filbert Street that afternoon it was a different matter. Almost 10,000 turned up to see the Reserves beat Peterborough and Fletton United. The local press thought it might be the highest ever gate for a second team match. That gate needs a bit of explaining. For a brief period in the mid-20s our Reserves played in the Southern League Eastern Division, and our visitors that day were the reigning champions. We'd finished just a point behind in second place, so this game was the clash of the big two. At Reserve games there was the added bonus of finding out how the first team got on as soon as the game finished. At 4.40, the bad news from Manchester was announced, and fans would have streamed out of the ground thinking 'It's the hope that kills you'. Many would have headed for the centre of town, passing through the market, George Lineker picking up the news by word of mouth and hoping it wouldn't ruin Harold's weekend too much. By 5.30, people would be snapping up copies of the Sports Paper, eagerly scanning the results: Stand-out scorelines were the impressive away wins for newly promoted Portsmouth and Wolves, and Derby's ominous looking trouncing of Hull CIty. Leicester had started with a defeat, but everyone who saw the game at Old Trafford could see the potential in the side. The directors, who had final say in team selection, had no doubts. They immediately decided to stick with the same XI for the next game. That was just two days away, on Monday evening, with Chelsea the first visitors to Filbert Street.

And to round off this thread, a tribute to the man whose first ever game was Aston Villa 8 Leicester City 3 in 1962. The Simon Inglis Top Ten: 10) Played in Birmingham 9) Sightlines 8) Played in Manchester 7) Football in the Dock 6) The Football Grounds of Britain 5) The Football Grounds of Europe 4) Engineering Archie - Arhcibald Leitch, Football Ground Designer 3) Villa Park 100 Years 2) League Footbal and the Men Who Made It 1) Played in London - Charting The Heritage of a City At Play Played in London is a truly astonishing piece of work. If you're heading for Craven Cottage today, here's just one page from the book:

Let's leave Leicester aside. How about the best general football books? I'm so glad I haven't added up my total expenditure over the years as it might be more than Chelsea's transfer budget. Here's the best ten: 10) Journey To Wembley Brian James 9) The Far Corner Harry Pearson 8) The Ball Is Round David Goldblatt 7) Only A Game? Eamon Dunphy 6) Villa Park 100 Years Simon Inglis 5) All Played Out Pete Davies 4) Hillsborough: The Truth Phil Scraton 3) League Football And The Men Who Made It Simon Inglis 2) Battle For The Valley Rick Everitt 1) My Father And Other Working Class Football Heroes Gary Imlach Two in there by Simon Inglis, and it could easily have been more. It might have been like those 'Best Ever Albums' lists where the top ten is mostly Beatles records. Actually, if there was a fire, I think I'd grab the Inglis books before the Beatles CDs. One that most people won't be familiar with is Rick Everitt's Battle For The Valley - a truly inspiring story of what fans can do if they get together and organise creatively. In the end, if you combine the Leicester and general lists, Of Fossils and Foxes would still have to be the overall winner.

Brilliant time capsule video here that I'd never seen before - key reports and interviews around the time of the 'Dont Go Martin' saga in 1998:

You could make a list of 'Leicester City books that should have been written' - by all those legends of the club who never thought it worth writing their story down on paper: Jimmy Blooomfield Matt Gillies Johnny Duncan Peter Hodge Arthur Chandler Sep Smith Len Shipman Graham Cross So sad that none of them ever published an autobiography. Crossy's still with us. Here's hoping...

That seems to be a freeze frame from this video. You'll see it at about 7.50.

So many great books have been published about Leicester over the years. But which are the must-haves - the ones that should be on every City fan's shelf? Here's a personal top twelve. Before we start, a word about what's in and what's out. The book has to be predominantly about Leicester City to qualify, which means some fantastic reads are omitted. So no place for these: Steve Claridge - Tales From The Boot Camps Mark Bright - From Foster Child to Footballer Martin O'Neill - On Days Like These Gordon Milne - Shankly, My Dad and Me Right, let's go: 12) Jamie Vardy - From Nowhere. My Story. Jamie Vardy with Stuart James, 2017 A fine account of his career up to the title win in 2016. What we really need now is an update, with the full story of all the dramas of recent seasons. 11) Here, There and Everywhere - The Steve Walsh Story. David Joss Buckley, 1996 Steve Walsh wasn't one of my favourite players, but I loved every page of this. The quality of the writing helps it to rise above the standard footy fare. 10) Lineker - Golden Boot. Rob Hughes, 1987 The definitive Lineker biography has yet to be written. This is a slim volume, written fairly early in his career, which means a good proportion of it is devoted to his time with us. It’s Rob Hughes’ way with words and his coverage of Lineker’s family history that make this a must-have for City fans. 9) Minding My Own Football Business. Barrie Pierpoint with Matthew Mann, 2020. I was in the anti-Pierpoint camp during the battle of 1999, but I have to admit, this is a really impressive piece of work. Telling the story of his nine years at Filbert Street, it is pretty one sided, but you get a great feel for what the club was like in the nineties. I really wanted Martin O’Neill to tell his side of the story in his book, but he barely gave it a mention, so Barrie’s version lies unchallenged at the moment. The best Leicester book published in the last five years (just beating the Rowley Brothers story). 8) Fearless - The Amazing Underdog Story of Leicester City. Jonathan Northcroft, 2016 Of all the books published in the wake of our title win, just two really stood out. One was David Bevan’s ‘Unbelievables’, written from the perspective of a City fan. But I can’t be handing out these gongs to friends, so let’s give it to the other candidate, Jonathan Northcroft, who took time to tell the story in real depth. 7) O'Neill - Crest of a Wave. Geoff Peters, 1998. As mentioned, Martin’s recent autobiography is disqualified from this list, but instead, here’s a beautifully written tale of his first two years at Filbert Street. It followed a similar book, ‘Starting A Wave’, by Brian Little, which might have been included here had the prose style not been so faithful to Little’s less-than-inspiring manager-speak. 6) Muzzy - My Story. Muzzy Izzet with Lee Marlow, 2015 Neil Lennon, Muzzy Izzet and Robbie Savage were the heart of Martin O’Neill’s team, and their autobiographies should be side by side on every City fan’s bookshelf. Muzzy’s story just shades it here. 5) Gibbo - The Davie Gibson Story. Dave Gibson with Chris Westcott, 2013 Most City fans who recall the glory days of the early 60s pick Gibbo as their favourite player, and this book tells his story with real style. Of others from the ‘Ice-Kings’ era, Frank McLintock’s ‘True Grit’, despite being aimed mainly at Arsenal fans, gives you great insights into those times, and Gordon Banks’ autobiography 'Banksy' is also worth getting hold of. 4) Can't Buy That Feeling. Simon Kimber and Gary Silke, 2018 Full of little nuggets of LCFC history, this collection of interviews from the Fox Fanzine is beautifully edited and illustrated. A simple idea perfectly realized. 3) One Hump or Two? Frank Worthington, with Steve Wells and Nick Cooper, 1994 Of 1970s City players, you’d think it would’ve been perfectionist Peter Shilton who published the classic, and free-wheelin’ Frank who put out the rush-job. In fact, it’s the reverse. Shilts’ autobiography feels half-finished, while this rollicking read satisfies on every level - backing up the wild stories with a wealth of footballing detail. Not far behind this is another candidate from the Bloomfield years – Keith Weller’s highly recommended ‘White Tights and Bright Lights’. 2) Bring Back The Birch. Alan Birchenall with Paul Mace, 2000 Birch’s achievements on and off the pitch deserved celebrating in a high-quality publication – and this did the job splendidly. He says at the start that he wants it to be about all the special people he’s met rather than a game-by-game review, but the scrapbooks he gave Paul Mace to work with were so well stocked that each stage of his career is covered more than satisfactorily. 1) Of Fossils and Foxes. The Official, Definitive History of Leicester CIty FC. Dave Smith and Paul Taylor. 4th edition, 2016 This is so far ahead of the field it’s untrue. It’s not only the best Leicester book, it’s the best history of any club I’ve ever read (and I’ve got a shelf full of them). No doubt you already own a copy, but do yourself a favour and dive into some of those player profiles you’ve never read before – each one condensing hours and hours of research into a punchy mini biography. The other parts – the season-by-season narrative, the line-ups, the stats section – are similarly authoritative. Don’t try looking for any factual errors – you’ll have more luck finding a needle in a haystack. So that's the top twelve. It should be pretty easy to get hold of all the books mentioned here. abebooks.co.uk is good for second hand stuff. Well, I said it was a personal selection, and I'd love to hear some other views.

@davieG This piece you inspired has been updated, over on The Fosse Way: A glimpse into Leicester’s past: One day on Fosse Road — The Fosse Way

It's surprising how few photos there are of the Turk's Head - one of the key locations in Leicester City history. But there it is in that photo. I've circled the Bass sign hanging outside. The Turk's Head was the pub Johnny Duncan took over in 1930 - without permission from the club. As a result, his playing career came to an end. He was still running it when he returned to Filbert Street as manager in 1946. The pub became a centre for sports lovers, with regular visits from famous figures. Duncan passed away in the year this photo was taken - and the pub closed three years later.

Moments that are often left out of the Euro 96 story because they don't quite fit the narrative: Spain's disallowed goal was at least a yard onside: Gazza was very lucky here: If you go back to 2.30 in the video you can see the 'offside' moment.

The poor balloon owner then wrote a letter to the Leicester Chronicle explaining what happened. I'd say he got off pretty lightly considering where he was from:

Here's another fascinating moment from Keith's career as a ref. This one has a lot in common with the notorious Derby v Fulham game on the last day of the 1982/83 season. The ref blew the final whistle 90 seconds early that day because of the threat of a pitch invasion, and Fulham's 1-0 defeat meant Leicester were promoted to Division One. Fulham felt cheated, and they appealed to both the Football League and the FA to have their game replayed. Neither appeal succeeded, and we were back in the top flight (you'll recall that Keith took charge of one game at Filbert Street that season - the 2-1 win v Oldham). Eight years later, on May 4th 1991, Stoke had a game against Grimsby in Division Three. Stoke were stuck in mid-table, but it was a key game for Grimsby, who were chasing automatic promotion. And there was another reason why it was a high profile fixture. Earlier that season, the two sides had met at Blundell Park, an occasion remembered not for the game itself but for what happened afterwards. Back then of course, a good proportion of the people who went to football games were there as much for a punch-up - or the promise of one - as for a good game of footy. Most of the time, opposing fans were kept apart, both inside and outside grounds, but just occasionally, the thrill-seekers got exactly what they were after. After the final whistle blew at Grimsby, home fans poured on to the pitch and headed for the away end. Stoke fans were fenced in behind the goal, but tried to get through the gate in the fence and confront the home fans on the pitch. Since the Hillsborough disaster two years earlier, police were not allowed to lock those gates, and so they had to use their bodies to physically stop it being opened, resulting in a dislocated shoulder for one officer. Eventually the Stoke fans broke through, both there and in the corner between the away end and the Main Stand. This was the result: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DewZhMRrB8o&t=370s On the Stoke 'Oatcake' forum you'll find stories of much worse scenes outside the ground that day. The return fixture in May was Stoke's last home game of the season. A year earlier, fans had marked the occasion with a celebratory pitch invasion, and this season that would be a lot easier because the perimeter fencing on three sides of the ground had been removed in the wake of the Taylor Report. And now Grimsby were added to the equation. It was the perfect storm. Who did the Football League choose to control this volatile encounter? Keith Cooper. With twenty minutes to go and the match goalless, Stoke fans began gathering on the touchlines. With fifteen minutes to play they surged on to the pitch. The players raced for the dressing rooms but according to the Grimsby Evening telegraph, two Grimsby players 'sought refuge with the Town fans until it was safe to leave the pitch'. What an extraordinary image - their route to the tunnel blocked by marading Stoke fans, so they jumped in the away end? After a ten minute delay, Keith restarted the game, and the clock had ticked on to 88 minutes when he decided to blow the final whistle early. The fans then swarmed back on, with mounted police preventing them getting at the away end. The match 'finished' 0-0, which left the top of the table like this: Restructuring of the Football League meant that three went up automatically that season, plus one from the play-offs. Had the full ninety minutes been played at Stoke, Grimsby might have got a winner to put them in a much stronger position, or they might have conceded a late goal, leaving them 4th instead of 2nd. In the end, there were no appeals, either by Grimsby or their rivals. A week later, Grimsby's 2-1 home win over Exeter saw them clinch promotion, just as Tony James was scoring that famous goal at Filbert Street to prevent Leicester dropping down to replace them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DewZhMRrB8o&t=370s

Don't know if anyone has posted a link to this great Athletic piece from Steve's Swansea years, but anyway, here it is: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/2034653/2020/09/07/i-told-my-son-the-fans-may-say-bad-things-about-me-they-do-already-he-said/

A bit more context about that Leicester v Coventry game. It was three months after the 1994 World Cup, where refs had been given a new directive to clamp down on tackles from behind. Those guidelines were carried over into the new season. That partly explains the Gillespie red card, at least.

And while we're at it, here's the most joyous track he (or anyone) ever recorded. Johnny Dodds' clarinet solo followed by his famous stop-time solo on trumpet.

More on 'When You're Smiling'. In the months before Louis Armstrong arrived in Leicester in 1934, a recent release of his was being reviewed in the press - a medley of recent hits: That could well have been one of the records featured in the 'recital' in Kingstone's Clock Tower store mentioned above. And it gives you a good idea of what his set-list would have been at the Opera House in Silver Street. It's an incredibly rare record now, but fortunately it's on youtube - uploaded seven years ago, only 15 views. It's magnificent: The version of When You're Smiling is great, though he does it fairly straight. The other two tracks give you an idea of why he was such an original. Ripping up the old melodies and replacing them with his own in-yer-face scat-rap. It's as shocking as Elvis in 56 or Johnny Rotten in 76. He just blew everyone else away. This is the lyric to St. James' Infirmary: I went down to St. James Infirmary, Saw my baby there, Stretched out on a long white table, So cold, so sweet, so fair. Let her go, let her go, God bless her, Wherever she may be, She can look this wide world over, But she'll never find a sweet man like me.

The forgotten parade? Do you remember Monday evening after the 2000 League Cup Final? I was there near the Clock Tower as the bus came past. I've been trying to find photos of it online and drew a total blank. How weird. Maybe I was looking in the wrong place. Then I remembered - there might be something in the programme from the game the following Saturday. And there was indeed a nice two page spread. Here's a few shots cribbed from there on my phone: On the next one you can see that old Dean and Dawson building mentioned above (on the right): And here too:

Like many others on here, the more I look into Steve Cooper's history, the more optimistic I feel about next season. Forgive me though if I don't write the usual retrospective. With Forest featuring so prominently I'll give it a miss this time. Instead, here's something a little different - the story of Keith Cooper - Steve's father, who was a top level referee. It's a tale @ADAMSKI97 and @Golden Fox have already alluded to, and as we'll see, it climaxes in a remarkable evening at Filbert Street in 1994. 1) Playing Career Cut Short Keith Cooper was brought up in the Welsh town of Rhydyfelin, on the eastern bank of the River Taff. His dream was to be a professional footballer, and in 1965, he was well on his way: He was at Ninian Park at the same time as future Leicester right back Peter Rodrigues, and he played in the same Cardiff youth team as John Toshack. But an ankle injury forced him to give up the game in the late sixties. He took up the whistle, and quickly made a name for himself in the local leagues around Pontypridd. No doubt his experience at Cardiff helped him build a rapport with players, and he made it on to the Football League list in 1975, when he was just 27: He was quickly promoted from running the line to being the man in the middle: Neil would soon have a brother. On Monday December 10th 1979, Steven Daniel Cooper was born. Welcome to Leicester Keith made his first visit to Filbert Street just after Steve's third birthday, on December 18th 1982. We were playing Oldham Athletic in a Division Two fixture, five months into Gordon Milne's reign at the club. On that day, Keith had a big decision to make before the game even started. The pitch was frozen, and both Milne and Oldham boss Joe Royle thought the game ought to be postponed. But Keith gave the go-ahead, and the 'lottery', as Bill Anderson in the Mercury called it, kicked off as scheduled. Ten minutes into the game, Royle shouted over to Milne in the home dugout - 'Let's call this off. We'll flip a coin for the points!' Perhaps he'd already noticed that Leicester were adapting better to the conditions. We won the game 2-1, though according to Anderson, the winning penalty from Kevin Macdonald was a bit lucky, 'referee Cooper failing to take into account the surface' when he judged that Paul Ramsey had been fouled. Milne was delighted with the points, but said: I had to tell them to forget all they had been taught and just keep knocking the ball up field all the time. The match was as good a case for summer soccer as I have seen. We had been down in 15th place at the start of the month, but the Oldham game was the third win in a row, taking us up to 6th. That good form continued, and Milne's side clinched promotion on the last day of the season. Up The Football League We Go Keith Cooper's career was heading in the same direction. In March that season, he achieved his ambition of taking charge of a game in the top flight. He was chosen for the game between Coventry and Spurs, and the Pontypridd Observer marked the occasion by sending a reporter to accompany him on the trip, setting off for Coventry before sunrise. His wife Gill did a fine job getting the kids up and dressed for the photo. You can see young Steve holding her hand. When the game started, 'the man from Ponty had an eventful opening ten minutes. Coventry's Gary Gillespie was the first to go into the book, and team-mate Mark Hateley was given the same punishment for dissent. Then, midway through the half, Coventry's Jim Melrose was sent sprawling in the penalty area. Keith instantly pointed to the spot, as Spurs keeper Ray Clemence gave him a rather pained look. Steve Hunt confidently dispatched the spot kick'. Melrose had recently been half of the swap deal that took Tommy English from Coventry to Filbert Street. Here he is in action that day: The game finished 1-1 - the first of hundreds of top flight matches Keith would take charge of in the next 15 years. He was quite a star in his home town. Since the demise of Pontypridd AFC (they played in the Southern League and came close to being elected to the Football League in the 1920s), fans of the round ball game hadn't had much to shout about. Cooper's presence at the highest level of the Engish game was some kind of substitute. The Observer would regularly report on his upcoming schedule, and often do in-depth features on his life as a referee. In one such feature, Keith talked about taking charge of the first game at Anfield after the Hillsborough tragedy: Under The Spotlight In another interview in January 1990, he said that an ambition of his was to be chosen for a game on live TV. That chance soon arrived. He took charge of Everton 4 Nottingham Forest 0, featured on ITV's 'The Match' in April 1990, with Tony Cottee scoring twice. In May 1994, he was given the honour of refereeing the League Cup Final, with Aston Villa beating Man U 3-1. Shortly after that came another big game - the second leg of the play-off semi-final between Leicester and Tranmere, which was quite an explosive night. This is a poor quality clip, but it shows David Speedie's winning goal, which came from a free kick Tranmere thought should never have been awarded. Shortly after that, it all kicked off: Keith sent off both Tranmere keeper Eric Nixon and David Speedie, who thus missed the play-off final against Derby. Just five months later, Keith was back at Filbert Street, and the drama was unrelenting. Having beaten Derby in that play-off final, we were now in the Premier League, and Sky chose our game against Coventry for their Monday Night Football slot. Here's the key moments: Gary Gillespie, you'll recall, was the first player Keith ever booked in a top flight match. After the game, the two managers both said it was time to introduce video replays. Coventry boss Phil Neal said; We should do what cricket has done - stop the game so the ref can see a vital incident again'. Brian Little agreed: 'Both players were unlucky. Videos are used to show things that refs miss, and perhaps that sort of evidence should be used to highlight incidents like this'. But it wasn't those comments that caused the fuss: Birch told us what happened next in his book: Sure enough, a few days later a letter dropped through the Filbert Street letterbox informing that the FA were considering charging me for bringing the game into disrepute. What a load of nonsense. I was hardly in a mood to back down, but against my better judgement I allowed a letter of apology to be submitted to the FA. As a result of this letter, no further action was taken against me. Now, what would Steve Cooper have made of all that? He was still at school at the time, approaching his 15th birthday. His classmates knew all about his dad's job, and, well, you know what schoolkids are like. This is what Steve said when asked whether he'd ever considered becoming a ref like his dad: The morning after that Leicester v Coventry game may have been the worst it ever got. It's good that he can laugh about it. But now that he's at Leicester, what would happen if his dad and Birch met up in the hospitality area before a game? Would it be awkward? Birch isn't the sort to bear grudges. And nor, in fact, is Keith. How do we know? Well, look what happened after the very last game he took charge of - Blackburn 1 Arsenal 1 in April 1996: Heart warming stuff, huh? Welcome to Leicester, Steve. And best wishes to your dad.