When the FA Cup third round lasted 66 DAYS: 261 postponements, snow drifts... and flame-throwers

[davieG]

Paul Simpson relives the Arctic anarchy of 1962/63, when the winter weather played havoc with the football fixtures. One team, dubbed the 'Ice Kings', somehow survived...
 

https://www.fourfourtwo.com/features/when-fa-cup-third-round-lasted-66-days-261-postponements-snow-drifts-and-flame-throwers

 

Extract

 

Oil drums and burning coke

If anything, this rupture of the season helped Leicester. In the summer of 1962, groundsman Bill Taylor had relaid the Filbert Street pitch, treating the topsoil with a blend of fertiliser and weed-killer that generated enough heat from the chemical reaction to mitigate the frosts.

As Gordon Banks recalls in his memoirs: “The groundsman augmented this affect by placing oil drums filled with burning coke at various points around the pitch, which raised the air temperature enough to ward off the severest frost. A nightwatchman sat up throughout Friday night to ensure all was safe. These braziers remained on the pitch until about 11am on a Saturday morning. An hour later, when the referee arrived to inspect the pitch it was playable and the game was given the go-ahead.”

So after beating Grimsby Town 3-1 only four days later than originally scheduled, Leicester were able to play their fourth-round tie, at home against Ipswich, at the end of January. While many clubs didn’t play a match for 10 weeks, the Foxes were back in action in five. Even before the third round had finished, Leicester had beaten Ipswich 3-1 to ensure their place in the last 16.

Under manager Matt Gillies, Leicester played a short passing game in which impish inside-left Davie Gibson and indefatigable left-winger Mike Stringfellow swapped positions and hit angled posses into the box for centre-forward Ken Keyworth, who had started out as a deep-lying midfielder, to run onto. Behind them, Frank McLintock often ran into the space vacated by his back-tracking inside-right Graham Cross.

All this short passing and interchanging divided pundits, some journalists hailing it as creative, others groaning that it was defensive. When City returned to action, they changed tack a little – hitting more longer balls to the wingers – and were so effective, winning nine games in a row in all competitions, that they were dubbed the “Ice Kings”.

 

Yet things, as Banks’s memoirs make clear, were hardly back to normal. “The pitch had partly frozen over again come three o'clock, especially the end under the shadow of the towering double-decker stand.” Knowing that half the pitch was still frozen, Banks took to the field in odd boots: on his right foot he had his normal leather-studded boot; on his left a boot with moulded rubber studs better suited to hard surfaces.

He would carry the other two odd boots under his arm and switch as soon as he knew which end City were defending in the first half. He also filed down his leather-studs because the exposed nail heads gripped the frozen ground better. (Luckily for Banks, officials had not yet started checking players’ studs.) Though he says: “I was always careful not to expose them in such a way that could cause injury”, such a ruse would be illegal today.

 

With no heating in his house, Banks ate more hot dinners to keep warm, gaining a few insulating pounds in the process. McLintock followed suit but recalled: “That was a rotten winter to live through. No matter how much coal we threw on the fire or gallons of hot steaming soup we shovelled down, we went weeks without being warm.”

As extreme as Banks’s filed-down studs sound, the footage of games played in such absurd conditions makes such precautions seem utterly reasonable.

 

After all the postponements, flame-throwers and gallons of soup, the semi-final line-ups were surprisingly unsurprising. Southampton lost 1-0 to Manchester United and Leicester overcame Liverpool primarily because the Foxes' keeper showed the form that was to earn him the nickname 'Banks of England'. The Reds had 30 shots – compared to City’s three – but still lost to a Stringfellow goal.

On May 25, Gillies’ Leicester kicked off the FA Cup final as slight favourites. A league and cup double had seemed on the cards until they lost four league games in a row before the final. Matt Busby’s Manchester United had laboured in the league since the thaw and finished just three points – and two places – clear of relegation. Yet the Ice Kings were not to reign on Wembley’s immaculate grass. United won 3-1 with goals from Denis Law and David Herd (2). Keyworth scored a late consolation for City.

 

For Gillies’ Leicester, this was as good as it got. Their chance of greatness had slipped away with the thawing ice. Gone, too, was British football’s curiosity about Gillies’ unorthodox tactics – though Shankly would tell Gordon Milne and Tommy Smith to swap positions in the manner of Cross and McLintock.

Read more at https://www.fourfourtwo.com/features/when-fa-cup-third-round-lasted-66-days-261-postponements-snow-drifts-and-flame-throwers#1qD5eRo4ALM6KHlr.99

 

 

[siraaj_lcfc]

Lol U what?

[Head Honcho]

We had two 4th round ties against Oldham postponed in 1979.

 

I seem to remember being en-route when they were postponed.

 

The tie went ahead thirty days after it was scheduled to be played on Feb 26th. We lost 3-1...awful season too!

[Fox92]

That article comes out every year.

[st albans fox]

We were the ‘spurs’  of the early sixties ....... bottle it big time .....