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Match 7
Saturday September 20th 1924
Coventry City v Leicester City
In the mid 1920s, the landscape of the south side of Leicester was changing rapidly.
The Filbert Street Main Stand had been completed three years earlier, so fans on the way to the game now had that delicious sense of anticipation that comes with seeing the ground from a distance.
From the upper tiers of that stand you could see the War Memorial slowly rising above Viccy Park, and if you looked to the right, the electricity generating station was gradually expanding and blocking the view of the gas works.
These were all major projects, but they were dwarfed in scale by the building program about to get under way a little further south.
On Saturday September 20th, Councillor Hallam of the Leicester Housing Committee performed a historic ceremony in front of scores of VIP guests - cutting the first sod at the council's first ever large scale housing project - the Saffron Lane Estate.
The plan was to build 1,500 houses in just two years, meeting the enormous demand from city residents living in slum conditions in the centre of the city.
The Mercury wasn't holding anything back that day. This was the front page:
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And this was how it viewed the occasion:
Old John, that quaint and historic edifice that has looked down long enough to see every towering factory chimney rise as a sign of the commercial development of a great city, must have stirred at the sight of a great gathering of people signifying a new town, the physical and moral salvation of 10,000 people, and a vastly important epoch in the history of Leicester.
The council had received a number of tenders for the plan, and settled on that of Messrs Henry Boot and Sons, though it wasn't the lowest submitted. Managing Director Charles Boot explained that:
We have overcome one of the great disadvantages of concrete houses by adopting the 'double wall' principle. There is a two-inch space between two walls throughout the house without a break thus avoiding the possibility of damp through the walls.
This shows how the area looked before building started, and when the project was completed, with the Aylestone Recreation Ground at the top of each map:
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The notion of the Saff as a 'garden city' will no doubt trigger a few guffaws, but compared to what people were used to, those houses would have seemed like paradise - indoor toilets, room enough for all the family, a garden to play in, and green spaces nearby.
As Councillor Hallam performed that ceremony, however, many of the future residents of the estate had their minds elsewhere. Twenty miles away at Highfield Road, Coventry, Leicester City were hoping to build on the impressive win at Stockport five days earlier. The Coventry paper reported that '
The influx of Leicester visitors was greater than anticipated'' and before kick off '
they made themselves known with a variety of war cries'.
The Bantams, as Coventry were then known, were 17th in the table, six places below Leicester, but in their line up was the legendary inside forward Danny Shea - 'the intellectual footballer' as he had been dubbed. He was a former England international, now 36. You can seen him below in a bizarre team group picture in which the Coventry players are decked out in suits. Shea is the little fellow right in the middle who you would swear must be the groundsman or one of the directors. But no - that's the man who played inside right against Leicester that afternoon - and he would be the game's central actor:
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Just five minutes in, Shea's 'brainy pass' set up Fred Herbert to put Coventry one up. But soon after, this happened:
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Shea then got the second himself, 'diverting in a cross', and after half time his header put Coventry 3-1 up. Duncan and Carr then combined to set Channy up for 'a fine shot' that reduced the deficit, and our centre forward had a great chance to complete his hat-trick when through on goal, but he shot straight at the keeper.
Coventry then got a fourth through Fred Morris, their other ex-England international, and 4-2 is how it finished.
Once again, we had dominated, but had failed to put our chances away. This is how the Leicester Mail summed it up:
In the field, Leicester were completely masters of the situation, but when in front of goal they were guilty of the same fault that spoiled their chances last season. They dallied! They played for position and forgot the points where football is different from billiards.
The Mercury reflected that '
Shea is older and slower, of course, but he is still the past master in the arts of the timely pass and the wise manoeuvre'.
Strangely enough, the most pertinent commentary on the club throughout that season came from a Nottingham based reporter called 'Kernel' who had a weekly column in that city's excellent 'Football Post' newspaper, which appeared every Saturday afternoon. This was how he saw the situaiton:
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Prophetic words. But at the time, you could understand those 'impulsive' judgments. We were lying in 17th place in Division Two, and every one of our rivals was looking down on us. Both Nottingham clubs were in Division One, Derby had gone back to the top of Division Two that day with a 4-0 win at Wolves, and even Coventry had now moved above us.
But amid the gloom, there was already one ray of light. Two days earlier, on the Thursday afternoon, Leicester Boys had faced Nottingham Boys in a game staged at Filbert Street. At outside right that afternoon was Harold Lineker, 55 years before his grandson made his professional debut on the same ground. Harold's fine performances for St.George's School had earned him a call-up, and he contributed to an impressive 2-0 victory over Nottingham, with both the goals coming in the last five minutes.
That match was a prestigious friendly, but the real battle was about to start. The draw had just been made for the first round of the English Schools Trophy, that competition in which Leicester had never got beyond the preliminary stage. Their first opponents this time would be the boys from the county - 'Mid-Leicestershire'.