My first Leicester City years: A late run for League One glory
I was born in 1993, writes Simon Birch, so my early Leicester memories are around that Martin O’Neill team. An unusual period of success that I wasn’t quite old enough to appreciate.
I was engaged in football though, in the way that kids are. I’d go to games with my dad, I’ve got all those strong sensory memories I’m sure a lot of us share. The smell of Bovril, not being able to see anything and the feeling of the bitter sting of a Tuesday night away at Wolves spreading from my nose into the rest of my slowly numbing face.
I had the white Leicester shirt with Heskey on the back and pretended to be him when scoring goals in the back garden. I played in my local team, a perennial Most Improved (worst) Player who had a tendency to leave one in, even at my young age.
Despite this, when the thing happened, my football conversations with strangers at house parties all included the question: ‘How long have you been a Leicester fan?’
I had undeniable proof, ready to go at all times. A picture of me sitting on my dad’s knee as a toddler holding the Coca-Cola Cup, potentially legally binding Leicester legitimacy, the perfect comeback to a cynical attempt to catch me out as a plastic fan. It felt absurd to need this kind of licence to celebrate success, but I’m sure that’s an experience we all share.
But it wasn’t a non-stop streak of interest in football itself. Around my early teens, I lost interest in it and put all the focus I could muster into music. This was, of course, a worthwhile use of my endless time but one day it struck me like lightning: I still loved football. Just like that, overnight I threw myself entirely into football.
At that age, around 15 to 18, everything you feel is the most important and intense thing. After making that decision to like football again I threw myself into it. Every day after school was spent watching football, playing FIFA, trawling the FoxesTalk forum and wondering when Astrit Ajdarevic was going to hit his stride.
Every Leicester game, I sat in my room and listened intently to BBC Radio Leicester, trying my best to imagine the movements on the pitch, Steve Howard bringing down a Bruno Berner long ball for Matty Fryatt to score. Some variation of this happened over and over again, with Fryatt scoring 20 before Christmas, becoming a Leicester legend in the process.
Fryatt’s brilliance was undeniable, but I only had eyes for Jack Hobbs, definitely a product of my previously mentioned love of leaving one in. A classic big lad at the back, he played 44 times and scored 5 goals that season. He headed everything out of our box and was a danger at corners - for younger readers (or newer fans), imagine Harry Maguire without the marauding forward runs.
But this obsession was all happening in isolation, just like scoring those Heskey goals in the garden and what most people are looking for in life, especially in these formative years, is community.
At school, everyone who’d supported Manchester United the previous season suddenly started loudly declaring themselves Peterborough fans and I had a pre-emptive taste of being treated as a glory supporter. I needed to be there for real and experience the noise I’d only heard broadcast into my room behind the voice of Ian Stringer describing a late Andy King run into the box. I was almost at teenage yearning levels, a very dangerous thing, until I realised I had an in.
The only other boy my age where I grew up was a season ticket holder. I’d spoken with him in the village shop when I was picking up the Leicester programme the owner would bring back from every game for me. We went down to the park, played headers and volleys 1-on-1, mostly headers from me (again, leaving one in) and he invited me to come to a Leicester match with him.
It was late in the season by now, already April. I hadn’t been to a football match for around 4 years and certainly not without an adult. The game was Leeds at home, the penultimate home game of an already historic season. It felt like being a Leicester fan couldn’t get much better than this.
That feeling of freedom I felt when me and my mate sat waiting at the station to get the train into Leicester has always stuck with me. It was that first big hit of pre-match excitement I felt and it was so pure.
My football fandom was still fresh enough not to be crushed by the weight of needing to wear Stone Island, finding a pub that would serve a clearly 15-year-old boy and pretending that I’d be ready to fight someone for the crime of supporting West Brom.
It was all possibility and hope and I could not wait. This was proper football and this was the new me. I am a football fan now, fully formed and in the middle of it all.
The attendance was just 25,000, a total that seems unthinkably low now, but being there with just a friend it felt like an enormous mass of people. I don’t quite have those base-level, instinctual sensory memories that I have from football as a kid. My memories are more concrete. We sat in the family stand, to the right of the goal, around halfway up where my mate and his mum had their season tickets.
We watched a Nigel Pearson masterclass of no-nonsense football but heading towards full time we were yet to see a goal. Then with the last kick of the game, Max Gradel swung in a corner and Steve Howard towered over the Leeds defence to head it in. Pandemonium. It was a huge step towards winning the league and still one of my strongest football memories.
We both came away on such a high and started making plans for the next home game against Scunthorpe, the last of the season. We won the league the week after away at Southend and that meant we’d see the trophy presented at the Scunthorpe game.
Once this happened, the game was a full house and the only way I would be able to go was by using my mate’s mum’s season ticket. She’d been a fan for a lot longer than me and yet she gave me what I thought could be our only chance to see Leicester lift a trophy. I was in a lot of trouble at school and had a hard time in education, and when she gave me that ticket she said it was because I was “a good lad really and you’re trying your best” and that meant the world to me.
She’s sadly no longer with us but did get to see us lift the Premier League trophy and when I saw Wes Morgan lift it, she was the first person that came into my head. She sacrificed that for me at a time when I needed something to hold onto and I’ll always carry that with me.
