My favourite Leicester City FA Cup game - Part 2: Shrews, Cobblers and Addicks
Ahead of Leicester City’s trip to Stamford Bridge this weekend in the FA Cup quarter-finals, we asked our writers for their favourite Foxes games in the competition.
To add a bit of variety, nobody was allowed to choose the 2021 final…
Here’s part 2, featuring three games across three different decades against teams all currently hovering in mid-table in League One.
A boy can dream…
Andrew Smith
When people talk about a “good old-fashioned cup tie”, they’re talking about matches like this - Shrewsbury Town in 1982. A packed Filbert Street, cabbage patch goalmouths, three replacement goalkeepers, a hint of local derby rivalry.
Two teams who could hardly be more different. Where Lineker and Lynex glide effortlessly along the patchwork pitch, Shrewsbury, seemingly recruited from the Dog and Duck an hour before kick off – bristle with a violent Sunday League menace.
I’m in the Kop – not my normal spot – but the perfect place to see all the significant action close up. All is going to plan when Larry May heads in a corner at the Filbert Street end to make it 1-0. But then Shrewsbury equalise.
Next our heroic keeper Mark Wallington gets injured in a brave attempt to stop another Shrews attack. Thigh heavily strapped, he continues, but is little more than a hobbling ghost on the goal-line, as yet another up-and-under attack brings a second goal for our opponents.
Wallington has to come off and is replaced in goal by our talismanic striker Alan Young. He is replaced by our ONE (!) sub, Jim Melrose. Oh, and just before half time Shrewsbury gift us an own goal.
The drama continues after the break when Young is concussed after yet another goalmouth collision. The relatively diminutive Steve Lynex takes over in goal and we’re now down to ten men. Young makes a seemingly miraculous recovery (wouldn’t be allowed nowadays) and goes back in goal, freeing Lynex up to play a part in setting up all three second half goals, all scored right in front of the Kop!
Filbert Street is ecstatic. This is no averted “giant killing.” Both teams were in Division 2 (the Championship in new money) at the time. And an FA Cup semi-final at Villa Park against Spurs is just around the corner. (Ian Wilson scored one of the silliest own goals you’ll ever see, and that was pretty much that).
Watching the extended highlights back, it’s impossible not to compare and contrast. Do we play out from the back? We do not. Do we control possession? I don’t know, there’s no data. But we won. And in the end that’s the only stat that matters.
Giving the Cobblers a shoeing
David Bevan
Leicester v Northampton is, I’m led to believe by those who favour the egg-shaped ball, a hotly-contested East Midlands derby in the sport of rugby union.
It has never been a derby in football, but when you’ve lived in one place your whole life and the team from that place plays against the football team you’ve supported your whole life, it quickly becomes a big deal to you.
This was something of a golden era for Northampton Town, who had been promoted through the play-offs and ended the season at Wembley again, this time losing to Grimsby. I distinctly remember really wanting them to win on both occasions, with good friends being huge Cobblers fans.
Those same friends meant that when Leicester were drawn against Northampton in the third round of the FA Cup in 1998, it was imperative to 13-year-old me that we absolutely annihilated them.
Thankfully, we fielded a strong team - Heskey, Izzet, Lennon, Elliott and co - and the result was never in doubt.
Ian Marshall rolled in the opener after Heskey trod on the ball and Garry Parker drove a spot kick into the net following a foul on Robbie Savage, who got the third himself in the second half. Tony Cottee rounded off the scoring from Heskey’s low cross.
Northampton, fielding ex-Leicester defender Colin Hill, understandably struggled to impose themselves at all. It was a game notable for the Cobblers failing to win a single free kick across the 90 minutes.
Looking back at the goals now, what comes across strongly is how unstoppable a young Heskey was running the channels. That was true in the case of Premier League defenders, let alone lower league ones.
Even more striking than that is the crowd - Filbert Street was packed, and the goals were celebrated properly, not least by one specific teenager in the Double Decker.
Into the Valley…
Harry Gregory
I am going back to when we were slumming it. When the inversion of the football pyramid meant that, in 2006, Leicester City were lower league opposition to Charlton Athletic - the Leicester, Brentford or Brighton of their day. We had hit a new purgatory of lower mid-table in the Championship. The FA Cup provided a tonic to forget about our woes.
Craig Levein had hardly set the pulses racing and now he had his collection of SPL all-stars ready to field. Miraculously as well, they did actually look alright on this February afternoon. Me, my brother and dad had the fine pleasure of using Fox Travel to arrive south of the River Thames. I remember the sight of Bernie caused utter confusion amongst the locals as he exited one of the convoy and proceeded to play ‘Chicken’ on the adjacent road.
Six thousand packed an extended away end at the highly underrated venue of The Valley. I have never returned since. Because why would I want to tarnish the memory of Stephen Hughes and Gareth Williams giving Danny Murphy a merry dance? Mark De Vries bullied the Charlton defence with such a playground manner, he launched another false dawn.
City looking outstanding in their very peculiar ‘Fosse Gold’ kit and gave that kit its iconic afternoon. Nikos Dabizas nodded in off a free-kick to make the most of the Foxes’ good first half performance. Hopes of an upset were tempered when the home side equalised through Shaun Bartlett.
Thankfully, City didn’t rue clearances off the line for chances which fell to Dabizas and De Vries. In the final minute, Dion Dublin did about the only decent thing he ever did in a Leicester shirt and steered a header past the Charlton keeper. Cue bedlam behind the goal to the point I remember losing my voice and a day which entered our family’s folklore of following Leicester.
