Impending doom: When Leicester City won at Aston Villa
Our journey through Leicester City’s historical away day victories against current Premier League opponents arrives at 1938.
War was ahead - but when Leicester travelled to Villa Park, there was plenty of entertainment for nearly fifty thousand spectators.
In 1938, the Odeon Cinema on Rutland Street in Leicester opened, designed by the office of Birmingham-born architect Harry Weedon.
As The Story of Leicester website states: The Odeon was built during the “Golden Age of Hollywood” when actors like Clark Gable, Katharine Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart and Greta Garbo were popular with cinema audiences.
Photograph: Helen Wells
But a golden age of entertainment was about to run up against the outbreak of war in Europe.
On 30th September 1938, the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain stepped off a plane from Germany at Heston Aerodrome in west London. He was brandishing a piece of paper which he declared to be “symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again”.
Upon arriving at Downing Street that evening, he gave a speech and offered four words for which he would forever be remembered: “Peace for our time”.
He ended his address with the words “Go home and get a nice quiet sleep”.
The following day, he did something very different to relax.
He went to watch a game of football.
The match in question was Charlton Athletic’s home game with Chamberlain’s hometown club, Birmingham City.
Perhaps he was given a copy of the matchday programme and if he had opened it, Chamberlain would have read on the second page:
“Your liver should pour out two pints of liquid bile into your system daily. If this bile is not flowing freely, your food doesn't digest. It just decays inside you.
Gas bloats up your stomach.
You get constipated.
Your whole system is poisoned and you feel sour, sunk, and the world looks punk.
Laxatives help a little, but a mere bowel movement doesn't get at the cause. It takes those good old Carters Brand Little Liver Pills to get these two pints of bile flowing freely and make you feel "up and up." Harmless, gentle, yet amazing in making bile flow freely.
Ask for Carters Little Liver Pills.
Stubbornly refuse anything else.”
And on page 3?
“Moderate fare at the Valley - There were precious few thrills in the game with Leicester City at The Valley a fortnight ago, when Charlton collected two very valuable points by scoring the only goal of the game.”
The report blamed a glaring sun, dry ground and a light ball, and relayed Charlton’s relief at Leicester missing a late second half penalty.
With Chamberlain looking on, Charlton and Birmingham players gathered around the centre circle in silence as prayers were said to give thanks for the Munich agreement.
The Prime Minister would have been entertained by a match that finished Charlton 4 Birmingham 4.
But he would not be able to relax for long. Grumbles were growing about what had taken place in Munich.
Three weeks later, on Saturday 22nd October 1938, the Edinburgh Evening News published an article about Sir Archibald Sinclair, the leader of the Liberal Party, responding to a speech made by Sir Samuel Hoare, the Home Secretary.
Hoare had said:
“Our critics declare that the Munich agreement is mere idle words, and that you cannot believe the pledges of the German Fuehrer. I believe Herr Hitler means what he says.”
Sinclair responded:
“The test of the worth of Herr Hitler’s signature to the Anglo-German Naval Treaty will come when he has finished building up his Army and Air Force and has resources to spare for the Fleet. And when he has achieved his immediate views in Europe and turns to those of world power and colonies.”
On the same day, the front page of the Birmingham Gazette carried the following article:
Villa Spectator Banned
The incidents at the Aston Villa v Brentford match on 17 September have been considered by the Disciplinary Committee of the Football Association who have issued the following statement:
’The referee’s report with regard to misconduct by a spectator during the match, Aston Villa v Brentford on 17 September and subsequent correspondence, have been considered by the Disciplinary Committee of the Football Association who have decided that:
(1) The Aston Villa club be ordered to exhibit a large number of ‘warning’ notices in prominent places on their ground.
(2) J Francis, the offending spectator, be debarred from attending any football match at Villa Park during the remainder of the season, 1938-39”
The Aston Villa directorate express regret that anything should have been done to render this procedure necessary.
These “warning” notices have been posted at Villa Park and visitors to the ground to-day will see them.
The visitors to the ground that day were Leicester City.
Leicester’s first win at Villa Park had come on 27th August 1927. It was the first game of the 1927/28 season that ended with a 3rd place finish in the First Division, the club’s highest to date.
The London, Midland and Scottish Railway ran a special cheap trip from Nuneaton Abbey Street to Birmingham at 1.42pm for 2/6.
Coalville-born Hugh Adcock scored Leicester’s first goal of the season, toying with Villa centre-half Alec Talbot in the process. In fairness, Talbot had an excuse - he had been stopped earlier that day at Stafford on his way to Manchester to play for Villa reserves and brought back to play because first choice Frank Moss had been informed of the death of his brother.
Outside left William Bell and wing half Syd Bishop added to the scoreline as Leicester ran out 3-0 winners. The Leicester Mercury reported:
“Birmingham is very proud of Aston Villa; but the 50,000 worshippers of the claret and blue idols had a very, very nasty shock on Saturday.
And the cause of all the trouble were the naughty men from Leicester.”
It was a rare triumph for Leicester at Villa Park. Villa scored at least three goals when winning each of the next five meetings at Villa Park.
So the Leicester supporters turning up on 22nd October 1938 wouldn’t have been too confident.
Three weeks earlier, while Neville Chamberlain was watching eight goals fly in at The Valley, Leeds were putting eight of their own past a Leicester team that managed just two in reply.
Two home wins in the space of three days over Preston and Birmingham were the Foxes’ only victories of the season to date.
The Villa Park attendance of 46,233 was by far the highest attendance at a Leicester game home or away in 1938/39.
The Leicester side they would watch was Calvert, Frame, Reeday, Heywood, Sharman, Grosvenor, Griffiths, Maw, Dewis, Moralee and Stubbs. Welsh international Mal Griffiths was playing his fifth game for the club after signing from Arsenal and would go on to play 420 times across 18 years with the Foxes.
That evening’s local paper, the Sports Argus, led with the headline: “Surprising Batch of Midlands Disasters”. The subtitle read: “Villa, Blues, Albion and Walsall among the ‘empties’ - Wolves and Coventry save grand slam.”
Their match report was equally colourful in describing the tradition of the time of new students collecting money from the crowd:
“The ground was bathed in warm sunshine when the teams appeared. Previously the pockets of the 50,000 spectators had been lightened by the University Carnival ‘raggers’.
One student followed the referee into the middle of the field, stood by while the coin was spun - and then failed to get it for his box.”
There was also a passing reference to why “notices warning spectators were displayed” with a description of how “a dissatisfied spectator threw his hat onto the field. No knives this time.”
Following a goalless first half, play resumed “after the pantomime interval game of soccer-cum-rugby-cum-all-in wrestling by the students” - perhaps a fittingly theatrical flourish to proceedings given the very same day saw the births of the actors Christopher Lloyd and Derek Jacobi.
Leicester took the lead thanks to Burbage-born George Dewis on the counter attack just after the hour mark. Ten minutes later, Dewis was taken out when through on goal and Maurice Reeday dispatched the resulting penalty.
Villa pulled a goal back, ballooned another chance over the bar from close range and then had a second strike disallowed in the closing minutes as the visitors clung on.
The victory was one of only two away wins in a season that saw Leicester finish bottom of Division One.
It would be the final league table for seven years.
Two days after Leicester’s win at Villa Park, on 24th October 1938, Neville Chamberlain told his sister Ida:
“A lot of people seem to me to be losing their heads and talking and thinking as though Munich had made war more instead of less imminent.”
The following September, Chamberlain declared war on Germany.
