Local heroes and England legends: When Leicester City won at Newcastle United
Leicester City only won one of our first 26 away games at Newcastle. It was a special one - a 5-1 win in 1928 when the great Arthur Chandler scored four goals - but we’re going to focus on another comprehensive victory nearly sixty years later.
That 1928 landmark still merits a brief mention, if only for the glowing praise lavished upon the Foxes by the Newcastle Journal.
“Leicester City gave a magnificent display of football against Newcastle United at St James’s Park on Saturday, and gained a handsome and thoroughly deserved victory by five goals to one - a margin that by no means over-emphasized the superiority of the winners, who, in truth, might easily have increased their total by the exercise of a little more care on the part of their marksmen, to say nothing of the many lucky escapes the home goal had from falling when the defenders were powerless to intervene.”
“Crowded together in front of Leicester’s solid phalanx, the United forwards had not room in which to operate, and for want of a chance to swing a leg for a kick at the ball it was kept bobbing about above the heads of the players in the vain hope of it being nodded into the net.”
Leicester’s second win at St James’s Park came in 1960, the first of three in a row culminating in another 5-1 win in 1965.
Win five arrived in 1974 thanks to a solitary Steve Earle goal, which brings us all the way up to 20th March 1985. On the surface, it was an unremarkable game between two teams that would finish the First Division season a point apart in 14th and 15th. But it was also a game, a place and a time flooded with England legends.
Before we delve into that, let’s take a look around Newcastle in 1985.
We can move to the football stadium just north of the city centre, with a writer for Newcastle fanzine The Mag bringing us inside St James’s Park in the mid-eighties:
“I frequented the Leazes End, preferring to pay half price into the corner next to Leazes Terrace and taking my chances with the metal fence and the often overzealous stewards, to get into the centre where for some reason they charged full price only, but it was after all, closer to the away fans who we would both goad and look up and down for fashion tips.
It was at that time the Leazes End had become a catwalk of sorts, with all the lads showing up in the latest, sort after piece of apparel. Sergio Tacchini and Fila tracksuit tops were big at the time, giving way to Kappa ski coats as autumn turned to winter. I was mad for the Lacoste crocodile more than anything else, until Spring arrived and with it, Burberry and Aquascutum whose golfing jackets and checked shirts became all the rage.”
The game being played on a Wednesday evening, Leicester’s away support would have been slightly diminished but there still would have been optimism for the long trip north. A disappointing season overall had already contained some impressive away victories.
In early December, two goals from Alan Smith contributed to a 4-0 win at Newcastle’s near neighbours Sunderland. On Boxing Day, Smith and Gary Lineker both beat Bruce Grobbelaar at Anfield to secure a 2-1 win over a stellar Liverpool side that would eventually finish second. And March 1985 began with a 1-0 win at Villa Park courtesy of a lone Smith strike.
Newcastle’s team featured future managers of both sides: Glenn Roeder in defence and Gary Megson in midfield.
Leicester, meanwhile, had a one-man wrecking ball in the middle of the park. Many Leicester players have earned the ‘hard man’ tag over the years. But this was a few months before Ali Mauchlen travelled south from Scotland to join the club and a year before Steve Walsh’s arrival. Leicester’s hard man in early 1985 was Paul Ramsey, whose impact on this game was two-fold - leaving Newcastle goalkeeper Martin Thomas with a dead leg in the 18th minute and then breaking Megson’s nose four minutes later.
While the clash with Megson was accidental, Thomas refused to shake hands with Ramsey at the final whistle. “It’s true to say I’m not happy about the incident,” he told the Newcastle Evening Chronicle the following day. “He came in late and caught me above the knee. There was no way he could have got the ball and 99 per cent of players would have pulled out, but unfortunately he was one of the one per cent.”
Leicester took full advantage after the collision, although the visitors were already 1-0 up through an Ian Banks goal after just two minutes. Lineker scored a second goal ten minutes before half time.
This would be the last time Lineker would score in an away win for Leicester, although he did subsequently score in defeats at Old Trafford and Loftus Road, as well as home wins over West Ham, Nottingham Forest and Sunderland before he was sold to Everton in the summer of 1985.
Newcastle pulled a goal back through Lineker’s future England strike partner Peter Beardsley, before Banks made it a personal double to restore Leicester’s two-goal advantage and Alan Smith got the fourth late on.
Newcastle goalkeeper Thomas went on to claim that although he had no chance with either of Banks’s goals, which were both deflected in off Newcastle defenders, he “would have been disappointed if I had not managed to keep the other two out in normal circumstances.”
The Newcastle Evening Chronicle’s reporter was, it seems, a tad salty despite this introductory sentence:
“There were no tears from Newcastle United after their disastrous 4-1 defeat by Leicester City at St James’s Park last night.
United, in fact, had enough chances to have had the points wrapped up in the first 20 minutes, but were foiled by Leicester keeper Ian Andrews and their own bad finishing.”
“United manager Jack Charlton took the defeat philosophically when he said: ‘That’s the way things go in football. You don’t always get what you deserve, but you cannot take anything away from Leicester City’.
In my opinion Leicester are one of the poorest sides to have visited St James’s Park this season, yet they went away 4-1 winners.”
This was Charlton’s sole season in charge of Newcastle, the side having struggled to replace yet another England icon with Kevin Keegan’s retirement in the summer of 1984.
There was speculation this would be local hero Chris Waddle’s final game for Newcastle. In fact, six days after defeat to Leicester, Waddle was selected by fellow Geordie Bobby Robson for his England debut - a 2-1 win over the Republic of Ireland in which Lineker scored his first goal for his country - and the winger would stay until the summer before moving to Tottenham Hotspur.
Another local hero was in the making though. Six weeks after their senior side lost to Leicester, Newcastle’s youth team took to the field for the first leg of their FA Youth Cup final against Watford.
The captain was a midfielder who had made his first-team debut a couple of weeks earlier, a 17-year-old from Gateshead called Paul Gascoigne. The first leg finished goalless but a fortnight later Gazza produced a magnificent performance and a spectacular goal to help the young Magpies to a 4-1 win at Vicarage Road.
This story reaches a conclusion of sorts on 4th July 1990 in Turin, when England exited the World Cup at the semi-final stage.
Bobby Robson in the England dugout, our Shilts and Gaz on the pitch alongside Gazza, Peter Beardsley and Chris Waddle - a night when Newcastle and Leicester shared the pain of a defeat that defined a generation.
