TWIH: A Pivotal Match At Coventry

Despite the passage of time, Leicester City’s roller coaster season of 1968/69 lives vividly in the memory.

The season was dramatic to say the least.

It started with high hopes, but it all came crashing down. A pivotal moment in this catastrophe was a match against Coventry City at Highfield Road in front of a 41,000 crowd, 45 years ago this week. 

The events during the months leading up to this match had a huge bearing on its significance.

The season began with the City embarking on their 12th successive season in the top division.

They had quality players like Peter Shilton, Peter Rodrigues, David Nish, John Sjoberg, Graham Cross, Malcolm Manley, Alan Woollett, Bobby Roberts, Len Glover, Rodney Fern, Davie Gibson and Mike Stringfellow.  At the start of the season the Club added to this squad by breaking the British transfer record to bring Allan Clarke to Filbert Street. Andy Lochhead joined the Club in October.

Their manager was the respected Matt Gillies , who aided by ‘the professor of football’ Bert Johnson, had guided Leicester City to FA Cup finals and League Cup finals at Wembley, European competiton and high places in the League.

However it soon became clear that the high hopes at the start of the season were misplaced. By the end of November, the Club had only won 3 of their 21 league games, and on the same day that Everton trounced Leicester 7-1 at Goodison, Matt Gillies resigned in protest at the dismissal of Bert Johnson.

Frank O’Farrell, the young and successful manager at Torquay United, took over from  Matt Gillies in December. His problems were exacerbated by matches being postponed early in 1969 due to bad weather, creating a backlog of fixtures which came back to haunt the Club later in the season. 

This fixture pile up was made worse by the totally unexpected FA Cup run which took Leicester City through to the 1969 FA Cup Final against Manchester City.  One of the undoubted highlights of this run was the fifth round replay victory at Anfield against Bill Shankly’s Liverpool.

Another highlight was the FA Cup semi-final victory against FA Cup holders West Bromwich Albion at Hillsborough, despite the absence of playmaker Gibson through injury.

The euphoria of this occasion was tempered by the fact that Leicester City were bottom but one of the old First Division with a huge backlog of fixtures.

On 1 April 1969 (an appropriate date, given what happened during the game) and only two days after the victory which ensured a third FA Cup Final in nine seasons, Leicester had to play a vital League game against their nearest rivals for relegation, Coventry City, who were one place and two points above them in the table, although Leicester did have four games in hand.

The atmosphere was electric. Well over 41,000 packed the terraces. It was not a classic match. It was a nervous game which showed quite clearly why both sides were struggling. Leicester were up against it from the start. It was only two days since the euphoria of Hillsborough. Furthermore, Rodrigues, Gibson and Glover were missing due to injury. Matters got worse when Sjoberg got a knock which caused him to suffer double vision. In those days of only one substitute it was the less-than-fit Stringfellow, playing his first game for three months, who came off the field leaving Sjoberg to struggle on. Brian Greenhalgh was the substitute and he was central in the drama which followed.

With only minutes to go, the score was 0-0. Coventry defender George Curtis fouled Greenhalgh in the box and the referee awarded Leicester City a penalty kick. The City fans went wild with delight. Then the inexplicable happened. The Coventry players pressured the referee into consulting his linesman because he had initially raised his flag but had then dropped it. As a result the referee rescinded his penalty decision and awarded a free kick to Coventry for off side. Within what seemed to be only a few seconds, Coventry’s Ernie Machin put Mick Coop away on the right. He swept over a hard cross and Neil Martin, completely unmarked and fairly close in, swept the ball into the net.

It was a classic example of defeat being snatched from the jaws of victory. Precious points had been dropped.

In the weeks that followed, Leicester City desperately tried to claw their way out of the relegation frame, but their schedule verged on the impossible. They played six games in two-and-a-half weeks leading up to the FA Cup Final and a further five games in the two-and-a-half weeks after their defeat at Wembley.

 There was too much ground to make up. Despite a couple of memorable victories at Filbert Street in front of massive crowds, survival in the top division depended on victory at the last game of the season at Old Trafford. Despite going ahead, Leicester lost 3-2 and the Second Division beckoned for the first time since 1957.

Had the refereee not changed his mind in that vital game 45-years-ago this week, the City may just have survived!

PICTURES

Lead.  The 1968/69 Leicester City team photograph.

1.  Frank O’Farrell, Leicester City’s manager from the match against Coventry.

2.  The programme for the 1 April, 1969 match at Coventry.

3.  Coventry City’s Highfield Road, the scene of the controversial match.