Bumper Crowds & Shock Results – When Leicester Played On Christmas Day

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Bumper Crowds & Shock Results – When Leicester Played On Christmas Day

For well over half a century, Christmas Day fixtures were a regular and traditional part the football calendar.

2023-12-25T12:48:00.000Z

by John Hutchinson

Published

25 Dec, 2023

Bumper Crowds & Shock Results – When Leicester Played On Christmas Day

For well over half a century, Christmas Day fixtures were a regular and traditional part the football calendar.

John Hutchinson

2023-12-25T12:48:00.000Z

Bumper Crowds & Shock Results – When Leicester Played On Christmas Day

For well over half a century, Christmas Day fixtures were a regular and traditional part the football calendar.

John Hutchinson

2023-12-25T12:48:00.000Z

Bumper Crowds & Shock Results – When Leicester Played On Christmas Day

For well over half a century, Christmas Day fixtures were a regular and traditional part the football calendar.

John Hutchinson

2023-12-25T12:48:00.000Z

Bumper Crowds & Shock Results – When Leicester Played On Christmas Day

For well over half a century, Christmas Day fixtures were a regular and traditional part the football calendar.

John Hutchinson

2023-12-25T12:48:00.000Z

This tradition started for Leicester Fosse on Christmas Day in 1894, during their first season as a Football League club, when they travelled to Gigg Lane for a match against high-flying Bury, who were top of the Second Division table, having already won 15 of their first 18 games.

Fosse, who were to finish a creditable fourth in their first season in the league, entered the match in 11th position. A goal from Willie McArthur gave the visitors a half-time lead, but they were defeated 4-1. The game was played in front of a crowd of over 5,000. In the 1890s, Loughborough Town was a Football League club until they dropped out of the league in 1900. Their Bromheads ground was situated behind the Greyhound pub on the Nottingham Road.

Exploiting the potential of increased gates generated by a local derby, Leicester Fosse played their first-ever Christmas Day match at Filbert Street against the Luffs in 1896, whom they defeated 4-2. Some 11,000 fans watched the game, a record for a home game, and well above their average gates of 6,000.

There were two more Christmas Day clashes with Loughborough Town, both played at Filbert Street. These were in 1897 and 1899. In front of crowds of 9,000 and 7,000, Leicester won both, 4-0 and 5-0.

Until league football was suspended at the end of the 1914/15 season, due to the First World War, festive fixtures at Filbert Street became a common occurrence, with only one match (against Clapton Orient in 1913) being played away from home.

The trend of increased gates for these fixtures continued, perhaps most notably in 1914. A combination of war being waged on the Western Front and Fosse sinking to the bottom of the Football league resulted in average home crowds falling to 3,600 but 13,000 turned up for the Christmas fixture against Arsenal.

Leicester Fosse’s Christmas Day outings went on in the regional wartime leagues which replaced the Football League during the First World War. By the time the Football League was restored, for the 1919/1920 season, the Fosse had been re-formed as Leicester City Football Club. From then, until 1957/58, the tradition of Christmas Day matches continued, (although it was discontinued from 1941 until 1945, during the Second World War). Throughout this period, it became usual for the return fixture to take place on Boxing Day.

In fact, for the first five seasons after the First World War, the idea of playing the same team at home and then away, or the other way round, in successive matches was extended to spread across the whole season with fixtures against the same opponent being played on successive weekends.

There were some startling results in these Christmas Day fixtures. For example, in 1924, Leicester City defeated Port Vale 7-0 with Johnny Duncan scoring six goals. This result was all the more remarkable because this was the last season in which there had to be three players behind the ball to prevent offside. It was a rule which resulted in comparatively very few goals being scored. The following season, two rather than three players had to be between the attacker and the goal.

A striking feature of these paired Christmas fixtures was the number of times a result on Christmas Day was completely reversed in the return fixture on Boxing Day. One example was in 1936/37, when City reversed a 6-2 defeat at Blackpool on Christmas Day with a 2-1 victory at Filbert Street 24 hours later. The most bizarre Christmas Day fixture took place in the Wartime South Regional League in 1940 when Leicester played Northampton Town twice on the same day. The first fixture was at Northampton when the visitors were defeated 5-2.

Later that same day, City got their revenge by winning 7-2 at Filbert Street. The gates for both fixtures were a in the region of 2,500. Leicester's George Dewis and Northampton’s Jack Billingham scored in both matches.

Turning out for the Foxes in both games were the future England captain Billy Wright and soon-to-be Three Lions international Jimmy Mullen. Nine years later, they both played for Wolverhampton Wanderers against City in the 1949 FA Cup Final. Leicester's final Christmas Day fixture was a First Division match against high-flying Blackpool at Bloomfield Road in 1957.

The Seasiders, with England stars Jimmy Armfield and Stanley Matthews in their side, won the game 5-1, although, in another example of Christmas results being reversed the next day in the return fixture, Leicester City got their revenge on Boxing Day with a 2-1 victory at Filbert Street.

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