Remembering When Leicester Regularly Played On Christmas Day

For well over a century, Christmas Day fixtures were a regular feature of the football calendar. To mark the festivities in 2020, Club Historian John Hutchinson looks back on this now-peculiar football tradition.

2020-12-26T10:58:00.000Z

by John Hutchinson

Published

26 Dec, 2020

Remembering When Leicester Regularly Played On Christmas Day

For well over a century, Christmas Day fixtures were a regular feature of the football calendar. To mark the festivities in 2020, Club Historian John Hutchinson looks back on this now-peculiar football tradition.

John Hutchinson

2020-12-26T10:58:00.000Z

Remembering When Leicester Regularly Played On Christmas Day

For well over a century, Christmas Day fixtures were a regular feature of the football calendar. To mark the festivities in 2020, Club Historian John Hutchinson looks back on this now-peculiar football tradition.

John Hutchinson

2020-12-26T10:58:00.000Z

Remembering When Leicester Regularly Played On Christmas Day

For well over a century, Christmas Day fixtures were a regular feature of the football calendar. To mark the festivities in 2020, Club Historian John Hutchinson looks back on this now-peculiar football tradition.

John Hutchinson

2020-12-26T10:58:00.000Z

Remembering When Leicester Regularly Played On Christmas Day

For well over a century, Christmas Day fixtures were a regular feature of the football calendar. To mark the festivities in 2020, Club Historian John Hutchinson looks back on this now-peculiar football tradition.

John Hutchinson

2020-12-26T10:58:00.000Z

It started for Leicester Fosse on Christmas Day 1894, during their first season as a Football League club.

On 25 December, they travelled to Gigg Lane for a match against high-flying Bury, who were top of the Second Division, 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 just over 5,000, although one source reported a gate of 7,000.

In the 1890s, Loughborough Town were a Football League club, until they dropped out in 1900. Their Bromheads ground was situated behind the Greyhound pub on Nottingham Road.

Exploiting the potential of increased gates generated by a local derby, Leicester played their first-ever Christmas Day fixture at Filbert Street against the 'Luffs' in 1896, when they ran out as 4-2 victors.

Up to 11,000 fans watched the clash, a record for a Fosse home game, well above their average gates of about 6,000. There were two more Christmas fixtures against Loughborough, both played at Filbert Street.

These were in 1897 and 1899. In front of crowds of 9,000 and 7,000 respectively, the Fossils won both games, by scorelines of 4-0 and 5-0 apiece.

Until league football was suspended at the end of the 1914/15 season, due to the First World War, home Christmas Day fixtures were common, with only one match (against Clapton Orient in 1913), being played away.

The trend of increased gates for these fixtures continued, perhaps most notably in 1914.

A combination of war and Fosse sinking to the bottom of the league resulted in average home crowds falling to 3,600, but 13,000 nonetheless turned up for the Christmas Day encounter with Arsenal.

Fosse’s festive fixtures continued in the Regional Wartime League, which replaced the Football League during the First World War.

By the time the Football League was restored, for the 1919/20 season, Fosse had been reformed as Leicester City, a title which, of course, remains to the present day.

From then, until 1957/58, the tradition of Christmas Day fixtures went on, 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.

There were some startling results in these Christmas Day fixtures. For example, when City won promotion to the top division in 1924/25, they beat 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, a rule which resulted in comparatively very few goals being scored.

The following campaign, two rather than three players had to be between the attacker and the goal and the goals began to flow with more regularity.

A notable feature about 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 turned around a 6-2 defeat at Blackpool on Christmas Day with a 2-1 victory at Filbert Street 24 hours later.

The most bizarre festive fixture took place in the Wartime South Regional League in 1940, as Leicester intriguingly tackled Northampton Town twice on the very same day.

The first fixture was at Northampton, when the visitors were defeated 5-2. Later the same day, City got their revenge by overcoming Northampton 7-2 at Filbert Street.

The gates for both fixtures were a in the region of 2,500. Leicester City’s George Dewis and Northampton’s Jack Billingham scored in both matches.

Turning out for the Club in both games were the future England captain Billy Wright and fellow would-be Three Lions international Jimmy Mullen.

Nine years later, meanwhile, they both starred for Wolverhampton Wanderers against Leicester in the 1949 FA Cup Final.

City’s final Christmas Day fixture was a First Division match against lofty 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 flipped on their head the next day, Leicester hit back on Boxing Day, with a 2-1 victory at Filbert Street.

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