'Double Hat-Trick Thrills' – Duncan's 1924 Christmas Day Heroics

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'Double Hat-Trick Thrills' – Duncan's 1924 Christmas Day Heroics

This Christmas, Club Historian John Hutchinson recalls the remarkable Christmas Day fixture in 1924 – when skipper Johnny Duncan scored six consecutive goals in the 7-0 defeat of Port Vale.

2025-12-25T08:30+00:00

by John Hutchinson

Published

25 Dec, 2025

'Double Hat-Trick Thrills' – Duncan's 1924 Christmas Day Heroics

This Christmas, Club Historian John Hutchinson recalls the remarkable Christmas Day fixture in 1924 – when skipper Johnny Duncan scored six consecutive goals in the 7-0 defeat of Port Vale.

John Hutchinson

2025-12-25T08:30+00:00

'Double Hat-Trick Thrills' – Duncan's 1924 Christmas Day Heroics

This Christmas, Club Historian John Hutchinson recalls the remarkable Christmas Day fixture in 1924 – when skipper Johnny Duncan scored six consecutive goals in the 7-0 defeat of Port Vale.

John Hutchinson

2025-12-25T08:30+00:00

'Double Hat-Trick Thrills' – Duncan's 1924 Christmas Day Heroics

This Christmas, Club Historian John Hutchinson recalls the remarkable Christmas Day fixture in 1924 – when skipper Johnny Duncan scored six consecutive goals in the 7-0 defeat of Port Vale.

John Hutchinson

2025-12-25T08:30+00:00

'Double Hat-Trick Thrills' – Duncan's 1924 Christmas Day Heroics

This Christmas, Club Historian John Hutchinson recalls the remarkable Christmas Day fixture in 1924 – when skipper Johnny Duncan scored six consecutive goals in the 7-0 defeat of Port Vale.

John Hutchinson

2025-12-25T08:30+00:00

Over a century ago, on Christmas Day 1924, a crowd of nearly 23,000 at Filbert Street witnessed one of the most startling feats in City’s long history.

The match ball from this magnificent achievement has been generously loaned to the Club by Johnny’s daughter, Season Ticket Holder Jenny Blackhurst. It is currently on display in the reception area at King Power Stadium.

When the ball was formally presented to Johnny after the game, an inscription painted onto it in gold lettering stated that the ball had been 'Presented to J. Duncan for scoring six consecutive goals. Dec 25th 1924.'

Johnny’s team-mate Arthur Chandler was also to score six goals in the famous ‘six swans match’ in 1928, but Jenny remembers that her father always pointed out that because Channy’s goals were not consecutive, his achievement was not as notable!

Johnny Duncan won the Second Division title in 1925 and later helped the Club reach second in the old First Division in 1929.

Christmas Day fixtures ended in 1957, but up until then they had been an important and traditional part of the Football League fixture list. The normal pattern was for the return fixture against the team played on Christmas Day to be on Boxing Day.

This explains why, the day after their 7-0 beating at Leicester, Port Vale had to face the Foxes again. This time they only lost 2-1.

Very unusually for those days, Duncan’s six-goal achievement was the main front page headline of the Leicester Mercury the next day. The eye catching headline proclaimed, 'World Football Record Equaled'.

Inside the paper, the headline for the full match report was 'Duncan’s Sharp Shooting Performance. Double hat-trick thrills big Filbert Street crowd'.

The account of the match was glowing.

It began: "In a remarkable game, City equaled their feat against Wolverhampton two seasons ago by recording a victory of seven clear goals. The opposition was by no means negligible. Certainly the goals were obtained against a first-class goalkeeper (Fern). Records of all sorts might have been broken had Fern been in less excellent form. Duncan’s feat is without equal in the history of the Leicester club and has never been eclipsed in the annals of the league. He was in wonderful finishing mood, although the extraordinary extent of his success was only rendered possible by the combined skill and incisiveness of his colleagues."

Johnny Duncan later became Manager of Leicester City Football Club in 1946, later guiding the Foxes to the FA Cup Final in 1949.

The report goes onto describe how, with the wind and the sun behind them, Leicester City were soon ‘determining the game’. Chandler opened the scoring with a low drive after 19 minutes, following a lovely pass from Carr. Despite the bad pitch and greasy ball causing a few ‘miscalculations’, City played the more ‘methodical and finished football’.

Duncan scored his first goal in the 33rd minute. Adcock crossed the ball from the wing, Wadsworth lobbed it back and Duncan placed it ‘with fine force and direction into the back of the net’. Three minutes later, he scored his second, following a pass from Adcock. A ‘wonderful save from Fern’ prevented Johnny completing his hat-trick before half-time.

Leicester’s supremacy was no less pronounced in the second half. Duncan netted his next three in seven minutes. In the 56th minute, he was unmarked in the penalty area, received a free-kick, and pivoted to give Fern no chance with a left foot shot. Five minutes later he scored again.

‘Wadsworth was able to flash across a low centre, Fern pushed the ball out, but Duncan found himself with enough shooting space to make a goal a certainty’. He got another two minutes later, created by a pass from Adcock.

Arthur Chandler is our record goalscorer with 273 goals to his name.

Leicester’s seventh goal, and Duncan’s sixth, came two minutes from the end ‘as a result of a quick move on the right by Newton and Adcock, Duncan accepting the winger’s fine pass with decisive effect’.

The Mercury report noted that Port Vale had been dazzled by the variety of Leicester’s game. It concluded: ‘Duncan, because of his exceptional shooting, which could easily have brought him more than six goals, shone above the rest’.

Leicester went on to become Second Division champions that season. This tremendous Christmas Day result started a run of 13 wins and two draws in the next 15 matches which took them to the top of the table.

Under Duncan’s captaincy, they then took the old First Division by storm, finishing third in 1928 and missing out on the league title by one point in 1929. It could be argued that the dawn of this golden era was Duncan’s feat of scoring six goals on that Christmas Day, 101 years ago today.

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