Fifteen-Hour Train Journeys & String Ensembles – Leicester's 1937 European Tour
Since then, the map of Europe has been redrawn. The area that Leicester visited in what was then Yugoslavia is now the independent state of Serbia and the what was Czechoslovakia is now Slovakia.
The original team earmarked for this tour was Wolverhampton Wanderers, who had finished fifth in the First Division. They were to be runners-up in the next two seasons to Arsenal and Everton and were one of the top sides in England.
However, the FA prevented Wolves from going because of their poor disciplinary record. It was something of an honour therefore, for Leicester City, as Second Division champions, to be chosen in their place, albeit at short notice.
City’s captain was the England international right-half Sep Smith. Before he died in 2006, aged 94, he recalled some of his memories of the tour, several of which were less than enthusiastic.
Leicester lost all five matches. Sep’s view was that the Eastern European teams were keener to win than City who had, after all, just completed a hard promotion season. Refereeing standards were very different from those which the Leicester players were used to.
There is a battered newspaper cutting in the Club’s archives announcing the team’s arrival in Bucharest, the Romanian capital city. For the record, Leicester played two games in Romania, losing both. Venus Bucharest defeated them 2-0 and then, the following day, they lost to 2-1 to Ripensia Timisoara.
Three days later, after a 15-hour train journey to Budapest, they lost 4-3 to Hungaria Budapest, with Sep scoring Leicester’s first goal.
The next day, after another long railway journey of 236 miles, they lost 3-0 to BSK Belgrade. This was followed by yet another rail ride of 360 miles to Czechoslovakia, where the team was defeated 3-1 by Bratislava. A local report of the game, written in Slovakian, is in the Club’s archives.
A glance at a map of Europe quickly confirms the large distances between venues. With an itinerary as full as this one, it is hardly surprising that Sep’s view of the tour was negative as there was too much travelling. The players did not have the opportunity to look around.
“It was all travelling and playing,” he said.
Sep also recounted how the players were allowed 10 shillings per day allowance on the tour. For four days, he did not collect his money, but when he went to claim his £2 arrears, the Club would not pay it. There were several culture shocks on this trip.
The travelling was all on a boat train, which was a sleeper. A photograph in the Club’s archives depicts Arthur Chandler (Leicester City’s record goalscorer, by now on the coaching staff), Wales international players Dai Jones and Eugene O’Callaghan and manager Frank Womack on a wooden railway carriage.
On one of the long train journeys through Eastern Europe, travelling between venues, Sep was having a meal with Sandy McLaren, the goalkeeper. Steak was served. Sandy had sampled this particular dish before and informed Sep that the steaks were in fact horsemeat. Sep did not eat the meal!
Another surprise on the tour included the pitch in Bucharest, which was cinder, and which caused gravel rash injuries to go along with sunburn and mosquito bites suffered by the players.
The hospitality in Budapest was great, however, if a photograph in the Club’s archives is anything to go by.
It shows the City team, including Sep, sitting at a long dining table in the Hotel Bristol, surrounded by waiters and a string ensemble consisting of men and boys in traditional Hungarian dress playing violins and a cello.
While they were in Budapest, the team also visited the impressive Hungarian Parliament building on the banks of the Danube.
In Belgrade, Leicester City played their first match under floodlights, nearly 20 years before they were installed at Filbert Street. Sep was less than impressed. He recalls that the floodlights were 'street lamps'.
He said that it was okay when the play was near to one of these lamps but that away from them, towards the centre of the pitch, you could see very little. It was nevertheless a glimpse of the future, as was the fact that four months later, back in the UK, the first match to be shown live on television, a game between Arsenal’s first team and their reserves, took place.
Another glimpse of the future was that the tour took place against the backdrop of the growth of fascism in Europe. The Romanian Fascist 'Iron Guard' and the increasing pro-Nazi policy of Regent Prince Paul in Yugoslavia, foreshadowed the outbreak of the Second World War two years later.