Ike O'Noclassed
Well-Known Member
Although it’s now 50 years since I first called myself a Leicester fan – watching the ’61 Cup Final on telly, I plead guilty on at least three counts of not being loyal.
For a start I came to live in Leicestershire as an 11 year old, and swapped my lifelong love for Chesterfield (near the bottom of the old Div 4) for high-flying City with ne’er a backward glance. Funny how things pan out.
Also I wasn’t one of the diehard 7000 who stuck with LCFC in the late 1980’s. I buggered off mostly because I was sick of being treated like a degenerate untermensch inside and outside Filbo, rather than a protest against the exodus of star names like Gary Lineker, Alan Smith etc. So I spent several happy seasons at Butthole Lane, cheering on Shepshed Charterhouse (crowds about a third the size of City’s can’t remember many coppers there safeguarding the general public) against the likes of Crawley Town – whatever happened to them? Wish I could say it was the attraction of Pleaty’s football revolution that drew me back after a few years, it was actually Gazza’s tears.
Most bizarrely, like many a young Koppite in the late 1960s living in the wilds of the county - away Saturdays we’d be more likely to be singing away in the Trent End than heading off on the Supporter’s Club coach or a Midland Red boneshaker to watch City – too expensive and except for (the many) Cup games – no travelling Blue Army, no buzz. So we tagged along with our Forest supporting mates keeping our City allegiance to ourselves, and they did the same, though I didn’t have the bottle of my mate Kev who always wore his red scarf in the Kop and never a hint of trouble.
This even survived the spectacular Battle of the Kop in May 1968 – I think what eventually killed it was it just got embarrassing when Cloughie and Frank McLintock got us at opposite ends of the table in 77-78. That and the ultraviolence. I'd say Loughborough is a blue town, but during the eighties there was a lot of red around too. I think they came back when B*Little started his wave, so that's alright.
There we are, disloyal as feck, though at least I stayed in Block L more or less on my own season before last when we lost to West Brom – the ex Baby Squad and their wannabes having marched out after an hour when we went 2-0 down – singing “Leicester ‘til I die†without a hint of irony.
