Impending gloom: When Leicester City won at Brentford
Try to find out what life was like in London in 1952 and your webpage is quickly clogged up with numerous references to something that sounds more like a cartoon villain than a real life event: the Great Smog.
For four days in early December, the worst example of air pollution this country has ever experienced descended upon the city. Modern estimates suggest the death total was around 10,000, with the long-term health consequences also grave for many, many more.
All football in London was postponed.
Our story starts twelve months earlier, with two December games Leicester City must have wished had been postponed. Defeat to Leeds United is hard enough twice in one season but in December 1951 Leicester managed it twice in two days - on Christmas Day at Filbert Street, on Boxing Day at Elland Road.
A 2-1 win at Luton rounded off the year and 1952 began in the best fashion possible. In a 3-1 home victory over Nottingham Forest, Arthur Rowley struck his 20th goal of the season.
This was Rowley’s second season at Leicester. He’d scored on his debut at Bury and 27 further times in that campaign including a hat-trick in the return fixture.
There were two more hat-tricks in the first half of the 1951/52 season at home to Birmingham and QPR, but he was yet to strike three times in one game away from Filbert Street.
On the morning of the trip to Brentford on 19th January 1952, the London Daily News reported the imminent arrival of a player who would go on to become a Leicester City legend in the dugout rather than on the pitch.
“Leicester City’s long quest for a centre-half will probably end early next week with the signing of Matt Gillies from Bolton Wanderers. The clubs have agreed to terms, and as Gillies has been to Leicester to look over a house all that remains is for him to say “Yes” when he meets Leicester officials on Monday.
Matthew Gillies, 28-year-old and known as Jimmy, was an amateur with Motherwell during the war. When it was over they forgot about him and he signed, at a £10 fee, for Bolton. Leicester will have to pay something like £12,000 for his transfer.”
Gillies would play more than 100 times for Leicester, but it was his ten years as manager from 1958 to 1968 that would seal his legacy at City, reaching two finals apiece in the FA Cup and League Cup, winning the latter in 1964.
The talk of the time at Brentford in January 1952 was a dressing room dispute between manager Jackie Gibbons and his star wing-halves Jimmy Hill and Ron Greenwood, both of whom, like Gillies, would go on to achieve even greater fame in the game after playing.
The afternoon at Griffin Park was all about a striker though. Arthur Rowley’s hat-trick gave Leicester an emphatic victory.
Buried towards the bottom of page two of the following Friday’s West London Observer, underneath reams of praise for Fulham’s 6-0 win over Middlesbrough, was the headline ‘Leicester still Brentford’s “bogey”’.
“The cracks that became evident about Christmas time in Brentford’s hitherto solid defence, widened ominously in Saturday’s game at Griffin Park, against Leicester, who exploited them cleverly to gain a clear-cut, two-goal victory.
The score by no means flattered the winners. Their intelligent anticipation, speed on the ball, and accurate passing had Brentford’s defence dizzy for much of the game.”
The report concluded:
“Brentford’s side for this week’s away match against Notts Forest will include the recently open-to-transfer stars Greenwood and Hill.
Greenwood has already decided, and Hill looks likely to decide that “there’s no place like home” and patch up their differences with the club. This is good news for all concerned, and it is a pity that these differences arose in the first place.”
The London Weekly Dispatch had been in agreement on the day following the game: “If this is what the absence of Greenwood and Hill means then the sooner the quarrel is patched up the better.”
As it happened, Hill departed to rivals Fulham just two months later.
The London Weekly Dispatch’s headline was simply “What price Rowley?” and the writer labelled Rowley’s display “a personal triumph”.
Rowley’s second hat-trick of 1952 also came in London, helping Leicester to a 6-4 win at Fulham in September. It remains one of only six Leicester victories in 43 league trips to Craven Cottage.
The 1952/53 season that followed was far more fruitful for Brentford when they faced Leicester - the Bees did the double over the Foxes. But the season as a whole was poor for the west London side, slipping to 17th out of 22 while Leicester finished 5th for a second consecutive season.
On 6th December 1952, Brentford’s home game with Luton was one of five London games postponed due to what the papers called “fog and frost”.
The Ireland’s Saturday Night newspaper lay the blame rather lyrically:
“Jack Frost, top favourite with only one class of sportsman - the ice-skater, played havoc with smaller men of cross-Channel soccer to-day.”
Games were postponed at Arsenal, Chelsea, Charlton and Leyton Orient, as well as at Wembley where Oxford and Cambridge were due to meet in a University match.
Across north London, Finchley’s FA Cup game against Crystal Palace was abandoned after an hour (Finchley were bidding to become the first amateurs to reach the third round for 17 years and led 3-1 when the game was abandoned, only to win the replayed fixture 3-1 four days later anyway).
The postponement of the match between Arsenal and Preston North End (which led to this fantastic image) had a huge bearing on the destination of the league title.
Preston would have gone into the original fixture on the back of three straight wins. It was eventually played in March and the 1-1 draw contributed to Arsenal winning the league by 0.099 goal average over the team that finished level on points with them - Preston.
Leicester and Brentford’s fortunes were about to diverge. In 1954, it was Leicester doing the double over Brentford including a 6-0 thrashing at Filbert Street. The Foxes went up, the Bees went down and the two would share the same division just once, in 1992/93, until 2021.
That year, the newly-crowned FA Cup winners went to newly-promoted Brentford’s year-old new home and won 2-1 with goals from James Maddison and Youri Tielemans.
The Gtech Community Stadium is certainly one of the better new grounds, despite understandably lacking the charm of Griffin Park. Like Leicester’s own home, however, it has another deficit that the club could do something about.
At both grounds, the stands are merely labelled North, South, East and West. Surely this is an open goal missed - an easy opportunity for modern money men to make a link with the past and name these stands after some of the legends who have helped make each club what it is today.
The Arthur Rowley Stand? The Billy Dare Stand? As it is, it’s just the East Stand for the travelling Foxes fans this weekend.
But at least it will offer good visibility.
