This Friday, May 31st, marks 24 years since Martin O’Neill’s last day as Leicester City manager. The Northern Irishman features in this tale of two clubs on different courses and what could have been.

With the sad news that Coalville Town chairman Glyn Rennocks is withdrawing the club from the Southern League, time to look back at the tale of another ambitious club from the North-West of the county.

It's 1989 and two clubs are on a collision course.

One is Shepshed Charterhouse. Their wealthy owner Maurice Clayton has been the catalyst for a remarkable rise up the non-league football pyramid, and now he thinks he's found the manager to take them even higher - a 37-year-old Irishman called Martin O'Neill.

Clayton can't hide his excitement as he introduces the new man to the press. “We're going to set things alight this season,” he says. O'Neill is equally positive: “My top priority is promotion to the Vauxhall Conference.”

If they do that, they'll be just one step away from the Football League.

The other club is Leicester City, who are heading rapidly in the other direction. Relegated from the top flight, nobody thought they'd keep falling. But with David Pleat in charge, they are sitting rock bottom of Division Two. The Third Division is beckoning, and if they do a Wolves and plummet all the way down they could be just one level above Shepshed.

The last time two Leicestershire clubs met in the league was way back at the start of the 20th century (Leicester Fosse v Loughborough) but it isn't too far-fetched to imagine it happening again before the century is out.

It never came to that, of course. Just as Leicester City started to turn their season around, O'Neill quit Shepshed in a spectacular war of words with Maurice Clayton, and the club's upward surge was halted.

This is the story of how that happened, and to understand it fully we need to go back to Christmas 1974, a turning point in the lives of the two main characters.

Christmas Eve 1974

Maurice Clayton had quit his marketing job at Leicester firm Corah’s and was now running his own successful knitwear company. He was living in a fine house in Knighton Rise, Oadby and preparing for a happy family Christmas.

But then just hours before Santa came down the chimney, the drama began. Fire broke out in the house and quickly spread. The smoke could be seen across the south of Leicester, and much of the property was destroyed. Two of his children were home at the time, but thankfully they escaped unhurt.

That report says 'the fire was believed to have started near a chimney' - so Santa may have had a narrow escape too.

Standing outside your luxury home watching smoke rising from the charred wreckage is the kind of experience that can alter your priorities in life, and the next chapters in Clayton's story were wholly unexpected.

He converted to Buddhism (a faith that stresses the impermanence of all things), and he decided to plough his fortune into a project he described as 'totally altruistic'. He used his wealth to give the town of Shepshed, where his company was based, a football club they could be proud of.

In the year after the fire he was invited to help out Shepshed Albion, then struggling in Division Two of the Leicestershire Senior League. The money he poured into the club, renamed Shepshed Charterhouse after his own company, set them on that remarkable upward trajectory. In seven successive seasons in the late 70s and early 80s they either won the League they were competing in or won promotion by finishing second.

It was on a business trip to Thailand that his own spiritual voyage began. He was introduced to Buddhism, and he also met the woman who became his second wife. After the conversion to his new faith, he married his Thai bride in the presence of nine monks in a ceremony lasting seven hours.

So Maurice had a dream. He bought a football team. He came back from Thailand and... (I'll leave you to adapt the rest).

Dreams and Nightmares

As the Clayton family were counting their blessings that Christmas Eve in 1974, the O'Neill family were gathering in Nottingham for their seasonal celebrations, and 22 year-old Martin was still thinking about his own narrow escape.

A month earlier, he'd traveled with his Nottingham Forest teammate Jim McCann to see a Jethro Tull concert at the Birmingham Odeon. Before the gig they had time for a drink and they went to a pub called the Tavern in the Town in the centre of the city.

Nothing unusual in that, you might think. But in that very pub, two days later, an IRA bomb exploded, killing eleven people. On the same evening, another bomb in a city centre pub called the Mulberry Bush killed ten. 182 were injured in the two explosions.

You can understand how shaken that would have left him. He could so easily have been caught up in it - and not just as a casualty. He was an Irish Catholic, a republican, who'd actually been at the scene of the blast - unlike the wholly innocent Irishmen (the ‘Birmingham Six’) who'd been arrested shortly afterwards, severely beaten while in custody, then found guilty on the basis of totally spurious evidence.

Martin had an almost obsessive interest in famous criminal trials. And now suddenly he himself was a character in a real-life incident. His mind must have been racing. What if they'd pulled me in? "Officer - I'm Martin O'Neill. Don't you know me? I'm a professional footballer. I play for Nottingham Forest."

The day after the bombings, even that looked in doubt. Forest manager Allan Brown told him he was dropping him because he wasn't good enough. "I feel sorry for Martin," he said. "He obviously has ability, but he didn't do well at Cardiff. He gave the ball away far too often to be an asset to us". Brutal words.

Martin had often thought of going back to university to complete his Law degree. Maybe now those thoughts were stronger than ever.

Then three days after Christmas came the sequence of events that would change everything.

That day, Forest lost 2-0 at home to Notts County. For the home fans, sick of treading water in Division Two, this was the last straw. They made their feelings clear, chanting 'We Want Clough! We Want Clough!'

O'Neill wasn't there. He was playing for the reserves.

The following week, Brown was sacked, and it was indeed Brian Clough who took over.

As he met the players for the first time in early January, Clough asked 'Is young O'Neill in the room?' He was, and Clough told him he wanted him back in the first team for the FA Cup replay at White Hart Lane two days later.

Martin later described it like this:

A fresh-faced Yorkshireman burst into the changing room and irrevocably changed my life. Forever. I was transfixed by his presence. In the subsequent decades he has entered that room so often in my mind, in both my dreams and my nightmares.

Forest pulled off a shock 2-1 win in that Cup tie at Spurs, leading to the famous dressing room photos that Martin mentions in his autobiography:

Without Clough, what would have become of Martin's career? Would he have got frustrated with life at a humdrum Second Division club? Would he have gone back to university? Would he ever have had the opportunity, or even the desire, to manage a football club?

Maurice and Martin

Fast forward to May 30th 1989. Martin had won a sackful of medals as a player. He'd then tried to find a job as a manager, and after finding it unexpectedly difficult, he ended up as boss of Grantham Town in the Southern League Midland Division. Then two years into that job he met Maurice Clayton, who told him about Shepshed Charterhouse, then in the Northern Premier League. Martin liked what he heard, and he and John Robertson headed for North-West Leicestershire.

The job was part-time. Players trained two nights a week, played every Saturday and sometimes midweek too. It was perfect for Martin as he didn't want to quit his other job. He was working for Save and Prosper, and it was keeping him fairly busy.

Look at these two articles from just after he joined Shepshed:

The first is from the Loughborough Echo. The second is from the Stapleford and Sandiacre News (near Nottingham). The date of both is exactly the same - June 30th 1989. Save and Prosper must have been delighted to have that bright face fronting their PR campaigns, and it must have been pretty lucrative for Martin.

When the season started, Shepshed took seven points from the first four games. But then came a match which, in retrospect, looks like the beginning of the end. Shepshed may have been the club with a meteoric rise, but what happens when you encounter an even brighter meteor? On September 9th, Colne Dynamoes arrived at The Dovecote.

The Lancashire club were owned by another wealthy businessman, Chalky White, who'd been involved with them since he was a teenager when the club was founded in the 1960s. They too had a fairy tale climb up the football pyramid, and they were paying their players much more than any other club in the League. They'd just signed up Liverpool's double European Cup winning hero Alan Kennedy.

Colne won 2-0 at Shepshed, to the delight of their 'massive traveling support'.

O'Neill's frustration got the better of him that day. He had a rant at the ref after the Colne trainer had, he felt, infringed protocol when giving treatment to one of the Colne players. The ref sent O'Neill off.

The following week they had a chance to put that behind them when they visited Brackley, from two levels below them, in the First Qualifying Round of the FA Cup. But Brackley pulled off a shock 2-1 victory.

This wasn't in the script.

Four days after that they hosted Buxton, who were bottom of the League, and slumped to a 3-0 defeat. Things were getting desperate.

On September 23rd they won 3-0 at Halesowen in the FA Trophy, and Martin had this to say:

I’ve been determined to give everyone at the club a chance to prove themselves. We’ve used a few games to do it, but the task is completed’.

An interesting statement in the light of what happened just four days later.

On September 27th, O'Neill and Robertson quit, saying business commitments prevented them from doing the job properly. They had been there for only nine games - just one more than Brian Clough during his notorious spell at Leeds.

Maurice Clayton told the local press that O'Neill had left the club 'by mutual consent', adding 'In view of recent results we are not unhappy with the situation'. And that might have been the end of the story, but Martin read those comments and decided to put the record straight.

As the Loughborough Echo reported:

O'Neill said that, in fact, there was nothing 'mutual' about the resignations, and that Clayton had asked them to stay. O'Neill said they had left the club in a much healthier position, being 10,000 pounds better off after he persuaded John Deakin to sign a contract with Birmingham City. He said he had already declined two offers from non-league clubs but business commitments meant he could not consider taking up another position until spring at the earliest.

Then it was Clayton's turn again. He refuted the idea that the club had wanted Martin to stay. “Without exception, all at the club were happy to learn of the departure of O'Neill and Robertson. The club are definitely not 10,000 pounds better off. The correct figure is 8,000. And financial matters are not the concern or business of the team manager. Effective communication and spirit are now back at The Dovecote.”

Martin came back once more: “If financial matters are not the concern of the manager, why was the Chairman's first question 'Did you get enough for him?'"

The argument finally blew itself out, and shortly afterwards, so did those two non-league meteors. Colne Dynamoes won the league that season but the Conference wouldn't allow them to be promoted, citing ground concerns. Chalky White was so frustrated that he pulled the plug and the club folded at the start of the following season.

Shepshed were relegated that year, then again a year later. They reverted back to their original name as Clayton stepped aside. Then when the club's future was in doubt they became, ironically, Shepshed Dynamo, named after the Loughborough club of the same name that had helped them out.

Martin O'Neill's business commitments didn't in the end keep him out of football 'until spring at the earliest'. That fateful meeting with Alan Parry in the gents at Carrow Road took place in January, and he was soon installed as manager of Wycombe Wanderers.

Maurice Clayton died in 2015, but his family still own the Dovecote today. If by any chance a member of that family gets to read this, it would be great if you could provide some more background to this tale.

Before he died, Clayton decided to forgive and forget. It came eight years after that war of words, when Martin took Leicester City to Wembley for the League Cup Final against Middlesbrough - the club's first Cup Final for almost 30 years. Clayton sent him a letter of congratulation.

As Martin was leading the team out at Wembley on that sunny April afternoon, looking down from the stand was a 38 year-old watching his first ever game of football in England.

I don’t know if Maurice Clayton and Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha ever met in the years that followed, but if they did, they wouldn’t have been short of conversation topics. Thailand, Buddhism and, of course, buying football clubs.

While researching this I came across a load of great Shepshed material. It didn't fit in the main story, but I'll put the best bits here:

1) Martin O'Neill had actually played at Shepshed many years before he became their manager.

In August 1977 he played for Forest Reserves in a pre-season friendly at The Dovecote. It was a key moment in his career, because three days later Clough decided that for their first game back in the top flight, he couldn't afford the luxury of playing two wingers (as he'd done in the promotion year) so he dropped Terry Curran, bringing in O'Neill in right midfield in a more defensive line-up. John Robertson was retained on the left wing.

In the match report it says that:

At least 1,000 people were present – roughly the number that turned out to watch in the 1950s when they won the Senior League Second Division without losing a game.

Wow. A whole season unbeaten. Shepshed the Invincibles! This looked like a fascinating story so I investigated a bit more.

2) On April 21st 1954 Shepshed Albion beat Ibstock Penistone Rovers 2-0 to round off their season, leaving the table like this:

If you can't read the fuzzy figures, it says that their record was:
Played 28
Won 26
Drawn 2
Lost 0
For 135
Against 26
Points 54

They dropped just two points! So it wasn't so much Arsenal Invincibles 2003/04, more like Preston North End Invincibles 1888/89.

And here's a fuzzy photo to complete the story:

A week after that last League game came the Champions match - the winners of Division Two hosting the winners of Division One. The result was Shepshed Albion 1 Anstey Nomads 3. There to present the trophies to the teams was Len Shipman, chairman of Leicester City and president of the Senior League.

It was an eventful time for Len. Four days earlier Leicester City had sealed promotion by winning 3-1 at Brentford. That took us back to the top flight after a break of 15 years.

3) This is what the Dovecote looked like at the time:

And if you go back to an older map where the ground isn't even marked you can see the name of the road on which it is situated:

Apparently there was a town in Yorkshire with a road of the same name that decided to change it because they were so fed up with tourists stopping to take goofy photos next to the street sign. But Shepshed seems to be proud of it and the name has stayed. Fans at the Dovecote have even been known to chant 'If you love it up the Butthole clap your hands'.

I wonder though whether back in the 19th century the townsfolk weren't a little more sensitive. You see, the name of the town itself was changed towards the end of the century. Shepshed used to be called Sheepshed. And I have a theory about why they changed it.

In 1889, exactly 100 years before Martin O'Neill arrived in town as manager, there was a truly historic Cup tie in Sheepshed. It was the season in which the county's first ever organised football competition took place. It was called the Leicestershire Challenge Cup, and one of the 16 entrants was our very own Leicester Fosse, then in just their fifth year of existence.

Our first ever Cup tie was a victory against a team called St.Saviours in the First Round (two weeks after those Preston Invincibles had beaten Hyde 26-0 - the all-time record FA Cup score).

In the next round we were drawn against - yes, Sheepshed.

After a 3-3 draw at the Belgrave Road Cricket and Cycle Grounds (Fosse's home), we traveled 16 miles to the replay - the first time Leicester fans ever had the thrill of an away trip in the Cup. No doubt there was time for a pint or two in the local alehouse before heading to the Dovecote.

Now don't imagine that because it was the age of Victorian values that fans would have restricted themselves to polite comments like 'Fine play, Leicester!' and 'Jolly bad luck, Sheepshed!'.

No. Quite the reverse. Match reports from the era make it clear just how common rowdy behaviour was back then. And it doesn't take a great deal of imagination to work out what kind of verbal taunts and farmyard noises would have been directed at the home fans that day. Not when you know what we later chanted at Derby fans.

How might locals have taken those taunts? Well, in the Leicester Chronicle of March 15th 1890 comes this report:

To correspondents: the name formerly spelt 'Sheepshed' is now 'Shepshed'. The change was made many months ago after correspondence between the village authorities and the Post Office.

Many months ago? So that would have been the previous summer. Just after the season finished. The season in which rowdy Leicester fans had besmirched the good name of the village with their offensive chanting. That's the theory, anyway.

The result of that replay? It was another draw. So there was a third game at a neutral venue. At Loughborough on January 28th 1889 Sheepshed won 2-1.

And here's another bizarre coincidence.

That same day marked the last hurrah of the old amateur dominance of the English game. You'll know that in the first decade of the FA Cup it was teams of old public school boys who carried off the trophy year after year. That era quickly passed when the professional game took off in the 1880s, and the very last public school team to make a real challenge for the trophy was Old Carthusians, who made it to the quarter finals in 88/89 before losing to West Brom, just as we were losing to Sheepshed in the Leicestershire Challenge Cup.

So why the coincidence? Well Old Carthusians is the name for former pupils of Charterhouse School in Surrey. And of course, Shepshed Charterhouse is where we came in.

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