Dramatic Promotions & Near Misses: The 1982/83 Season's Bizarre Conclusion
In a small seaside town, around 150 miles north west of Filbert Street, Leicester City’s season had come to an extraordinary end. It was 16 May, 1983, and the long, gruelling promotion race was finally over.
The Club were back in the top flight of English football. But promotion hadn’t been sealed in a stadium, with the clock ticking down to the final whistle and the away end boiling over with unconfined joy.
It wasn’t settled with 11 men against 11. There wasn’t even a ball to kick that day, let alone a player to boot it. Instead, three men in suits had sat at a table in Lytham St. Annes and ruled on the fate of the Club.
For the first time in the history of Leicester City, one of football’s fundamental questions – which teams would go up to the First Division? – had been decided off the pitch.
But if the singular story of the 1982/83 season ends with a quirk, it begins with a shock. In the summer of 1982, the unexpected exit of Jock Wallace stunned the Club and the city beyond.
The Scotsman had arrived in 1978 at a time when the Club were in the throes of a crisis - they’d sunk to the Second Division of English football for the first time in seven years and lacked the cash or direction to see them through it.
Wallace arrived from Scotland on the back of a domestic treble at Scottish giants Rangers. His ability to promote and develop youth saw the aging stars of the Jimmy Bloomfield-Frank McLintock era soon replaced with promising young footballers such as Gary Lineker, Andy Peake, and Dave Buchanan.
His no-nonsense managerial style, meanwhile, struck a chord with the Foxes faithful and made him an immensely popular figure.
In his five seasons as manager, he steadied the ship, then rebuilt it, forging a side that played one of the most attractive styles of football in the entire country.
He was deemed the man to guide the City for the long haul. Instead, the lure of returning home proved too strong, and that summer of 1982, Wallace handed in his resignation, to join Motherwell.
While the City directors fought publicly against the departure, seeking compensation from Motherwell, the search for the right man to fill the void began taking place behind the scenes.
The hunt ended in August with the appointment of Coventry City manager Gordon Milne, who made the short journey along the M69 to accept the position.
He was a shrewd, sensible man with a business head, and his presence at Filbert Street couldn’t have struck a starker difference to his predecessor.
Milne got stuck in without delay, but his handling of Club business left an uneasy feeling across the city.
Seeking a new style of play, he ruthlessly assessed the playing staff at all levels, triggering a mass exodus at Filbert Street, including the much-loved Jim Melrose, who was replaced with Tom English, a striker from Coventry. Milne’s strength might have been in his ability to balance the books, but he wasn’t afraid to upset the status quo while doing so.
Still, the 1982/83 season began like all others away from the top flight, with the optimism borne of a clean slate and a fresh start.
Yes, the fans were wary of the new man in charge, but the side boasted youth, a rising star in Lineker and a promising newcomer in Alan Smith.
City’s chances of a return to the First Division were as good as any.
The sting left behind by the departure of Wallace, however, was yet to heal and those initial hopes of escaping the division were starting to look fanciful only two months in, with the Foxes recording three losses in the first four home games. Come the end of September, the team had gathered just seven points out of a possible 21.
And yet there were glimpses of excellence, confidence, and belief to temper the underwhelming results.
The team struggled to find a consistent rhythm in the first part of the season, but when they did find that harmony, they shifted into gear effortlessly.
Sandwiched between losses to Leeds United and Queens Park Rangers in September, came a 6-0 thumping of Carlisle United that saw both Steve Lynex and Lineker record hat-tricks in the same match.
There was a team worthy of promotion here, they just needed to click. As the weather got colder, the team gradually warmed up.
Results in October included four successive wins without conceding a goal and Lineker notched yet another hat-trick.
Defeats in both legs of the Milk Cup to Third Division side Lincoln City left a sour taste, but momentum in the league persevered, and by the end of the year, City found themselves in the top half of the table.
But the top three of Queens Park Rangers, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Fulham had already pulled away from the pack come the start of the new year.
Their consistent performances made the trio clear favourites for promotion and none of them looked likely to falter.
With a return to the top flight surely out of their hands, and an early FA Cup exit at the start of January, there was a growing feeling that Leicester would be treading water this season.
And then, something changed. Perhaps it was the arrival of accomplished midfielder Gerry Daly to revitalise the team.
Maybe the grim sight of a sparse Filbert Street on 22 February, when City beat Shrewsbury Town 3-2 in front of 6,155 supporters, the lowest home league gate since the war, stirred something inside the dressing room. Or, possibly, the liberation of living in the knowledge that there was nothing now to lose allowed them to play without pressure.
For whatever reason, the shackles came off.
Starting with that victory over Shrewsbury Town, the team put together an unbeaten run that stretched over the final three months of the season and with it announced their presence to the top three.
If anyone was to slip up, City warned, they were there and waiting - and a team did slip.
That team was Fulham, who had an inexperienced, small squad and a challenging run-in that saw them yet to face in-form Sheffield Wednesday, leaders Queens Park Rangers and the Foxes.
The west London side began to stumble just as the finish line came in sight. The Foxes, meanwhile, powered on, continuing to pick up points.
Still, coming into the last five games, the Cottagers were sitting five points ahead of Milne’s men. Ultimately, the position was Fulham’s to lose rather than City’s to gain.
The head-to-head clash between the two at the end of April turned into a fraught battle for third. The atmosphere at Craven Cottage was thick with tension, with both sides fully aware of what was at stake: a win for Fulham and third was as good as confirmed; a win for the Foxes and all was still to play for.
At the end of the 90 minutes, Leicester emerged as victors and took home all three points. Ian Wilson scored the only game of the match, and with it took the Club closer to glory.
Fulham went on to fall short against Wednesday and QPR, while Leicester gained a point apiece versus Bolton Wanderers and Leeds.
Coming into the final two games, the teams were neck and neck on 66 points, with City gaining a marginal advantage with a superior goal difference.
On 2 May, 1983, for the first time that season, the Foxes gatecrashed the promotion spots and shoved Fulham down to fourth.
A win for the Foxes against Oldham Athletic and three points for Fulham at home to Carlisle United put the emphasis on the final day.
City knew that victory at home to relegation-bound Burnley would guarantee a return to the top flight, regardless of the Fulham result, but anything less meant their fate was taken out of their hands.
Burnley frustrated Leicester and held them at bay to a goalless draw. The absence of top-scorer Lineker, still then nursing a knee injury sustained in the match against Leeds, was notable and he could only watch from the sidelines as his team-mates missed chances to end the race once and for all.
It wasn’t an emphatic end to the season by any means, but the Foxes faithful didn’t care. As the full-time whistle blew at Filbert Street, news of Fulham’s loss away at Derby seeped through the terraces, courtesy of countless supporters brandishing transistor radios, and jubilant fans surged onto the turf.
Leicester City were back in the big time, and would be competing with the biggest and best in the land next season.
But the ecstasy turned quickly into confusion, then dismay. City fans, it turned out, were celebrating the result of a game that never finished: Derby supporters, hearing they’d dodged the drop, stormed the pitch just 78 seconds before the final whistle. The stewards and the police couldn’t control the crowds, and the match was abandoned.
Fulham manager Malcolm Macdonald was outraged. He demanded a replay and told the press he’d be lodging an appeal to the Football League. City, while still technically in third place, could only wait.
If their fortunes were up in the air, so were the team: Milne took his side to Spain. Macdonald, meanwhile, kept his team at home in the hope their season wasn’t over.
All eyes turned to Lancashire, as the Football League convened that meeting at their headquarters at Lytham St. Annes.
A commission of chairmen - John Smith, of Liverpool, Jack Wiseman, of Birmingham City, and Norwich City’s Sir Arthur South – spent three hours considering the dilemma.
Graham Kelly, the league secretary, eventually announced their decision. A replay would be “monstrously unfair on other clubs affected, most of all Leicester City,” he said. “The circumstances cannot be recreated unless you replay almost the whole of the Second Division programme.”
Over in Spain, Milne broke the news to his sunbathing team that Fulham’s appeal had failed and Leicester City were officially up.
Two days after the final whistle had blown at Filbert Street, the players celebrated their promotion all over again.
It was the end of what Milne called: “the longest afternoon of my life.”
“Justice and sense have prevailed,” he said.