Links With The Past: ’61 & ’63 FA Cup Final Memorabilia
On 6 May, 1961, league champions Tottenham Hotspur won 2-0 against a Leicester City side effectively reduced to 10 men early in the game due to a serious injury to full-back Len Chalmers. No substitutes were allowed in those days.
Before the game, to mark the achievement in reaching the Final, Leicester City issued a souvenir booklet called ‘Success City’. It cost 2/6d (12 ½ p.), and contained, amongst other cup final-related features, messages not only from Matt Gillies, the manager, but also from Dorothy Russell, the Lord Mayor. Most of the booklet is taken up with illustrated biographies of the first team squad and of the back room staff.
These two tickets for the game (pictured above) were priced at 3/6d (17½p) and 10/6d (52½p). On the reverse of both, there is a plan of Wembley Stadium and a series of regulations forbidding fans from taking ‘a Camera or photographic apparatus of any description into the Stadium’.
The 18-page match programme (also above) contains team photographs and pen portraits of both sides, along with potted histories of both clubs. Leicester City, who finished sixth in the top division that season were portrayed as ‘a soccer academy of thinking players’ whose manager Matt Gillies believed that ‘brains always beat brawn’.
The BBC sound commentary of the highlights of the Final was released on an Extended Play 45 rpm vinyl record (also above). The sleeve notes billed the game as the ‘Match of the Century’, and boasted that the commentary was recorded ‘on the spot at Wembley Stadium’.
Finally the Seating Arrangement for the Celebration Dinner and Dance (also above), which was held at the Dorchester Hotel in London’s Park Lane, contains the names of over 250 guests.
Two years later, in May 1963, Leicester City, who had been chasing a League and FA Cup Double only a few weeks earlier, were red hot favourites to defeat relegation-fighting Manchester United in the FA Cup Final.
In the event, Busby’s Manchester United, with players such as Bobby Charlton and Denis Law performing at the top of their game, defeated Leicester City 3-1.
Leicester City’s right-back that day was John Sjoberg who had established himself as a first team regular, in place of Len Chalmers, four months earlier. John, who went on to make over 400 appearances for the Club, many of them at centre-half, wore the shirt pictured above in that final. It was white rather than the traditional blue because the match was televised in black and white and Manchester United’s red shirts would have been indistinguishable from Leicester City’s blue shirts.
Also pictured is John’s gold FA Cup Finalists Runners-up medal, which has his name engraved on the reverse side.
The plastic FA Cup Final rosette features pictures of the players in the FA Cup Final squad. From left to right they are Ken Keyworth, Albert Cheesebrough, Jimmy Walsh, Mike Stringfellow, Davie Gibson, Richie Norman, Colin Appleton, Gordon Banks, John Sjoberg, Frank McLintock, Howard Riley, Graham Cross, Len Chalmers and Ian King.
The FA Cup Final ticket cost 7/6 (37½ p) which would be about £7 in today’s values. The date on the ticket, 4 May, 1963, is misleading. The freezing winter of 1962/63 caused many games to be postponed. Leicester City, nicknamed the ‘Ice Age Kings’, went to the top of the table during this protracted freezing spell, winning 10 league and cup matches in succession. The season was extended to cater for the backlog of matches. The stamp overprinting the ticket in the top left hand corner, reveals that the final was not played until 25 May.