Leicester City In The Second World War: A New League System
When Leicester City opened their 1942/43 season with a home fixture against Birmingham City (pictured below), the Allies were at a difficult stage in the Second World War.
The Axis Powers (Germany and Italy) controlled most of Europe together with much of North Africa and the German army had penetrated deep into Soviet Russia. Meanwhile the Japanese Imperial forces controlled much of China, Indo China and the Pacific.
However, during the 1942/43 season, there were three major turning points which began to tip the balance in the Allies favour.
In June 1942, the American naval victory over the Japanese at the Battle of Midway altered the balance of power in the Pacific.
In October and November 1942, Montgomery’s 8th Army defeated The German Afrika Corps in North Africa.
Between August 1942 and February 1943, the Russians halted Germany’s advance deep into the Soviet Union in the Battle of Stalingrad (now called Volgograd) which claimed an estimated 2M casualties.
On the football front, for the third year running the Football League again reorganised the War time leagues.
For the first part of the season, 69 of the 88 pre-war Football League clubs and three Non-League clubs and were placed into one of three Wartime Sections, North, South and West.
Leicester City were placed into the North Section which had 48 clubs.
The South Section, including the rebel clubs of 1941/42, consisted of 18 clubs.
The West Section consisted of six clubs, including the three Non-League clubs, Lovell’s Athletic, Aberaman Athletic and Bath City.
Unlike the South Section, the North Section’s season was split into two separate league competitions.
The first competition ended on Christmas Day 1942 when Leicester City lost 5-2 at home to Aston Villa (pictured above), with Vernon Chapman (pictured below) on leave from the RAF, one of the home side’s scorers. Each of the 48 teams played 18 games. Leicester City finished 33rd.
With the North Section containing so many clubs, teams’ fixture lists were confined to opponents from their own geographical regions. Hence all of Leicester City’s opponents were Midland clubs.
For their first four fixtures, Leicester City wore maroon shirts for the only time in their history until the 2020/21 season. This was because their kit had been destroyed when the Main Stand caught fire nine weeks earlier.
The North Section’s second league competition ran from Boxing Day 1942 until 1 May 1943. By this time a young 18-year-old called Norman Plummer (pictured below) had made his Leicester City debut. He went on to captain the Club in the FA Cup final seven years later.
The West Section, whose season had finished on Christmas Day, joined an expanded North Section of 54 clubs for the second part of the season. The West Section champions, Lovell’s Athletic, a team based at a Newport sweet factory, amazingly finished the season as runners-up to Northern Section Champions Liverpool.
Leicester City, by contrast, finished 22nd out of 54.
Not all clubs played the same amount of games but bizarrely, this factor wasn’t taken into consideration in the final table. Actual points gained, irrespective of the number of games played, determined the final position.
Leicester City’s first 10 matches of the second part of the season also doubled up as qualifying matches for the League Cup North.
This was part of the War Cup competition which had replaced the FA Cup.
The eventual winners of the North Cup played the winners of the South Cup in the War Cup Final. This was held at Stamford Bridge in May 1943 with Blackpool defeating Arsenal 4-2 in front of a crowd of over 55,000.
Leicester won six of these of these first 10 games which doubled up as league matches, thereby qualifying for the knockout stage of the North Cup competition. This was a two-legged tie against Nottingham Forest.
In the second leg, in front of Filbert Street’s 9,000 crowd, which was the biggest gate of the season, the aggregate score was 1-1 at full time necessitating extra-time. Nottingham Forest scored the winner in the 119th minute from an offside position. The crowd was so incensed that the referee had to be smuggled out of the ground by the police for his own safety.
During the 1942/43 season Leicester City, in common with all other clubs, had difficulties selecting teams due to players often being unavailable because of the demands created by war work and by players being in the forces.
Leicester City played a total of 38 games that season and only three players, Sep Smith, Bert Howe and goalkeeper Alick Grant (main image) made over 30 appearances. In total the Club had to call on 58 players, many of whom were under 21 years of age. Twenty-six of the players used were guest players.
The only player to reach double figures in goalscoring was a guest player. He was Stoke City’s England international forward Freddie Steele (pictured above) who scored 13 goals out of the 72 goals scored.