Leicester City In 100 Players: Shirley Hubbard

Shirley Hubbard played at inside-forward and centre-forward for Leicester Fosse from February 1907 until May 1913, and for Leicester City in the 1919/20 season. He also made 17 appearances for Leicester Fosse in wartime regional matches.

In the 1911 edition of the ‘Fosse Photo Album’, a copy of which we have in the Club’s archives, the entry relating to Shirley reads: ‘S. Hubbard is now in his fifth season for the Fosse, for whom he has rendered good service in all three inside positions. Always a good worker from start to finish’.

Shirley was born in Leicester in February 1885. The 1901 census reveals that as a 16-year-old he was a shoe finisher living with his parents and eight brothers in Western Road.

In 2010, Viv Beeby, Shirley’s great niece, told us that soon afterwards, Shirley joined the Leicestershire Regiment. He played army football in Kent and Leicestershire, and in Poona (Pune), Bombay (Mumbai) and Madras (Chennai). She also told us that that Leicester Fosse bought him out of the army when they signed him in 1907.

Shirley was a regular in the 1908 Fosse side that won promotion to the old First Division. Unfortunately, the team was relegated after just one season but Shirley continued in Fosse’s Second Division side until May 1913 when, after playing nearly 150 games, he moved to Darlington and later to South Shields.

In November 1914, Shirley re-joined the Leicestershire Regiment and by February 1915 he was on the Western Front. Between 1916 and 1918, on leave during the war, Shirley made 17 more appearances for Leicester Fosse in the wartime Football League Midland Section.

Demobilised in 1919, Shirley returned to Filbert Street for the first post-war season. He scored the newly-named Leicester’s City’s first-ever away goal before losing his place to new signing Jock Patterson from Dundee.

He remained on the local sporting scene though. At various times in the 1920s and 1930s he was involved with football in Ashby and Loughborough, he wrote a column for the local press and he had two spells at Leicester City before the Second World War, coaching the reserves and the Colts.

Shirley died at his home at Houghton on the Hill in February 1962, four days after his 77th birthday.