Leicester City In 100 Players: Billy Frame

The series continues with full-back Billy Frame, who had one of the longest first team careers in the Club’s history and who was a key figure in the first team at Leicester City from 1933 until 1950.  

Lanarkshire-born Billy Frame played for Leicester City as a right full-back between 1933 and 1950. Only five other players in the Club’s history had lengthier senior careers at Filbert Street and only five players have made more than Billy’s 459 competitive appearances for the Club.

Some 220 of these appearances were in the Football League, either side of the Second World War, 19 appearances were in the FA Cup and a further 220 appearances (a Club record) were in the Wartime Regional Leagues.

Billy signed as a 21-year-old from the Glaswegian club Shawfield Juniors, the team that also discovered Frank McLintock several years later.

He was seen as an eventual replacement for Adam Black, another Scottish full-back who also played at Filbert Street for over 15 years.

Billy waited a year before making his Leicester debut, against Tottenham Hotspur, in October 1934. At the end of that season, his team were relegated after a 10-year spell in the top flight.  

He was a regular first choice in the years leading up to the outbreak of war in September 1939, playing a key part in City winning the Second Division in 1937, before suffering relegation again in 1939.

During the war, he was a virtual ever-present in the Leicester side which, in 1941, reached the War Cup Semi-Final against Arsenal. He was a key member of the City teams that won the Wartime Midland Cup in May 1941 and the Wartime Football League Championship South in December 1941. Both of these cups are in the Club’s trophy cabinet.

Billy continued at right-back in Johnny Duncan’s post-war sides, but he missed out playing in the 1949 FA Cup Final as he had been injured half way through the season.  

However, a week after the cup final, he played in the vital last game of the season at Cardiff, helping his side to a draw which kept them from being relegated to the Third Division.

Billy left Filbert Street in July 1950 to become player-manager of Rugby Town.

In 1954, Billy took over The Griffin Inn in Belgrave Gate for four years before moving to Nottingham to run pubs called the Cocked Hat and the Rose Grower.

Billy died in Nottingham in 1992. In 2009, the Club, at the request of Billy’s family, compiled an album of photographs of Billy’s time at Leicester as a Christmas present for his 97-year-old widow Agnes.