The last home game against Southend was notable for a half time appearance by Chris Garland, a City legend who was once named by Jimmy Bloomfield as his best ever signing. The reason was that Chris saved us (single-handedly it seemed) from relegation to division two in 1975 by scoring 8 goals in 10 games after his arrival. He played for City for 2 years, spread over 3 seasons and never gave anything less than one hundred percent.
Sadly Chris’s life has been less than straightforward since he retired from the game and he has been dealing with Parkinson’s disease since he was diagnosed in 1989 and this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the things that life has thrown at Chris.
So it was with some interest that I read Chris Garland’s recently released autobiography and predictably, went straight to the pages detailing his time at Leicester. I will at this point, freely admit to holding Chris in high regard and as I turned the pages I was transported back to my spot on the wall at the front of the old main stand enclosure and the heroics and goals of the man who turned our season on its head back in 1975.
So it was with some anticipation that I waited for Chris Garland to arrive at the club to take part in a book signing to promote his autobiography in the club shop (sorry, megastore)…..
However, looking around it would be hard to know that Chris was doing a book signing unless you had been told beforehand (or read the Mercury). There was no obvious mention on the club website, there was nothing outside the club shop, nothing in the windows of the club shop in fact nothing at all that would let the passing fan know that a seventies legend was present and happy to talk to anyone that wanted to do so.
Inside the store there were a few black and white A4 sheets of paper stuck to the wall telling us of the book signing. It was shabby to be honest and hugely disrespectful of a terrific servant to the club who deserves better.
This left me thinking that it would have taken so little effort (and money) on the part of the club to just make sure that Chris’s book signing was better publicised and (we would imagine) would have pulled more supporters in to the club shop (what the marketers would call ‘footfall’) during this important period for the commercial side of the club.
To compound the error, Chris’s half time appearance was blighted by a faulty microphone and so half the crowd wouldn’t have been fully aware of what was going on.
So at this point I will unashamedly plug Chris Garland’s book and urge you to buy it for yourself or someone who supports City and was doing so during the seventies. It is an honest, candid account of his time at City and also a graphic and harrowing account of his life since he retired from the game. And if you want to know what happened at the training ground when he broke Jeff Blockley’s jaw then that is all there too!
The book is available at the club shop but also can be bought on line via the Trust’s online shop http://www.buy.at/foxestrust/ and then follow the links to either Waterstones, Pickabook or Amazon and enter Chris Garland in the search facility on each site.