PNE 0 v Foxes 1
On the short trip for me to Preston I thought about Steve Walsh's foreword to the 'Essential History of Leicester City' book – "Leicester to most people is simply an unremarkable city, somewhere in the middle of the country … but to the people of Leicester it is much more than that…The story of Leicester gives an example of what can be achieved by hard work, commitment and loyalty to the cause. The fans have been brought up to expect its team to not know when it is beaten, and to never quit".
And meeting my Preston-supporting mate before the game and him all full of dreams of promotion, I thought about how we haven't had a dream in a long time. And I thought about how many times in the last week I'd told friends and colleagues in Manchester that Leicester were one of only a handful of clubs never to have been out of the top two flights. And in the national football museum at Deepdale I saw young Leicester fans marveling at a wall display showing league placings for the past 100 years and what a force we've been from time to time. And I thought about the Talking Heads song 'Once in a Lifetime', and I thought 'how did we get here?'
And most of all I wished Walshy was still playing, cos I know that when the chips are down you look around in the changing room and wonder 'who's going to do it for us today?' and I know its a Yank saying but even though the irony is that we've had much worse teams over the years, I just didn't think we had the 'go to' players to get us out of this pickle. I could feel the soil falling over our heads and I must confess I wasn't sure who could save us, and cos I've not been to many games this season I felt I'd not done my best and I felt pretty low about the whole shooting match.
But just when you think football nowadays is about as passionate as a trip to Tescos and that it doesn't mean a thing to you anymore, you have a day like this and it was right up there with winning the play-offs and the league cups. We didn't need the go-to players because we had the go-to fans, they weren't just the 12th man they were the 13th and 14th as well – and their belief transmitted to the players and they became as giants. And with the engraver's hand poised to chisel a name onto the Tony James Great Escape Trophy, who could have guessed it would be the name of Nisse Johannsen, the 66-1 longest punt on the coupon for first goalscorer – in the last minute – in front of the Leicester fans. What a moment!….
‘Picture courtesy of Raymonds/lcfc.com’ “Nissa – the Tony James of 2007?”
The game didn't have a massive amount of goalmouth action but it was played on a knife-edge with both teams knowing that a point would be quite useful for them – but 3 points would be utterly priceless. Consequently neither team really seemed to know how much to go for it, and the game changed like the shoreline and the sea as both teams went through alternate phases of thinking they could win it, before taking their foot off the pedal for a while.
Wortho must be a believer in the 'you don't understand what pressure is when you're young' school of thought, with Logan, Mattocks and Wesolowski all starting, making this a very young team when you remember that Stearman, Fryatt and a few others are still young pups as well. It was the first time I'd seen Mattocks and Newton and I liked the shape they gave to the side. The main first half action was a stinging Hughes drive that the keeper saved well, Newton volleying over at the end of a good move, and McAuley performing a heroic tackle to avoid an almost certain goal for them.
PNE seemed to up their game in the second half, Nugent came into it more, and we all expected and feared that Leicester might retreat literally and mentally and try to cling on for a draw. Logan was called into action two or three times but answered all the questions. But to our delight we were the stronger team for the last 20 minutes, even when we had to reshuffle when McAuley was injured and with Danny Night Nurse and the Horse on as subs. Johanssen had one shot headed off the line and over the bar, and when Hume's free kick hit the post with five minutes left it looked like it would be a useful point but that the torture would go on for the last two matches.
But then Johanssen got his boot on the end of Hume's free kick, and in super slo-mo the back of the net billowed, our minds took a nano-second to register the enormity of what it meant, and the rest, as they say cliche fans, is history. And even though scoring in the last minute is still too early ideally for Leicester to hang on for, nothing was going to spoil the day. Milan was in the stands and seemed to be loving it as much as the fans.
PS Please everyone keep buying The Fox and keep it going, in the national museum there is a big quote from The Fox on the wall about how football has lost its soul, it made me feel very proud and a bit emotional to see it there.
PPS And I know its nowt to do with footy, but good luck to my friends Scott and Shell whose baby is due today
Preston: Henderson, Alexander, St. Ledger, Chilvers, Hill (Whaley 78), Sedgwick (Agyemang 82), Soley, Davidson, Pugh, Nugent, Ormerod (Ricketts 72). Subs Not Used: Lonergan, Wilson.
Booked: Chilvers, Nugent.
Leicester: Logan, Stearman, Kisnorbo, McAuley (Horsfield 67), Johansson, Newton, Hughes, Wesolowski, Mattock, Fryatt (Cadamarteri 61), Hume. Subs Not Used: Henderson, Maybury, Hammond.
Booked: Hume, Newton, Kisnorbo. Goals: Johansson 90.
Att: 14,725 Ref: C Oliver (Northumberland).
The views expressed in this report are the opinions of the Trust member nominated to file the report only and do not represent the views of the Foxes Trust organisation