The Foxes Trust website occasionally highlights websites we feel would be of interest to all City fans and a new project undertaken by The FOX editorial team certainly comes under this category, so we asked the team for some background.
“For several years we have been lucky enough to have access to Neville Chadwick Photography’s fantastic stock of City photos, as well as the images that David Morcom has specifically taken for the fanzine since 1991.
With limited space in The FOX there was a level of frustration that so many great photographs charting the life and times of our club were never going to see the light of day. Between them, Nev and Dave cover six decades of Leicester City and we decided the only way we could share this vast number of images with you was to present them in an online archive.
Fox Photos is very much a work in progress, there are around 500 images on the site at present, but we plan to add many more in time. Just in the way that ‘Of Fossills & Foxes’ is the best football club history in publication, we aim to make ‘Fox Photos’ the number one online photo archive dedicated to a single football club.
Nev’s archive begins in the mid-60s with Matt Gilles’ excellent side starring Gordon Banks, Derek Dougan and Davie Gibson. We then move on to the Frank O’Farrell era which brought an FA Cup Final, a relegation and a Division Two Title; and the fondly-remembered Jimmy Bloomfield times which some great portraits and action involving the likes of Peter Shilton, Frank Worthington and Keith Weller.
The brief and gloomy Frank McLintock season is followed by the popular tenure of Jock Wallace, with some great shots from the game at Orient which saw Larry May’s goal clinch the Second Division Championship. Gordon Milne’s successful reign is also well covered with images from the legendary Fulham and Oldham away games that led to promotion in 1982-83. The largely depressing Bryan Hamilton and David Pleat period of the late-80s isn’t that well covered presently, we’ll do it when we can face it.
Brian Little’s renaissance forms the largest part of the site as we work our way through Dave Morcom’s back catalogue, and we will also build up the Martin O’Neill Years to the sort of prominence they deserve as soon as we can. The age of digital photography comes into play roughly at the same time as we upped sticks from Filbert Street and moved to the Walkers Stadium. Again, we have a few images up from this time, but have a very large amount still to do.
Although we want everyone to be able to enjoy this archive like they would a photo exhibition, there is also a commercial side to Fox Photos. All the images you can see are available to buy as prints in A5, A4 or A3 size using our safe and reliable marketing system.
Any profits will go towards helping out The FOX and trying to put it on a more stable financial footing. So please bear Fox Photos in mind when you are buying Christmas and Birthday presents – they make a unique gift that you can be sure will be well received by the Leicester City fan in your life.
If you have a photo in mind that isn’t on the website then please don’t hesitate to ask. Most home games are covered, so you would be able to find someone’s ‘debut match’ and also many Junior Fox mascots had around half a reel of film devoted to them in the 70s and 80s.
Also, if you have any City-related images of your own that you think should be added to the site then let us know.
As well as the many players, featured both on and off the field, and the managers and coaches, the other stars of this show are the fans. There are a large number of crowd shots on the site, featuring thousands of faces so come and see if you can find yourself at http://www.fox-photos.co.uk”