For any American listeners, it’s pronounced Leicester. This week’s floodlit extravaganza takes us to the home of insipid cheese, ol’ jug ears and crisps as we dip into a best of edition of the venerable old boy, The Fox in honour of City in May 1994.

The article in question, Good Intent (Geddit?!) is actually about a massive tent used to cover the pitch at Filbert street but there are deffo 2 floodlight pylons there as well, very distinctive were the floodlights at filbert Street.. To be fair drones definitely didn’t exist when this photo was taken so it was quite an achievement to get both of the pylons and about 25% of the Polysphere (massive polythene sheet) which apparently cost “£5000, covering 90,000 sq feet and weighing 24cwt”. wonder what you’d pay for that on Temu nowadays..

These sorts of tents appeared at a few grounds in the 70s but as the article points out there were drawbacks if too much snow accumulated and of course because the grass wouldn’t see sunlight for an appreciable amount of time the pitch took a battering underneath anyway. Never mind the time the club just forgot to use it and got battered 6-2 by a trainer shod Birmingham.

It’s a nice little article revealing that this contraption cost £4,000 per match to run, had to be replaced on a few occasion (tears?) and of course didn’t solve the problem on snow covered/frozen terraces and stadium approaches. Apparently Blue Peter ran a feature on the tent and Peter Shilton took Peter Purves and John Noakes on an army assault course. Classic Blue Peter fare, we were very easy to please in those days.

The back cover pleading for subscribers also carries a great photo from what must have been a pre season friendly somewhere obscure (Sweden ?) in 1977 with Frank McLintock and assistant sat in some great gear during his only summer as Leicester manager. Perhaps McLintock’s most amazing decision as Leicester manager was selling Frank Worthington to Bolton for £20,000 as Worthington needed a signing on fee and higher wages to avoid bankruptcy. Great stuff.