Leicester is alive as Foxes and Tigers weave special tale
In it, the author moaned to readers about the state of sport within his beloved city. The cricket team had endured a miserable summer, the rugby team had apparently adopted a boring style of play and, worst of all, the football team was sliding towards relegation from the Premier League.
Now nearly 18 months have passed since that letter was published and you would struggle to find a piece of writing more out of date.
For if Leicester’s status as England’s sporting capital was in a sad state back then, now it is positively booming.
To those across the globe, it is Leicester’s football team who are making the headlines. Under Claudio Ranieri, the Foxes have gone from relegation candidates to Premier League leaders with just four games to go.
Suddenly, everyone wants to know about a provincial city in England which is most famous for producing 11 million bags of Walkers crisps a day and boasts a population of just over 300,000.
“When I went back to Italy recently, everyone was talking about Leicester,” says Ranieri. “The Pope? I don’t know if he is backing us, but I do think that now, all the world knows where the city of Leicester is.
“I was watching something on CNN and it was asking where Leicester was. Then they showed a little map and pointed it out saying, ‘Here it is.’
“If CNN are speaking about this football club and in places like Australia and everywhere else it is a talking point, then it is fantastic.”
As well as appearances on television channels around the world, Leicester’s name is being splashed across the pages of international newspapers.
The football team were on the front page of The Wall Street Journal in March, while they were also recently the first English club to grace the cover of Italian newspaper Corriere dello Sport.
The sheer scale of media attention on Leicester can be seen by attending one of Ranieri’s press conferences. His most recent one had 70 journalists, forcing the Italian to forgo his usual ritual of shaking hands with everyone in the room.
“If I do this,” he said. “We waste one hour!”
Among the media throng were members of the press from Australia, Belgium, Denmark, France, and Japan. Rob Tanner, a football reporter for the Leicester Mercury, was being interviewed by several of the television crews.
Previously, Tanner would attend press conferences at the training ground where just three people would be present: himself, local radio, and the manager.
Now he is the one being interviewed, with even a Caribbean news organisation enquiring if he is available to speak via Skype.
Such are the number of interview requests for Tanner that the Mercury’s sports editor has had to place a ban on them until the end of the season as they are eating into work hours.
But while Leicester’s remarkable football team may be leading the way when it comes to global interest, those from the city are well aware of the wider sporting success being enjoyed.
The basketball team, the Leicester Riders, won the British Basketball League Championship earlier this month in front of a sell-out crowd at their new arena.
Never mind the Foxes’ fairytale run in the Premier League, Riders coach Rob Paternostro believes his team are having their own dream season after clinching the crown with just four defeats to their name.
“To win the Championship in our first season in the new arena is just beyond belief – a fairytale,” Paternostro says.
“It’s amazing. When you win the league, you know that you deserve it because it’s a long, long journey with a lot of games. In a new arena, to win the league in the first year is amazing.”
Alongside the basketball and football teams’ brilliant seasons, the Leicester Tigers have been ensuring that the city’s status as a rugby hotbed remains intact.
The football team may be grabbing the headlines around the world, but there can be no denying the success the Tigers have enjoyed this season.
This weekend, they face Racing Metro 92 in the semi-finals of the Champions Cup as they bid to be crowned European champions for the first time in over a decade. Domestically they are on course to secure a top-four finish in the Aviva Premiership, meaning an impressive double remains a possibility.
You would expect to find most teams on the cusp of such an achievement to be making headline news, but Leicester City’s success in the Premier League has left the Tigers somewhat in the Foxes’ shadow.
“It has been fascinating for us all,” says Martin Crowson, the Leicester Mercury’s chief rugby correspondent.
“The football story is magical, we’ve had interest from absolutely everywhere.”
For Tigers fans, they are a bit more used to success — although they haven’t won as many trophies as they would have liked in recent years.
“There is a really good story bubbling at Tigers, which is perhaps going unnoticed by some people, and it is the fact that this club was on its knees last year. Playing really turgid, boring rugby, they somehow scrapped to third place.
“There were rumours of infighting and big stars wanting to leave. They have gone and signed Aaron Mauger as head coach from the Canterbury Crusaders and they are now playing some of the most attractive rugby I can remember them playing. They are averaging 30-odd points a game. It’s a shame that story almost goes unnoticed.”
While the Tigers success is slipping under the radar at the moment, victory over Racing on Sunday would put them on the map once again, and a step closer to a first European title since 2002.
Something their director of rugby, Richard Cockerill, is well aware of.
“For us, it is about creating our own history,” says Cockerill. “We try not to live in the past too much here although there is, and should be, an awareness of all that, there have been some great eras, including that side of Martin Johnson, Neil Back and others. We’ve done some pretty good things since then but this group is out to create its own history. No one is hung up on the fact that it has been 14 years since we did win it.”
A win for the Tigers on Sunday would keep alive the prospect of a memorable season of sport in Leicester.
Indeed, come the end of May, the city could be the home of the Premier League champions and the European Rugby Champions Cup winners, while the Aviva Premiership may also be brought home.
So much for the sporting capital being a in sad state.
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