EFL once investigated Leicester for conceding 12 goals to Forest | OneFootball

Nottingham Forest’s successful season, and Leicester’s recent struggles and travails with goalkeepers, brings to mind a game, at the City Ground, between the two sides almost 116 years ago on the 21st April 1909. The match was played towards the end of the first season the Fosse – as they were then known – played in England’s top-flight, 24 years after their formation in 1884. Relegation was already guaranteed, with the Filbert Street side finishing with only 25 points from 38 matches, nine points from safety. It was 16 years before Leicester City – as they were by then known – experienced First Division football again.

On that Spring Day in 1909, Leicester’s fate might have already been sealed but they had the opportunity to salvage some pride by helping to ensure that a struggling Forest team joined them in Division 2. What happened was barely believable. Fosse’s goalkeeper Horace Bailey conceded 12 goals (eight by half time) with no reply in what remains to this day the club’s record defeat and the joint record loss in the history of England’s top-flight. No less than three Nottingham players scored hat tricks.

The website Foxes Talk tells us that one newspaper at the time reported: ‘Forest were allowed to crowd around the goal almost as much as they liked. The backs and half-backs made hardly any attempt to stop them’. Forest ended the season escaping relegation by only two points, although two seasons later they joined Fosse in Division 2.

Even though Fosse were a struggling side, a 12-0 defeat was still out of the ordinary. Some – not least Forest’s relegation rivals - suspected foul play. After the game, the Football League initiated an inquiry, held at Leicester’s Grand Hotel on May 6th. It concluded - after evidence was given by club officials and two players, including Bailey - that no corruption was involved. The explanation was much more simple, albeit hardly less complimentary to the club.

It seems that the poor Leicester performance was down to the team having been out celebrating the wedding of a former player – Bob ‘Leggy’ Turner who had recently moved to Everton - the day before the game. The festivities, it is said, lasted until the early hours of the day of the Forest game and several players were nursing appalling hangovers.

Horace Bailey wasn’t really to blame for the scale of the defeat. He was an excellent keeper, an amateur who won England honours and was part of the victorious Great Britain side (represented by England) in the 1908 London Olympic Games. He only conceded one goal in the three matches the team played in the tournament. Remarkably, it was reported that he had a good game against Forest that day and the result could have been much worse without him. The goalkeeper made only 68 appearances for Leicester leaving in March 2010 and subsequently turning out for Derby County, his place of birth, and Birmingham City. He died on August 1st, 1960, at the age of 79.