The King Power Stadium was another new ground for me. I’d been to Leicester’s former ground at Filbert Street a few times, although my recollections of that place now seem to have condensed into a couple of spectacular goals from Gazza and Boksic and seeing someone who was stood near to me managing to successfully hit a linesman with a full cup of tea.
I drove from Teesside with Tom and his mate Andy. After making good progress down the M1 we then spent half an hour driving around town trying to find the ground. Surely a signpost or two wouldn’t go amiss.
We eventually found the crowds and assumed that we were close enough to park up and walk the rest of the way. The streets tended to be either residents parking only or else one hour maximum. The restriction expired at 4pm and so I took the chance that I wouldn’t pick up a parking ticket for a ninety minute stay.
We were subjected to sniffer dog searches on the way in, although I’m not sure what they were trained to look for. It seems a bit pointless looking for drugs at a football match. Perhaps they were hip-flask sniffer dogs.
When I lived in Korea decent sausages were just about impossible to find and so on trips back to England I’d always freeze some of Blackwell’s finest and smuggle them in. I was always very impressed by the self-control of the drug dogs who would ignore my suitcase full of pork and lamb products to focus on whatever substances they had been trained to find.
The further delay caused by the searches meant that we were just in time for kick-off and after a few brief hellos to the usual suspects I went straight to my seat, high up in a corner. The former Walkers Stadium was very impressive. I liked that there were no upper and lower tiers, just a single bank of seats of equal height all the way around the pitch.
Leicester were absolutely hopeless and after an early goal from Negredo put the Boro one-up, it took a mistakenly awarded penalty to bring them level.
It was hard to see how they could have romped away with the league last season and the chants of “Champions of England, you’re having a laugh” were more than reasonable.
Another Negredo goal looked to have deservedly clinched the three points for us until a second penalty deep in injury time gave Ranieri’s team a spawny draw.
I know what you’re waiting for. A bad result made worse by us returning to the car and finding a parking ticket. Well, on this occasion I got away with it, although if it’s any consolation finding the M1 was no easier than finding the ground had been.
Trail of the Lion King 