Frank McLintock remembers it all as if it were yesterday. The trouble is, when you've lived as long as McLintock has, the years start to merge together – something he freely admits.
At 81, the former Scotland, Leicester City and Arsenal midfielder remains a bright and bubbly character but there is a tinge of melancholy in his voice, too. Since his wife Barbara died two years ago, he spends his spare time playing golf at South Herts Golf Club with George Graham, his former Arsenal team-mate, or visiting his four sons, often for a bite of dinner. It has forced him to face the reality of what comes next.
He jokes about death candidly saying: “Before I kick the bucket, I don't want to pack in all my sports. I've packed in football but I don't want to give up golf as well. I'm hoping I can still play until such times as I'm ready to say 'ta ta'.”
Graham couldn't make golf earlier this week, though, and there remains in the pair some of the competitive edge that never leaves the professional sportsman. Above all, McLintock just loves the fun of the game, even if practical, every day obstacles can sometimes get in the way of his weekly reunions with Graham.
“George has got builders in at the minute,” says McLintock. “They all arrived and dumped themselves on him, he didn't play earlier this week. He'll be playing this Friday with us. It's quite close between the two of us but George is starting to hit the ball further than me and that's pissing me off – I'm going to have to beat him up in the changing room. I've not played well these last three months since [the third] lockdown. Nobody picked a club up but it has affected me more than some of the players I play with. I'm 81 now . . . if you are 30 or 40 odds it doesn't affect you at all.”
Age and the passing of the years is a recurring theme for McLintock. When he talks about growing old it's almost like he's the passenger who fell asleep on a train and woke up in a foreign country. A chat with a former team-mate can act as a baseball bat to the solar plexus.
“I look back. I was 17. Where did it go? You can't believe it. It's 50 years since Arsenal won the double. It seems like five years, it really does. [Former Arsenal and Scotland goalkeeper] Bob Wilson phoned me the other day and we were talking about it and it just doesn't seem possible that we won the double 50 years ago. Maybe five, or 10, would be more like it but it is amazing how time flies in and yet it stays with you right until you either die or fade away.”
He says he remembers the domestic cup finals – he featured in five – the most. It is 60 years since the first of those when Leicester City, the team where the teenage McLintock started his career, were the bridesmaids to Tottenham's double-winning team. That side of Blanchflower, Mackay and White were regarded as the seminal force of the early 1960s but Leicester were not just there as a punchbag.
It was a team hewn from Scottish granite – there were 27 Scots on either the coaching or playing staff at Leicester in the early 60s. The manager Matt Gillies was from Loganlea in West Lothian, his trainer Alec Dowdalls had been the Scotland and Celtic physio and the starting team on that May afternoon at Wembley contained four Scots including McLintock. The captain Jimmy Walsh was a fellow Glaswegian, the centre-back Ian King was from Loanhead while Hughie McIlmoyle, a callow striker from Port Glasgow, led the line.
So fresh out of the box was McIlmoyle that he had only made his Leicester debut a couple of weeks earlier against West Ham United. The club's recognised first-choice centre-forward Ken Leek, who had scored 25 times that season including a goal in every round of the cup, was inexplicably dropped by Gillies amid rumour and counter rumour. The official explanation was that McIlmoyle, with a handful of appearances to his name, was in better form.
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“Hugh McIlmoyle came in and he was just starting out, finding his feet,” recalls McLintock. “He was a good player but Kenny Leek was our best goalscorer and it didn't help us losing him.”
There was a further setback when Leicester's Len Chalmers was badly hurt in a dangerous tackle by the Spurs forward Les Allen around the 20-minute mark. These were the days before substitutes so the right-back soldiered on despite a ruptured knee ligament and blood oozing out of the wound. He lasted about an hour on the left wing before coming off, with McLintock moving from midfield to cover for him.
“It was quite a bad tackle actually,” says McLintock. “I don't think he was a dirty player but the tackle was a bit nasty. It put Len Chalmers out of the game and it put us out of the game to a certain extent as well.”
Within six minutes Spurs – who had been pegged back by Leicester's tactics despite their numerical advantage – took the lead through Bobby Smith. Nine minutes later, Terry Dyson added a second and Leicester's chance was gone.
“We had a decent side,” says McLintock. “We performed pretty well in the final but we were outdone by [the fact we only had] 10 men and a Wembley pitch which, in those days, always looked superb but was very tiring. It just sucked the energy right out of you. We didn't discredit ourselves at all, we actually showed we were a team of good character.”
Two years later, McLintock was part of the Leicester side that lost another FA Cup final – this time at the hands of Manchester United – and he concluded he would have to move to fulfil his ambitions of winning a trophy.
“I really loved Leicester but when we got beaten in the second final it peed me off because I was desperate to win something and that resulted in me going to Arsenal. And then I went into two cup finals and lost the two of them [with Arsenal]! I played in four cup finals before I won one. I eventually won the double, of course, and the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup.”
The redoubtable Glaswegian was not lacking in character. He supplemented the £20 a week he earned at Leicester with painting and decorating work courtesy of the six-year apprenticeship he was serving. Indeed, he whitewashed a cellar in Leicester the morning before he took on Spurs at Wembley. If that speaks to the vastly contrasting worlds inhabited by top professional footballers then and now, it also marks out McLintock's determination – a trait that came to the fore while renegotiating his contract in later years.
“Me and Gordon Banks were internationals at Leicester. We decided we were going on strike. We still trained and played and did everything correctly but we were on strike saying £20 was not enough. After about three months, Leicester gave in and gave Gordon and I £30. The next day we found out that Matt Gillies gave the rest of the team the same. The boys were all saying 'well done, Frank, same again, go back in and get some more'. It was hard work in those days trying to make money.”
This afternoon, 60 years on from that defeat to Spurs, Leicester will do battle with another London team, still seeking that maiden FA Cup. McLintock senses today's encounter against Chelsea could be a make or break one for Leicester and their manager Brendan Rodgers, much as it was for him in 1963.
“He's done very well, he's made a few mistakes in the past, probably learned from it and I think he looks very good. The team plays good football and I think the players have got good faith in him. Leicester will do well if they manage to hang on to him. I could very easily see him going to one of the bigger clubs in the next year or so. [But] it would have to be a really good side before he would move away from Leicester.”
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