Leicester 10-0 Portsmouth: Six Swans, Six Goals and a Record (1928)

The Football Documentary Channel · Published 20 October 2026

Leicester 10-0 Portsmouth: Six Swans, Six Goals and a Record (1928)

On Saturday 20 October 1928, Leicester City beat Portsmouth 10-0 in a First Division match at Filbert Street, the club’s record league win and a mark Leicester still hold. Arthur Chandler scored six of the ten, equalling the club’s own record for a single match, and the afternoon left behind a piece of folklore that outlived the scoreline, the tale of swans flying over the ground as he scored.

The scoreline is beyond dispute. What has kept the afternoon alive is the forward who scored six of the ten and the swans story that grew around him.

A record win, and the omen that outlived it

How Leicester 10-0 Portsmouth reads in the record

The result stands as Leicester City’s record league win: 10-0 against Portsmouth at Filbert Street on 20 October 1928, a First Division fixture watched by 23,621. The competition was League Division One. Three players shared the ten goals: Ernest Hine scored three, Len Barry one and Arthur Chandler six, which add up to 10-0 with no own goals.

The order of the goals has not survived. They were recorded by scorer rather than by minute, so none can be pinned to a particular point in the game. What is certain is the shape of it: a hat-trick for Hine, a single for Barry, and six for Chandler, the double hat-trick that is why anyone outside Leicester still knows the date.

The thrashing did not come from a weak Leicester season. Leicester finished the 1928-29 First Division as runners-up on 51 points, a single point behind champions Sheffield Wednesday, and scored 96 league goals across the campaign. Portsmouth came 20th on 36 points and survived only because Bury and Cardiff City finished below them. The 10-0 was an outlier by any measure, but it fell in a Leicester season good enough to chase the title to the last week.

Arthur Chandler’s six, and the six swans

The swans are folklore, and best carried that way. The legend runs that just after Chandler scored his fifth goal, five swans flew over Filbert Street, and several minutes later a sixth swan passed overhead, after which he scored his sixth. Leicester supporters have known the afternoon as “the six swans” ever since. No contemporary team-sheet or referee’s note records the birds; the tale survives as something the fans have kept rather than something the match report proves.

The six goals are the solid part, and they matter more than the omen. Chandler’s haul against Portsmouth made him the joint holder of Leicester City’s club record for goals in a single match. The other name on that mark is Johnny Duncan, a Leicester teammate, who had scored six on Christmas Day 1924 against Port Vale. Chandler equalled that figure rather than beating it, so the club’s biggest league win produced a haul that only matched what one of its own forwards had already managed.

Chandler is the reason the match is remembered as his and not the team’s. He remains Leicester City’s all-time record goalscorer with 273 goals, across a career at the club that ran from 1923 to 1935. He also holds the club record for goals in a single top-flight season, 34, a figure he reached twice, one of them in 1927-28. A centre forward of that calibre needed no swans to make six against Portsmouth believable. The birds are the ornament; the number is the record.

READ MORE: The goalscorers who defined their clubs, from record hauls to one-off afternoons →

Leicester 10-0 Portsmouth, kept by the swans

Records often fade into small print, and this one survived because a story grew around it. Chandler’s six matched a mark one of his own teammates already held, and the swans gave the afternoon a shape that fans could carry when the scoreline alone would have been just another big number. You can follow more single-day landmarks like it through our On This Day series.

Sources: 11v11, Wikipedia, Leicester City, RSSSF.