O's Through The Ages - A Brief History Of Leyton Orient F.C.
Leyton Orient were founded in 1881 by a cricket club in East London. They named themselves after a shipping company. They have spent most of their existence in the lower reaches of the Football League, winning nothing that anybody outside of E10 would consider significant.
They have also survived two world wars, a string of financial disasters, an Italian owner who appointed eleven managers in three years, and relegation from the Football League after 112 consecutive years of membership.
Orient Through the Ages is a ten-episode series — roughly thirty minutes each — covering the full history of the club from Victorian East London to the present day. Players who went to the Somme and didn't come back. Tommy Johnston, who scored 121 league goals and asked for his ashes to be interred at Brisbane Road.
Laurie Cunningham, who arrived from Archway and was at Real Madrid within five years. The 1978 FA Cup semi-final. A Channel 4 documentary Forbes named one of the five greatest sports films ever made. Justin Edinburgh, who won the National League title and was dead nine days later.
Not the story of a glamour club. The story of a club that has endured — and why that turns out to matter more.
O's Through The Ages - A Brief History Of Leyton Orient F.C.
Latest Episodes
Episode 6 : The Cup That Got Away - The 1977–78 FA Cup Run, Peter Kitchen, and the Semi-Final That Still Hurts (1977–1982)
On 8 April 1978, Leyton Orient walked out at Stamford Bridge in front of 49,698 people for an FA Cup semi-final against Arsenal. They had beaten Chelsea and Middlesbrough to get there. They had a centre-forward who had scored in every single ro...
Episode 5 : The Boy from Archway - Bloomfield's Orient, Laurie Cunningham, and the Decade the Club Rediscovered Itself (1966–1977)
In 1974, a seventeen-year-old from Archway who had been rejected by Arsenal joined Leyton Orient. His name was Laurie Cunningham. Three years later he was sold to West Bromwich Albion for £110,000. By 1979 he was at Real Madrid. Within a decade...
Episode 4: A Season in the Sun - The Golden Age, Johnny Carey, and the One Year at the Top (1955–1966)
On the afternoon of 24 August 1962, Leyton Orient beat Middlesbrough 3-1 in Division One. It was their first ever top-flight match. In the crowd were two schoolboys who would grow up to write Cats and Requiem. On the pitch was...
Episode 3: Coming Home - The Long Lower Leagues, a New Name, and a Ground Called Brisbane Road (1929–1955)
For twenty-six years between the wars and after them, Orient were a club in transition — and occasionally in crisis. Relegated from Division Two in 1929. Evicted from their ground in 1930. Forced to play at a speedway stadium with a cinder trac...
Episode 2: They Took the Lead - Clapton Orient, the Footballers' Battalion, and the Cost of War ( 1905–1929)
In December 1914, with the First World War four months old, ten Clapton Orient players attended a recruiting meeting at Fulham Town Hall and enlisted together. They were the first Football League club to enlist en masse. Within two years, three...