Leicester Likely Lads

Keith Arthur recalls the greatest match team in history – the Leicester Likely Lads, a side that rewrote the bream rulebook

HERE’S an annoying advert on TV at the moment. You must have seen it: “Did somebody say Just Eat?” Go back 45 years and ask “Did somebody say just bream?” and this photo would be the answer.

It is, of course, the fabulous Leicester Likely Lads – minus a couple of regular faces such as my old pal Roy Marlow. The ringmaster of this circus of angling excellence, the remarkable Ivan Marks, is in front and centre of the group but members such as Big Jim Todd

T(top left), Tom Bedder (middle row, third from right) and Dave Downes (behind Ivan) could seemingly catch bream from a damp sponge.

Although it was bream matches that created the legend of the Likely Lads, they were wonderful all-rounders. It was just that, in the team’s pomp, most matches were won with bream and they were best at it.

I recall a story about Ivan winning a match on the Warwickshire Avon by crushing casters as he catapulted them out. The husks floated and the innards put a scent in the water that drew chub from the peg below...enough to win. I actually fished in an invitation team match on the Thames at Reading and, as regular Thames anglers, our London Anglers’ Association squad was fancied to do well.

We were absolutely obliterated out of sight by the Likely Lads – without Ivan on the day – who catapulted out what everyone thought were small balls of groundbait and caught roach and chub way beyond the range we could loosefeed.

They actually fed balls of sticky maggot – this was at least 45 years ago, long before anyone else had heard of it.

To use one of Ivan’s famously mixed quotes: “We always had a trick up our pocket”.

In an era of great anglers and teams, this magnificent bunch re-wrote match fishing history and were idols for those of us who had to try and beat them.

“The members could could catch bream from a damp sponge”