Preston North End will play their 22nd league game at Kenilworth Road this weekend, as they take on Luton Town in the resumption of the EFL Championship.
The two sides had met twice in the FA Cup – in the 1890’s and 1920s – before their very first league meeting, which didn’t come until September 1949, playing out a 1-1 draw in Luton.
Since then the head-to-head has been positive for the Lilywhites, with 23 wins and just 11 defeats in the 43 games played thus far.
Our first win down in Bedfordshire was in October 1950, with a 2-1 success, whilst our best wins at the home of the Hatters have all been 3-1 successes, in 1958, 1959 and most recently in 1997 when Tony Lormor, David Eyres – who will feature again soon – and Lee Ashcroft the scorers.
The Hatters play a big part in PNE’s history, having been the last opponent of the late Sir Tom Finney, when they visited PR1 in April 1960, North End winning 2-0 in the great man’s final outing.
We haven’t been to Kenilworth Road since December 2006, whilst our last win was back in November 1999, which is today’s featured game.
It was a game that saw David Moyes’ Lilywhites make it 12 games undefeated and left them occupying one of the second division's automatic promotion places in a season that ended with the title.
North End put aside the disappointment of failing to overcome non-league part-timers Enfield in the FA Cup by inflicting upon the Hatters a rare home defeat.
PNE were among the country's best travellers, so no result away from Deepdale was any surprise and after the game, where a David Eyres brace secured the win, Moyes was in a happy mood.
“I thought we were very professional in the way we went about our job, particularly when we had got the advantage of a couple of first half goals,” he said post-match.
“Luton are among the better sides at this level, but we held them when they threatened to stage a comeback and could even have nicked a couple of more goals ourselves.”
Experienced winger, Eyres, showed North End's strikers how to do it with a couple of well-taken efforts from which their Kenilworth Road hosts could find no recovery.
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