[Lord Snooty]

Huddersfield Town v Doncaster Rovers
Sky Bet League One
Tuesday August 19th - 19:45 ko
at the Accu Stadium

Huddersfield Town welcome Doncaster Rovers to the J'Accuse Stadium on Tuesday night for a game of football in the third tier of English football.

And once again, we go into the match as a club in crisis after defeat in Blackpool on Saturday afternoon left the club on a dire run of one defeat in a row. The fans are at breaking point and are once more questioning the abilty of the players signed by chairman Kevin Nagle and his new, young and inexperienced manager Lee Grant.

One of those players, striker Alfie May, will be hoping to get his Town goalscoring tally back up and running against the club that gave him his big break. As a 24 year old, Alfie was banging 'em in for fun on the non league scene and after scoring 37 goals in 45 games for Hythe Town in the Isthmian League, Rovers decided to take a gamble. He scored 23 times for them in his four seasons there, helping them get promoted in 2017.

But there's another player on the pitch, who definitely will score in this game. A man who needs no introduction to the Accu Stadium, but will get one anyway. It's the Keighley Caravanner, Matty Pearson. It'll be a header from a corner, followed by a cupping of the ear in front of the Cowshed. You just know it.

A brief history of Doncaster Rovers: formed in 1879 by a group of workers at the Great Northern Railway works in the town, they turned professional in 1885 and entered the FA Cup for the first time in 1887/88. They joined the Midland League in 1891 and were champions twice before they got elected into the Football League in 1901, replacing New Brighton Tower FC.

Their first season in the FL is still recorded as their best ever, finishing 7th in Division Two. They failed to gain re-election after finishing in the bottom three in their second season, getting replaced by Bradford City. They went back to the Midland League, but got re-elected back into the FL at the end of that season. It didn't last though and they were once again booted out at the end of that season, not to return until 1923/24 when they were elected into Division Three (North) to replace Stalybridge Celtic.

They won Div 3N in 1934/35, winning promotion to the Second Division. It was a two season stay up there, before they were relegated again.

After the war, they won Division 3N again in 1946/47, but were relegated straight away. In April 1949, they appointed Huddersfield Town's Peter Doherty as player/manager and this turned out to be their best signing ever as he not only won them the title, being top scorer in the 1949/50 season (30 goals in 39 games), but also gave them eight seasons in Division Two, their longest stay in that league.

He resigned in January 1958 after many disputes with the Board of Directors. The club were relegated at the end of that season and the year after to end up in the recently formed Divison 4 by 1960.

The next few decades saw them yo-yoing between the 3rd and the 4th until the nineties arrived and Ken Richardson took over, took them into administration and took them out of the league and almost took them out of existence.

With Richardson in prison after setting the stand at Belle Vue alight in an insurance scam, the club was bought out by a consortium in 1999 and in 2003, the club won the Conference League Play Off Final and promotion back into the Football League. This was with Dave Penney as manager and that Final was played at Stoke City's stadium against Dagenham & Redbridge. Rovers were 2-0 up through goals from Paul Green and Dave Morley, but the Daggers fought back to force extra time. This game was the only Play Off match in England to have been won by the Golden Goal method of next goal wins. It was Francis Tierney who scored it in the 111th minute to earn the Rovers promotion, with captain Paul Barnes, the ex Town striker, lifting the trophy.

Back in the EFL, they reached the quarter finals of the League Cup, defeating Manchester City and Aston Villa before losing to Arsenal on penalties. Penney resigned soon after and was replaced by Sean O'Driscoll.

On New Years Day 2007, Rovers moved into their new stadium, having Huddersfield Town in as the first opponents. Not a good day for us.

Later that season, they won the Football League Trophy in Cardiff. Once again they threw away a 2-0 lead, this time against Bristol Rovers after Jonathan Forte and Paul Heffernan had scored. Graeme Lee got the winner in the 110th minute for a 3-2 victory.

The following season, 2007/08, things got even better. They narrowly missed out on automatic promotion, but won their Play Off semi final 5-1 on aggregate against Southend United. This took them to the newly rebuilt Wembley Stadium for a showdown with the Champions of Europe, Leeds United, who were by now, a third division club.

A goal from James Hayter in the 47th minute (pictured below) gave Rovers the win against the biggest club in world football and promotion to the 2nd tier, now calling itself the Championship.

They had three seasons in the Championship, helped by the goals of Billy Sharp, who came on loan from Sheffield United before signing on full time. But after a poor start to the 2011/12 season, O'Driscoll resigned and was replaced by Dean Saunders, who got them relegated.

The 2012/13 season had incredible finish. Saunders had left the club and Brian Flynn had taken over as the Rovers headed to Griffin Park for the final game of the season against Brentford. The stakes couldn't have been higher. The winner wins promotion.

In the last minute of added on time, Brentford were awarded a penalty. Marcello Trotta stepped up and slammed it against the crossbar. The ball rebounded into play and Donny Rovers raced forward with it. James Coppinger scored to make it 1-0 with only seconds remaining and not only win them promotion, but also pip AFC Bournemouth to the League One title.

As is the norm with Doncaster Rovers though, success wasn't sustained and two relegations followed to see them back down in League Two by 2016. But with Darren Ferguson as new manager, they came straight back up to League one in the following season.

When Ferguson left, he was replaced by Grant McCann, who got them to the 2019 League One Play Offs, where they were beaten in the semis by Charlton Athletic on penalties.

They were relegated again in 2021, after managers with Town connections had been in charge. They were Andy Butler and Darren Moore, but it was Gary McSheffrey who was in the hot seat as they went down. He was replaced by another ex Town player and manager, Danny Schofield, who was sacked and replaced with the returning McCann in May 2023. He got them to the Play Offs again in 2024, but they were beaten by Crewe Alexandra in the semis.

That defeat didn't affect them though as they went on to win last season's League Two title, which brings them to Huddersfield this week for the first league visit to our ground since September 2013.

Head to Head



Town lead the head to head with 20 wins to Donny's 14, with 10 draws.

So that last match at the John McAccupharm Stadium was a 0-0 draw in 2013/14. The return match back at their place was a 2-0 win for the Rovers with Billy Sharp, of course, on target. David Cotterill got the second.

The first season together was in the 1950s after we had let Peter Doherty go and become the Doncaster player/manager. It led to our relegation and their promotion, so we met in Division Two in 1952/53. We were still the biggest club in Yorkshire at the time and a massive crowd of 27,614 crammed into the Belle Vue stadium. If you ever went there, you'll know that's one helluva squeeze! The game finished at 1-1 with Jimmy Watson scoring our goal.

He was on target again a week later as the teams met again at Leeds Road with Town winning 3-1. Jimmy Glazzard and Alistair Gunn scored the other two.

We went up that season, but when we came down again in 1956, Doherty's men did the double over Town sides led by Andy Beattie and then Bill Shankly.

We drifted apart for a few seasons. Only an FA Cup game in the whole of the sixties, won by Town by a Les Massie (pictured below) goal to nil in the 3rd round of 1965. We met up again in the seventies, down in the 4th Division and did the double over them in the first half of the season 1979/80 when we won the title. A 3-0 win at home in September with an Ian Holmes penalty and goals from David Cowling and Ian Robins, was followed at the end of December with a 2-1 win at Belle Vue. Brian Stanton scored our first before the legend Steve Kindon, a recent signing from Burnley, scored his first goal in the bright blue n white of Huddersfield Town.

We had a couple of seasons together in the eighties in the 3rd Division. The 1982/83 season being another Mick Buxton inspired promotion season, which had us scoring seven goals without reply over the two matches.

We played them in another promotion season in the nineties. That was under Neil Warnock, but we didn't play in the same league. They were on a fast downhill track when we played away in the FA Cup. Darren Bullock, Andy Booth, Ronnie Jepson and Iain Dunn scored for us in a 4-1 win, in the 94/95 season.

We had four seasons together in the 2000's, one of which was that opening game at the new Keepmoat Stadium. Donny won 3-0 in a diabolical Town performance which saw Adnan Ahmed and Pawel Abbott both sent off.

And finally, last season, we met in the Tinpot Trophy, which at the time of playing was known as the Bristol Street Motors Trophy. Ephraim Yeboah, an 18 year old on loan from Bristol City scored first for Rovers, before Danny Ward equalised in the second half. Town boss, Michael Duff, unimpressed with his under strength team's performance, brought on some subs, one of which, Ben Wiles, gave away a stupid penalty. Joe Ironside scored from the spot to give Rovers a 2-1 win.









Recent form - last 4 matches:

Blackpool 3-2 Town
Town 2-2 Leicester (EFL Cup) won 3-2 on pens
Reading 0-2 Town
Town 3-0 L.Orient

Donny 1-1 Wycombe
Middlesbrough 0-4 Donny (EFL Cup)
Mansfield 1-2 Donny
Donny 1-0 Exeter

Town are 7th in the League One table with 6 points. Rovers are 5th with 7.





Anagrams of Town and Doncaster connections:

1. Hedonic Sandfly
   
2. Dearer Moron
   
3. Panty Maestro
   
4. The Derry Poet
   
5. Ray Blunted
   
6. Email Fay
   

[Amelia Chaffinch]

4. PETER DOHERTY