[Lord Snooty]

August 12:

On this date in 2017, Huddersfield Town had it's best ever opening day win. Yes we may have had better scores, but in it's context this was the one. A 3-0 win away at Crystal Palace on our Premier League debut.

David Wagner led his team down to Selhurst Park, backed by 3,000 Town fans against a Palace team managed for the first time by Dutch legend Frank de Boer. Those fans were treated to probably the best performance by a Town team in living memory as Town took the lead in the 23rd minute. From a corner, flicked on by Christopher Schindler at the near post, his central defensive partner Mathias Jorgensen knocked it back across goal, where Palace defender Joel Ward could only deflect into his own net.

Three minutes later we were two up when a pinpoint cross from Aaron Mooy was met superbly by the head of Steve Mounie, who powered it past the stranded keeper.

It was 2-0 at half time after Jonas Lossl had denied Wilfred Zaha just before the break. Palace never threatened again though and Wagner had the luxury of taking a defender off, when Danny Williams replaced Tommy Smith. But it was that other super sub, Collin Quaner, who set up the third goal. He came on for Kasey Palmer in the 72nd minute and had only been on the pitch five minutes when he tricked his way down the right wing and played a perfect low cross in for big Steve to score his second and Town's third goal.

Mounie almost got a hat trick but was denied by a last ditch tackle from Timothy Fosu-Mensah. It didn't matter. At the end of the match we were top of the Premier League. What a way to start a season. 

Oooooooooooooooohhh - yay - yay - yay - yay -yaaaaaay!!!!

It's a good day all around on this date. We've had some unusually good League Cup wins as well as that fantastic win at Palace.

We've had first round EFL Cup victories in 1997, 2003 and 2014, which very much bucks the trend of how we usually perform in that competition.

The 1997 win was against Bradford City, who were a league below us, but we beat them 2-1 at home in the first leg on this date. Andy Payton scored for us as well as an own goal. The second leg is in a couple of weeks time at the Manningham Tip.

The 2003 game was at home to Derby County, a team two divisions above us as we were beginning life in the basement division for the first time since the end of the 70s. It was a team packed with kids as manager Peter Jackson had arrived at the end of last season with the club in admin with only seven players on the books.

He selected Jon Stead up front after he had scored twice in the opening league game, a 2-2 draw at home to Cambridge. Liverpool reject Jon Newby was up front with him. USA international, John Thorrington came in to replace Tyrone Thompson. Danny Schofield, who was by now 23 years old and the only survivor from Jacko's last stint in charge, played in midfield as did Rob Edwards, who Jacko had just brought back to the club after he'd been released by Chesterfield.

Derby led at half time through a goal from Ian Taylor, but then goals from Stead and Thorrington gave us an unlikely win and the prospect of another Championship team to play in the next round. That will be a trip to the Stadium of Light to play Sunderland in six weeks time.

The 2014 win was against Chesterfield and was with Mark Lillis in as caretaker manager after Mark Robins had resigned/been sacked (?) after the disastrous defeat against Bournemouth at the weekend.

It was a high scoring game at the Proact Stadium against the Spireites who had ex Town star Gary Roberts, in their line up. We were 3-1 down with only six minutes left, with Nahki Wells scoring our goal. He scored us a second, this one a penalty, in the 84th minute. Jon Stead, who had just returned to the club, equalised in the last minute to send the game into extra time.

Nahki completed his hat trick just after the restart and Joe Lolley completed a 5-3 win in the 98th minute to set up a second round game against Nottingham bloody Forest.

[Lord Snooty]

August 13:

Happy birthday today to Naby Sarr, who was born on this date in 1993 in Marseille. Twenty nine today.

He came from Charlton Athletic in 2020 and played 66 times for us, scoring seven goals. His final game was in the Final at Wembley, in what turned out to be a calamitous tactical error by Spanish numpty, Carlos Corberan. Naby had been a brilliant impact sub in previous games, but just at the vital moment, Corberan decided to change everything and left Jon Russell on the bench.

Then! Then he released him after we'd lost, days before walking out of the club himself. Naby has signed for Reading, with Paul Ince not happy about his registration being held up by FIFA. Hoping he'll get a game today.

Should Town have kept him?

So while Naby was having his first birthday party in Marseille, we were on the road to Blackpool on this date in 1994. And what a fantastic day that was. The one day of the year that Blackpool had sunshine, but it didn't shine on the home team. It shone brightly on the many thousands of Town fans who turned up at Bloomfield Road, a dilapidated old ground in need of some rebuilding. There were so many of us that we couldn't all get into the away terracing and the stewards had to open up the unsafe, derelict open end behind the goal.

What a great performance it was from the Town with Neil Warnock starting his second season in charge. New signing Paul Reid scored twice on his debut as well as Ronnie Jepson, who also scored twice in a resounding 4-1 win. The official attendance was 8,343, at least half were from 'Udders.

Fast forward five years to 1999 and on this date, we were on Sky Sports, which was still a bit of a novelty back then. No doubt we'd been chosen because we had recently appointed "a name" as manager, Steve Bruce. The opponents were Blackburn Rovers at the McAlpine on a Friday night. Friday the 13th. Unlucky for us? No unlucky for Simon Grayson, the Blackburn defender who deflected a shot by Marcus Stewart into his own goal to give us a 1-0 lead at half time.

Magic Marcus made it 2-0 shortly after the break, but then Rovers hit back, scoring through Lee Carsley and then equalising with a Marlon Broomes header in the 89th minute. Dejection! Bruce, you've ballsed it up again. Snatched a draw from the jaws of victory.

But no. The lads were determined not to throw it away and some great work from Ben Thornley, Scott Sellars and Clyde Wijnhard, set up sub Rob Edwards to drill the ball into the net to send the stadium wild.

Good old Brucey. Never doubted your tactics for a minute.

Here, have a watch of this.....

Then fast forward to 2016. The first full season for David Wagner had started with a brilliant home win against Brentford, but then we had a surprising defeat in the League Cup at Shrewsbury in midweek. So we didn't travel to Sid James' Park with too much confidence to take on a Newcastle team managed by Rafael Benitez.

That confidence went into overdrive after this game though. What a result this was. A 2-1 win up at Newcastle. Our first win there since 1953.

It started with a Nahki Wells well taken finish just before half time. Dwight Gayle (where's he now?) scored for the Toon on the hour, but it was the Town who took the points. A fantastic tackle from young Kasey Palmer robbed the ball off the Newcastle defender and he sent it into the path of the onrushing Jack Payne, who'd only just come on. He expertly placed it beyond the keeper and celebrated in front of the thousands of Town fans stuck high up in the seventeenth tier of the Leazes Stand.

Two wins out of two. The Wagner Revolution is in full swing!

Sadly, three years later, the Wagner Revolution had been and gone and the club had gone full revolution back to being crap again. On this date in 2019, we saw the end of the Jan Siewert era and a quick glimpse of the future as we played Lincoln City in the League Cup.

Jack Payne by now was in the Lincoln side, having spent the whole of our Premier League life out on loan (Oxford, Blackburn and Bradford, all in League 1), then being released on relegation. He ran our Prima Donna rubbish ragged. They also had the brilliant Harry Toffolo doing the same and it was all over seen by their management duo of Danny Cowley and his brother Nicky.

The Terriers were terrible. I've seen some bad performances in my time. This was in the top ten of the worst. Players like Reece Brown and Herbert Bockhorn never played again. Players like Jaden Brown, Juninho Bacuna and Isaac Mbenza shouldn't have, but did.

The result was 1-0 to the Imps with Harry Anderson scoring, but it could and should have been much more.

Siewert, it turned out later, was sacked after the game by Phil Hodgkinson, but was kept on for another chance against Fulham on Friday night. He finally fecked him off after that one and the Cowleys would take over a few weeks later.

Here's little Jack smiling again. Should we have kept him? I know he's done the rounds of the lower leagues since, but surely he was better than some of the dross we did keep.

[HerefordBull]

I saw Marcus Stewart end his career with Exeter City.

Ironically his last game for the Grecians came against Bristol Rovers, the club he started his career with. I think he joined the Terriers from them.

[Lord Snooty]

August 14:

On this date in 1971, our second season back in the First Division got underway with a 2-2 draw at home to Leicester City. Just like when we played in the Premier League, our second season in the 70s started full of optimism after a reasonable mid table finish in the season before.

Leicester had come up as Second Division champions and as such were invited to play in the Charity Shield the week before this game. That match is usually between the Cup winners and the League champions, but Arsenal had done the double and didn't want to play this fixture. So Leicester played the FA Cup runners up Liverpool.

The Filberts won that 1-0 and so came to Leeds Road looking forward to an easy win. They had England internationals Peter Shilton in goal and David Nish in defence and it was Nish who scored Leicester's second goal to add to one from Alistair Brown. Frank Worthington and Trevor Cherry scored for us though and the match ended 2-2.

They finished the season in 12th and we, just like our second Premier League season, got badly relegated.

On this date in 1993, Town played their first League game with Neil Warnock in charge. And it was utter bloody garbage. The match was against Reading at home, still Leeds Road, and we got stuffed 3-0.

We'd been playing some great football in the previous season and you could see it was slowly coming together when unfortunately Ian Ross and Mick Buxton both left for Sunderland. But why Terry Fisher brought long ball, boring Colin Wanker in, I'll never know.

This was one of the worst Town performances in living memory at the time...........

........but not as bad as this one 12 months ago. On this date in 2021, we played Fulham at home and got stuffed 5-1. How Carlos Carberan, the Town Head Coach survived this one, I'll never know. This was the second match of the season, with the first game coming against a Derby team in administration, managed by whingeing Wayne Rooney, who claimed he only had half a dozen players. Corberan couldn't even get his team to beat them.

How on earth did he survive this? Gawd knows!

We have a happy birthday to finish off with. Born on this date in 1957, it's Peter Hart, the captain of our glorious 4th Division champions of 79/80. He was born in Mexborough and is 65 today.

He played as the midfield enforcer and was in the Town youth team that made the FA Youth Cup Final in 74. This led to him getting into the first team squad and making his debut against Southend. He was 16 years and 229 days old then, making him our youngest ever player, taking that record off Denis Law. The record still stands today.

After leading us to that title in 1980, he surprisingly left the club to join our rivals of that season, Walsall. He'd played 229 times for us, scoring eight goals. He then added over 400 games as a Saddler to his tally, before hanging up his boots and becoming a Vicar. He was vicar of St Luke's Church in Cannock and then of St John the Baptist church in Armitage.

[HerefordBull]

Like the Peter Hart story .........An unusual pathway for a player post football.........beats the usual "running a pub" scenario.

[Lord Snooty]

August 15:

Back to the beginning for today. On this date in 1908, Huddersfield Town was officially registered as a Limited Company with the Board of Directors named as such; John Hilton Crowther (Chairman, pictured below), James Cotton, D. Dickinson, W.L. Hardcastle, Amos Brook Hirst, Fred Ibbottson, Gilbert Jenkins and LLywelyn Bath Jones.

The first practice match was also played on this day at Leeds Road. This was the first of three practice games, but there are no details about it. The others were played between Probables and Possibles, so this one was probably two captains picking their favourites, like in the school playground.

Town played the majority of our first half century of existence in the First Division. From the start of the 1956/57 season to the end of the 1969/70 season though, we had been in the 2nd Division. Having won the 2nd Division title, we started our life back in the top tier on this date in 1970 with a home game against Blackpool.

Improvements to the stadium had been going on in the summer, including new seats in front of the main stand where the Paddock used to be. It's said that they were still being installed right up to kick off time. Me and my dad had stood there for the final game of the promotion season. This time, we were over the other side and I was sat on the fence in the corner in the picture below. I reckon I'm one of those boys in short pants in danger of getting splinters in my arse. 

Anyway, the match itself was an absolute triumph. Blackpool had come up with us as runners up and we gave a champions performance in front of a crowd of 22,787. Steve Smith scored twice and Frank Worthington scored a penalty in a convincing 3-0 win.

[HerefordBull]

Love all the kids sat on the fencing at the back.......can you imagine Health and Safety allowing that these days.

[Lord Snooty]

August 16:

Good times. Bad times. Two very contrasting times, just three years apart.

On this date in 2016, David Wagner took his team, along with thousands of disciples of the Wagner Revolution, to Villa Park to play Aston Villa for the first time in almost thirty years. We went there on the back of two glorious victories against Brentford at home and Newcastle away, thinking anything is possible now. Or will the bubble suddenly burst?

It was an emotional day for the Villa fans as one of their own, Dalian Atkinson, had just been murdered by the police. There was a minutes applause for him during the game.

Villa had some big names still in their side, having just been relegated from the PL. Tommy Elphick, Leandro Bacuna, Jordan Ayew, Ross McCormack who always scores against us, and a young lad called Jack Grealish. And it was Grealish who set up Ross McTwattybollocks to open the scoring, turning to us and giving us the shush finger.

We got well and truly battered in that first half, but things started to turn back our way in the second. Sean Scannell had come on at half time. Nahki Wells joined him ten minutes later and we started creating chances. Elias Kachunga had an overhead kick go just wide. Nahki hit the post. But then Wagner brought out the ace in the pack in the 86th minute. Michael Hefele.

Fans had been singing his song all game, even though none of us had actually seen him play yet. He came on in the 86th minute and we were baffled as to why he would bring on a defender and leave Kasey Palmer still sat down.

And then it happened!

Hef ran on after giving Chris Löwe a slap of the hands as he replaced him. He didn't take up a defensive position, but ran immediately to take up the centre forward slot. The throw in had been played back to the Villa keeper, a young lad called Pierluigi Gollini. He fannyed about for a bit, with them being 1-0 up and running the clock down. But then he noticed out of the corner of his eye, the giant figure of a Bavarian Lion steaming towards him. The lad panicked and drove the ball forward. Hef turned his back to block it. It hit him on the arse.

We could not believe it. It's going towards the goal. Surely not. It is you know. Is it? YEEEEEEEEES!! It blummin' well has! GET IIIIIIN!

Absolute limbs. The bloke behind landed on top of me. We were right there in something like row 4 or 5 as the Hef with his clawed hands ran over to us and did a brilliant knee slide. Never seen owt like it.

The next four minutes plus injury time was a blur with everybody by now singing de de de de de de der, Michael Hefele. The lads ran over to us at full time and we had the victory wave. Probably the only time we had this for a drawn match. But this seemed very much like a win.

The one point gained kept us joint top on 7 points with Brighton, Norwich and Fulham. This is gonna be a good season.

Three years on from that night, we had lived the dream but were now living through a harrowing, frightening nightmare. Wagner had gone. Hefele had gone. The Terrier Spirit? Gone!

We were managed now by some bloke who used to manage the local children's hospice, a German lad called Jan Siewert from Wakefield.

The season had started badly with defeats against Derby and Lincoln in the Cup and all we had was one point from a quite encouraging draw down at QPR. However, on this date in 2019, Fulham came to the John Smith's for Sky Sports' Friday Night Football and the nightmare continued.

Tommy Elphick, who had been a Villa player three years ago, had now joined us and played alongside Christopher Schindler and Terence Kongolo at the back. Jonathan Hogg was still running midfield alongside young Lewis O'Brien looking good after his season on loan at Billy Bantam's Circus.

Fulham had come down with us from the Prima Donna League and had Aleksandar Meerkatrovic leading their attack. It was a goal less first half, but then Juninho Bacuna, who had been one of the bright sparks of the back end of our PL life, continued his disastrous start to Championship life by attempting to clear his own lines by whacking the ball away as hard as he could. Unfortunately he got it completely wrong and miscued what turned out to be the perfect cross for Meerkatrovic to nod the ball into the net past our new keeper Kamil Grabara.

But then just six minutes later, against the run of play, we were back level. Karlan Grant, another of last season's bright sparks, had a header just cross the line, with the ref pointing to his wrist and signalling back to the centre circle. One all. This nightmare could yet have a happy ending.

No it couldn't. Fulham kept coming and the inevitable happened in the 80th minute. It was a goal worthy of winning any game as Ivan Cavaleiro, on loan from Wolves and having played for them in Siewert's only win as our manager, curled a beauty into the top bins.

It was all over for Jan. It was just too much now. Potless Phil Hodgkinson had given him his backing, but after the boos rang around the ground at full time, he had to do something. Listening to Paul Ogden on the way home on Radio Leeds, he was reporting that Potless had been walking around talking on his phone, pacing up and down on the new blue track surrounding the pitch and rumours were coming out that Jan had indeed, been sacked.

Those rumours were true and Mark Hudson would once again be asked to lead the team in the next game, a trip to play his old club Cardiff City on Wednesday night.

Joe Walter was born on this date in 1895 and went on to live for 99 years, just missing out on his century by three months. He was born in the Eastville area of Bristol, which was where Bristol Rovers played for many years (the stadium land is now an IKEA). And it was from Rovers that Herbert Chapman signed him in 1922.

He played in the first two of our thrice champions seasons, before going back to the west country and joining Taunton United. Before all that though, he had played his part in the First World War, joining the Gloucestershire Regiment as a 19 year old. They had a football team and Joe played for them, deciding to carry on playing after the war had ended. He played local footy in Bristol before the Rovers signed him on.

He came to Leeds Road in the summer of 1922 and made his debut in the first match of 22/23, on the right wing against Middlesbrough at Ayresome Park in a 2-2 draw. His first of four goals in that triumphant season came in a 1-0 win away at Nottingham Forest. His first Leeds Road goal came against Oldham and then he scored in both games against Arsenal.

After Huddersfield and then Taunton, he came back up north to play for Blackburn, before going back down south again to play for the Pirates again and finishing off at Bath City.

He then got a job as a groundsman, working for the Bristol Co-Operative Society, but then became the head groundsman at Bristol City's Ashton Gate, the bitter rivals of his home club Rovers. That was in the 1950s, by the time he retired though, he was back at Eastville doing a bit of coaching.

And off into retirement he went, until he was tracked down by representatives of Huddersfield Town who were preparing to celebrate the end of an era at Leeds Road with the up coming Final Whistle match. They found him, aged 98, living in a nursing home in Bath and when Town were due to play Bristol Rovers away, he was invited to come on down to the match as a guest of both clubs. Rovers were playing their home games back then, in Bath at Twerton Park.

The game was a goal less draw, but Joe had been so enthused by all this attention that he accepted the invitation to be the guest of honour for the final match at Leeds Road in April. A feature was made all about him in the Final Whistle video and what a lovely old bloke he was.

In the next season, Town and Rovers both got to the Play Off Final and sadly just a few days before the match (which we won 2-1), old Joe passed away. He had died in his sleep and Neil Warnock and the entire playing staff attended the funeral.

[Lord Snooty]

August 17:

We've had some of the world's best strikers at Huddersfield Town over the years, but none of them had ever scored a hat trick in the opening game of the season, until Dale Tempest did it on this date in 1985.

It was in an exciting 4-3 game, at home to Millwall, which I missed.

Mick Buxton was still the manager, Simon Webster got the other goal and the attendance was 6,603.

Tempest was top scorer that season with 12 goals, but as we were struggling, Buxton eventually replaced him with Duncan Shearer at Easter.

After nine years floating around the lower leagues, Town were back in the Championship in 2012 and we played our first game back as a 2nd tier club on this date. It was the opening game of the Championship, a Friday night game, away at Cardiff.

We had Simon Grayson in charge, whereas the Bluebirds had Malky Mackay. They had the little toss pot Craig Bellamy up front, we had Lee Novak. Where's Jordan Rhodes was the question on everybody's lips. He'd been top scorer for the last three seasons, bagging a fantastic forty last season, but now the big clubs were lurking around trying to steal him off us.

He wasn't even in the traveling party for this game, with a mysterious injury being given as an excuse.

Anyway, we did well against one of the promotion favourites, but in injury time after a ton of pressure, our defence finally cracked with future Town skipper Mark Hudson grabbing the winner.

If that was a disappointing defeat, this next one was a disappointing win!

On this date in 2021, twelve months ago, we played Preston North End in the Championship at the JSS and won it 1-0 in what was a terrible match in front of the Sky Sports cameras. Why on earth did they pick this one?

This was only three days after the diabolical defeat at home to Fulham on Saturday. Head coach Carlos Corberan, with his job as such in question by supporters, made changes. In goal for his league debut was the penalty saving hero from the League Cup match at Hillsborough, Lee Nicholls, replacing the shell shocked Ryan Schofield. Another Hillsborough connection making a debut was ex Wendy defender Tom Lees. Lewis O'Brien came back into the side after having a Jordan Rhodes style mysterious injury, whilst transfer speculation kept coming in. And Scott High got a start after coming on as sub in the Fulham debacle.

It was another sub who made the difference in this one. Duane Holmes came off the bench in the 70th minute. Four minutes later, he had a shot, only our second of the game. Neither of them were on target, but this one went straight into the path of retreating Preston defender Sepp van den Berg, who couldn't stop himself redirecting it into the net.

We won, 1-0, without a single shot on target. Would this lucky win be a catalyst for a change in our fortunes?

Next up, a trip to Bramall Lane on Saturday.

[Lord Snooty]

August 18:

Town got relegated at the end of 55/56, to the 2nd Division. It was only the second time we'd ever been relegated, spending most of our existence in the top flight. Andy Beattie was still manager, with Bill Shankly as his assistant. Shankly would go on to be a football managerial legend at Liverpool, which was where Town went on the opening day of the season, a trip to Anfield on this date in 1956.

Liverpool had been relegated the season before us and had previously been in the First Division since 1905. They finished 55/56 in their lowest ever league finish of 11th, but still a massive crowd of 49,344 turned out to watch.

And what did they see? They saw the mighty 'Udders come away with all three points, no sorry, two points.

They had future Shankly's Boot Room boy Ronnie Moran in their side and it was Town who scored first with left winger Ron Simpson on target in the 5th minute. One nil at half time and it was 2-0 after 57 with Everton legend Dave Hickson scoring. They pulled one back through Billy Liddell, but then Willie Davie scored another for the Town to make it 3-1. Liddell scored another from the spot, but the game ended with a 3-2 Town victory.

Neither team got promoted at the end of it all. Liverpool finished 3rd, when only two went up. And Town finished a disappointing 12th, with Beattie resigning half way through.

That was our first season in the 2nd Division following relegation. It took us 14 years to get back up again, but when we did, we started off the new season like a rocket. We won our first two games to go top of the First Division. Having beat Blackpool 3-0 on Saturday, we played Southampton at home in midweek on this date in 1970 and won 3-1.

What a brilliant team this was, with Ian Greaves at the helm and the flamboyant Frank Worthington leading the line. Ron Davies, the Welsh international centre forward scored for the Saints. But we had goals from Dick Krzywicki, another Welsh international, Jimmy Nicholson the Northern Ireland captain and Steve Smith (pictured below), scoring his third goal of the new season already.

Final score 3-1 to the Terriers, with little Skippy the mascot yapping us on from the sidelines, we were top, top, top of the league.

The 79/80 season started on this date in 1979, with a 2-0 win over Aldershot. That's the league season. We'd already had a 2 legged League Cup win over Crewe, winning 5-2 on aggregate.

This was of course, the season when we won the 4th Division under the leadership of Mick Buxton, scoring over a hundred goals along the way. The final match of that season saw 16,807 in for the title win, but by this time, the word hadn't got around Kirklees how good these boys were. Only 3,313 came to see Ian Robins score the first (he would also score the 100th and 101st) goal of the season. The skipper and later the Reverend Peter Hart, scored the second in a 2-0 win.

Who the chuffing hell drew this for The S*n?

And finally for today, a 7-1 win. 

On this date in 2009, we played Brighton at home and gave them a proper stuffing. We'd drawn at Southend, beaten Stockport in the League Cup and then beaten Southampton 3-1 at home, but this one came right out of the blue. Totally unexpected.

They were no mugs, or so we thought, with Russell Slade in charge. The scoring didn't start until the 21st minute when Antony Kay put us into the lead. Liam Dickinson, who we would later have on loan, equalised in the 34th, but then Peter Clarke got us back in front just a minute later.

Then came the game changer when the Brighton goalie got sent off. That was Michel Kuipers, who was replaced by Graeme Smith. They had Tommy Elphick in defence and he was given a right run around by the rampant Town attackers.

Lee Novak scored from the spot just before half time. Gary Roberts added a fourth just after the hour. Then it was three goals from substitutes. Danny Drinkwater, on loan from Man Utd, scored his first Town goal, then Theo Robinson (pictured below) scored twice to finish it all off. Jordan Rhodes never got one though. Disappointing.

Huddersfield Town 7 (seven), Brighton & Hove Albion 1