[Lord Snooty]

January 5th:

Not so much happening on this date. The most interesting I can find are two FA Cup victories over Birmingham City. We have a couple of interesting instances of "history repeating itself" as well.

The first one in 1971 was during our first First Division season for quite some time, with Ian Greaves as manager. This was a Tuesday night replay at St Andrews after a draw at Leeds Road on the Saturday. Bobby Hoy had scored in the first match that ended 1-1 and Town made two changes to the line up for the replay with Dick Krzywicki and Les Chapman coming in for Brain Greenhalgh and Jimmy Lawson. Terry Dolan was on the bench and he came on for his first ever appearance for the first team in rather unusual circumstances.

He came on as reserve goalkeeper (only one sub allowed in those days) when Terry Poole had his leg broken by a bad challenge from Bob Latchford. Poole would miss the rest of the season, with David Lawson taking over, and wouldn't get back into the side for almost two years. Anyway, we won the match 2-0 with goals from the Welsh wing wizard Krzywicki and Frank Worthington, but the history repeating itself came in the next season....

That was in the Quarter Finals of the next season's competition when Lawson had his leg broken this time. Again from a challenge from that big bully Latchford. Once again, it was the boy Dolan who went in goal.

The second piece of history repeating itself was us knocking Birmingham out of the FA Cup on the 5th of Jan. This time it was 2008 and we had moved on to our new stadium by now. They, believe it or not, were a Premier League side back then and we were lowly League One. But it was Town who won 2-1 with goals from Luke Beckett and Chris Brandon.

Yesterday I wrote about my dad taking me to my first ever away game. Well sadly, this game was the last time we went to a match together. I'd started taking him to some home games by now. We hadn't been to any matches together since the 80s and that season I had started taking him to some games. The old lad had Alzheimer's and although he enjoyed going to the match, he'd decided he'd had enough of going and announced that he wasn't going anymore.

Today is also the 12th Day of Christmas, so until the next one........Merry Christmas Gobnait.