[Lord Snooty]

February 16th:

It's a happy 54th birthday to Graham Mitchell today, born in Shipley in 1968. He first came to Town as a youth in 1983 and it was Mick Buxton who gave him his debut in 1986 in a match away at Crystal Palace. When he left in 1995 after a dispute with Neil Warnock, he had clocked up 310 appearances for the club, which now stands him in 18= spot on our all time appearances chart, level with Jimmy Nicholson.

He was our Player of the Season in 1991/92.

After us he played for Bradford City, then went up to Scotland with Raith Rovers and Cowdenbeath. He had a couple of years with Cardiff City before coming back to West Yorkshire and became captain of Halifax Town. Whilst at the Shay, he started coaching at the Town Academy. And after spells playing at Bradford Park Avenue and Farsley Celtic, he came back and joined our Academy full time, working his way up to Reserves manager and then took a match for the first team as caretaker manager in 2008 before Lee Clark was appointed, a 1-0 win away at Southend United.

Born on this day in 1931 was Town manager of 74/75, Bobby Collins. I mistakenly shortened his Town career when I commemorated the day he died on Jan 13. We have a discrepancy on Wikipedia. His page has him managing us from June to December 74, whereas he in fact spent another whole year with us, finally resigning his post in December 1975.

Not that it matters, but anyway, he still got us relegated, but he was a nice bloke who got me the entire squad's autographs. 

Before he came to us, he had a successful playing career with Celtic, Everton and Leeds, as well as Bury and Greenock Morton. And of course Scotland for whom he gained 31 caps.

The first game on this date was back in 1920 and it would turn out to be our last defeat of the season. It was a 2-0 loss at home to Tottenham Hotspur, who would eventually win the 2nd Division championship, with Town finishing as runners up. After this game, we went 14 games unbeaten to the end of the season.

The most recent game on this day was last year, 2021, when Isaac Mbenza opened the scoring at Middlesbrough, but we went and lost 2-1. Whatever happened to young Isaac?

Before that it was a League One match back in 2010 up at Brunton Park against Carlisle United, when goals from Lee Novak and Jordan Rhodes gave us a 2-1 win.

We had an appearance in the FA Cup 5th round on this date in 2008. This was the trip down to Chelsea when we lost 3-1 and Michael Collins scored.

There was another 5th round match back in 1957. This one was at Leeds Road and following our 4th round match with Peterborough, we faced Burnley. There was a massive crowd there of 55,168, but despite Dave Hickson scoring, we lost 2-1.

But we did win a 5th round match in 1929. This was also at Leeds Road, but only 19,000 turned up for this one. The boys in bright blue n white triumphed again on another attempt to bring the cup back to Huddersfield. it was a 5-2 victory over Crystal Palace and the scorers were Billy Smith, Bob Kelly and a hat trick from George Brown.

The 6th round is set for the 2nd of March and a trip to the Hawthorns to face West Bromwich Albion. Bring it on.