[Lord Snooty]

March 16:

Not one, not two, but three of our famous strikers were born on this date. All three of them are in our all time goal scorers chart. Their names, Charlie Luke, Alf Lythgoe and Alan Gowling.

Mrs Gowling's boy was born in 1949 and is 73 today. He was born in Stockport and was such a clever boy, he went to Manchester University and played for the Man Utd youth team at the same time. He made it into the first XI in an era of strikers that included the famous Best, Law and Charlton, playing 71 games and scoring 18 goals, the first of which was on his debut against Stoke.

He came to Town in 1972 for £65,000 just after we had been relegated. A replacement for Frank Worthington, he top scored in every season he was at Leeds Road, but sadly, nobody else joined in. We got relegated twice while he was there and he left after we had been dumped into Division 4. He went to Newcastle, forming a strike partnership with Malcolm Macdonald, and scored in the League Cup Final of 1976.

Later he played for Bolton and then Preston before retiring to go manage a chemicals company in Buxton.

His Town goals record stands at 61 and he is 18th in the list.

The other two were team mates in the 1930s.  Charlie was born in County Durham in 1909. Alf was born in Nantwich in 1907. Charlie was nobbut a wee lad, playing as an inside forward, he stood at only five foot three, one of the smallest players ever to turn out for Town, making Duane Holmes look lie a giant.

Alf was a centre forward and I may have mentioned it before, he scored five goals in a match for Town. That was in 1935 in a 6-0 win at home to Blackburn Rovers. Both of them were on target earlier on in that season when Town inflicted Liverpool's record league defeat, beating them 8-0 at Leeds Road.

Charlie ended up with 47 goals for Town, leaving him now in 29th spot, equal with Phil Starbuck. Alf scored 46, but in about half as many games as Charlie. He is 31st in the chart, level with Jimmy Lawson, George McLean and Danny Schofield.

Games on this day. The most recent one was very memorable, but in the end disappointing. After leading 3-1 through a goal by Juninho Bacuna and two from Karlan Grant, we lost 4-3 at West Ham in the Premier League on this date in 2019.

In 2013 we had another victory at Bellend Road, beating Leeds Urinals 2-1. Neil Danns gave us the lead shortly after half time, before the twats equalised. But we weren't giving up on this one and four minutes from time, it was the corner flag getting kicked over in celebration as James Vaughan slotted the ball home.

And in 1955 we had that FA Cup quarter final replay at Sid James' Park against Newcastle. After we had been denied a semi final place by a last minute equaliser on the previous Saturday, 52,449 spectators turned up to see the Pies beat us 2-0.

I wasn't born then, but my dad always told me about a match he went to at Newcastle when the crowd was massive. I'm fairly sure it would've been this one.