[Lord Snooty]

May 29:

There's a lot to cover today, so I'll cover it in date order......

The boss, Mick Buxton was born on this date in Sunderland in 1943 and so is celebrating his 79th birthday today. He is still regarded by many fans as the best manager we've ever had, well in living memory anyway, don't think many of us saw Herbert Chapman and his merry men. Anyway, he started his career at Burnley in the early 60s, at a time when they had a team at the top of the Football League and winning trophies and reaching Cup Finals. He was a full back, but because of the strength of the first team, he was mainly a reserve player, so by the time he left for Halifax Town in 1968, he had only 19 first team appearances.

His time at Halifax wasn't great and he broke his leg twice, but he did help the Shaymen get promoted to the 3rd division in his first season there. He was forced to retire through injury at the age of 28 and was offered a coaching role at the Shay. He coached also at Watford, Mansfield, Barnsley and Southend and luckily for us, he never really settled that far down south. He'd kept on his Barnsley home, which as far as I know, he still has, and so when Tom Johnston offered him a job at Huddersfield, he jumped at the chance.

His first impression of the set up at Leeds Road wasn't good and so when Tom retired soon after, Mick set about a new regime, sweeping away the bad influences. One of them being a former player who I know, who said he thought Buxton treated him unfairly by not giving him a chance, but ultimately, it worked.

Form turned around immediately and we went from our lowest ever placing of 91st out of 92 clubs when he was given the caretaker role, to the 4th Division Champions within 18 months. It wasn't just the success though, it was the style of play. Even though it was the 4th division, the exciting attacking football was a joy to watch and the fact that the team scored 101 league goals in 79/80 shows what a great side it was.

The next season almost saw another promotion, finishing 4th when only the top 3 went up. The following season was a bit of an anti climax, but that wasn't the case in the next season when Buxton's Boys won promotion to the 2nd division, in what was the last time Town won automatic promotion.

He left in 1986, harshly sacked after a poor first half of the season. But he came back again in the 90s as assistant to Ian Ross, after he'd been manager at Scunthorpe. It wasn't a long stay as he and Ross resigned to be replaced by Neil Warnock. Mick then ended up managing Sunderland at Roker Park in the 2nd division, before going back to Scunthorpe.

By the time Mick left Leeds Road, he was the second longest serving manager in the club's history, second only to Clem Stephenson. He had 438 matches in charge of Town, winning 178 of them.

Another birthday today is for the heroic goalkeeper from yesterday's match. That was Steve Francis, the 1995 Play Off winning keeper, who was born in Blillericay on this date in 1964 and is 58 today.

He played 227 games for us, after starting out with Chelsea and then Reading. One of the games he played for Chelsea was the Full Members Cup Final in 1986 against Man City. That was the one when Mark Lillis put four goals past him, but still ended up losing as Chelsea won 5-4.

Obviously the 1995 Play Offs were the highlight of his Town career, but it was his old team mate, Peter Jackson who decided it was time to replace him. And what a replacement he got in Nico Vaesen.

After us, he had a brief spell as a Cobbler in Northampton, before retiring.

Three days after playing and winning our first Anglo-Italian Cup match against Sampdoria, on this date in 1971, we played Bologna at Leeds Road. We beat Sampdoria, but this match didn't go as well, being beaten 3-2.

A crowd of 9,707 came to the old stadium to see this and Town were unchanged, but were losing 1-0 at half time. Trevor Cherry scored Town's first and David Smith, who hadn't played in any of the league games in the season just finished, scored late on and as you can see on this caption from the Huddersfield Town Collection, it was just a consolation.

Next week, we travel to Italy for the return fixtures.

Next up on this date is 2011. We lost the Play Off Final 3-0 at Old Trafford against Peterborough and a lot of Town fans let the side down with their post match behaviour.


So let's move on, because on this day in 2017, late in May, Schindler scored, it was a Heffing dream.

I refer of course to the Championship Play Off Final, five years to the day before we go again today. It was a pretty drab game for 120 minutes, but then with the crowd singing "Don't Worry 'Bout A Thing", we got a penalty shoot out.

You all know what happened and none of us heard the immortal line at the time, unless you were watching on Sky. I've heard it a million times since though.

"Christopher Schindler........ has the chance....... to write his name...... in Huddersfield Town legend..........

AND HE TAKES THAT CHANCE!"

Enjoy the game today and let's hope we're all celebrating again like we did five years ago.

COME ON TOWN!