[Lord Snooty]

June 1:

So yesterday, we had the last of the Play Off Finals. What are we going to do now for the next few weeks? Don't fret, still lots to go at.

Like the 1971 Anglo/Italian Cup. Having beaten Sampdoria at home and then lost to Bologna, our brave lads now flew out to Italy for the return matches.

Our first game in Italy was played on this date against Sampdoria at the Stadio Comunale. An 8,000 crowd turned up to watch what was a bad tempered match in which Town were 1-0 down at the break. Town chief Ian Greaves, made a bold move at half time, bringing on Les Chapman (pictured below) for David Smith, who had had an elbow in the face early on in the match. This was back when only one sub was allowed and elbows in the face were commonplace.

Greaves's gamble paid off immediately as Chapman scored, heading home from a Steve Smith cross. And then he put Town in the lead with a hooked shot after Frank Worthington had nodded down a cross from Bobby Hoy.

Sampdoria equalised and then in the 80th minute, all hell let loose as the home team were denied a penalty by the English referee, Ray Tinkler. He was a notoriously bad ref, obviously not in the same way as Jon Moss, but he had been the ref at the centre of the storm at Bellend Road in the previous month when he allowed a miles offside goal for West Brom's Jeff Astle to rob Leeds of the league title.

And here he was again, endearing himself once more to the Huddersfield Town fraternity. Whether there were any there for this game, I do not know, but if they were they ought to make themselves scarce. Especially when Town won the game, three minutes from time.

Worthington passed the ball to Jimmy Lawson, whose return pass was shot fiercely at goal by the flamboyant Elvis impersonator. The keeper saved it but couldn't hold on. Trevor Cherry was rushing into the area and slotted the ball into the net to give Town a 3-2 win. As the whistle went for full time, the crowd went mad. Sampdoria had lost all three of their games and responded in stereotypical Italian fashion by pelting the team with cushions from the stand as well as firecrackers.

The players had to run for cover and were locked in the dressing room as the riot outside was brought under control. But it continued later as the team had to have a protective police cordon to get back on the bus, being spat at and kicked. Happy days!

The competition had a funny points system, which encouraged goal scoring. It was two points for a win, as was the norm in those days, plus another point for every goal scored. Goals against were irrelevant, it would seem. So the five points gained by the Terriers in this match put them top of the group. Not the group including Sampdoria and Bologna, but the English group, because the competiton had teams split into an English group and an Italian group, with the winners of each group meeting in the final.

Town were now in pole position, with just one game to go.

Born on this date in 1990 was Nahki Wells, the Bermudan international, who now plays for Bristol City and is 32 today. He was of course, a member of our glorious Play Off winning side of 2017 and scored in both the penalty shoot outs at Hillsborough and Wembley.

We all know all about this lad, so no need for me to bang on about him. When he left us in the summer of 2017 to go play for Burnley, he had scored 49 goals, leaving him in 25th place on our all time goalscorers chart.