[Lord Snooty]

June 13:

This was indeed a momentous day in the history of Huddersfield Town Football Club. Two years after being founded in 1908, the club were elected into the Football League on this date in 1910 and would start the 1910/11 season in Division Two.

They were elected in at a meeting at the Imperial Hotel, in Russell Square, London (pictured below). The unfortunate team to make way for the new entrants was Grimsby Town, who came straight back in after one season in the Midland League.

The Midland League was where Town had been in the previous season, after starting out in the North-Eastern League. The Mariners hadn't finished bottom of Division Two. They had finished above Birmingham, who got the highest vote at the re-election meeting. Town finished second in the vote, nine votes better off than Grimsby. The election system was so absurd that it only lasted another 77 years after this.

Darlington, Hartlepools United, Chesterfield and Rochdale were the other clubs bidding for a place in the League, who failed........ miserably!

Charlie Sykes, the president of the Huddersfield Cricket and Athletic Club gave a speech congratulating the Town and Amos Brook Hirst announced that £5,000 had been set aside for ground improvements, which would involve turning the pitch at Leeds Road around ninety degrees to the position we all knew.

Albert Bateman was born on this date in 1924. He was born in Stocksbridge and played for three seasons at Leeds Road just after the second world war. He played 78 times, scoring 16 goals.

That's his official total. He had a few more during the wartime league, scoring on his debut in 1944 against Barnsley. His official debut came in the opening game of 46/47 at home to Blackpool, alongside most of the rest of the team. Only Eddie Boot and Billy Price were in the last game in 1939 before yond pillock Hitler started being a prick and causing the FL to abandon the 39/40 season.

Another player making his debut in that game was Graham Bailey. Albert died in 2020 and at the time, it was thought that at the age of 95 before his death that he was the oldest living Town player. That was until it emerged that Graham was still alive and kicking and living in Bridlington. As far as I know, he still is and will be 102 now, if I'm correct. Go on, lad.

Anyway, injury forced Albert into early retirement at 25 and his last game for Town was at Sheffield United in January 1949. He died in April 2020, during the Covid lockdown, although it wasn't said at the time whether or not he was a victim of it.