[Lord Snooty]

July 6:

Harry Raw was born on this date in 1903, in Tow Law in County Durham. Not the most famous of names to have played for Huddersfield Town, but he was signed by Herbert Chapman in 1925 and played as an attacker for Town over the next six years.

His debut came in a remarkable turn around of fortunes. A week before, Town had been stuffed 4-0 at Maine Road by Man City in the FA Cup 4th round, in front of 74,799 spectators. George Hicks scored two of the City goals, having come back into the team after injuring himself somersaulting in celebration at scoring in the previous round. They went all the way to the Final that year, losing to Bolton Wanderers.

So a week later, Town had a league match at the same place. Such was the importance of the FA Cup back then that the crowd for the league game, despite having just beaten the current league champions, was half the size. Only 36,645 for this one.

Harry came into the side for his debut, one of two debutants in the team. Harry came in for Clem Stephenson and George Hobson was the other one making his first start for Town, replacing Harry Cawthorne.

So having been hammered last week, the pummeling was reversed. Town ran out 5-1 winners, with George Brown scoring a hat trick, Roy Goodall scoring a penalty and Billy Smith tagging on a 5th.

That win took Town back to the top of the First Division and Harry kept his place for the next week's trip to Blackburn, which ended in a defeat. Clem came back for the next game and so Harry was back with the reserves for the rest of that season, which Town won to complete the Thrice Champions.

He had three games in the next season, replacing Alex Jackson, who was away playing for Scotland, as Town drew 0-0 at home to Everton. Then he had another couple of games standing in for Clem. The first was a 1-0 win at home to Liverpool in front of another strangely low crowd. Only six thousand turning up for that one. Then he kept his place for a 2-0 win down at Highbury against what was now being called Herbert Chapman's Arsenal.

Harry played ten games in the next season, starting off the new campaign in the side in place of the ageing Clem. This was against Newcastle at Leeds Road, the team who had pipped us for the title. It wasn't the best start, losing 3-1 and so Harry was out for the next game.....again.

He did finally get a run of games though later on, including playing in three successive victories over Christmas. Those were a Christmas/Boxing Day double over Sheffield Wednesday and a magnificent revenge victory over Newcastle up at Sid James' Park.

He scored his first Town goal as well in this season, 1927/28. A famous match in Town's history. Not that this match at Gigg Lane against Bury was particularly famous, but another match on the same day was. It was the 31st of March 1928, the day that Huddersfield Town had five players playing at Wembley in the England v Scotland match, in a time long before international breaks when league games were still played at the same time.

Those missing five players were, Roy Goodall the England captain, Tom Wilson, who was Town captain but not England's, Billy Smith and Bob Kelly and Alex Jackson, who scored a hat trick for the Scots. They weren't the only players missing from the Town line up though as George Brown, Levi Redfern, Sam Wadsworth and Clem Stephenson were also left out in nine team changes from the previous game, which was the FA Cup semi final replay against Sheffield United. That had been drawn and so the second replay was due on the Monday, two days later. So obviously Jack Chaplin was doing a bit of squad rotation, trying to keep the rest of the first choice XI fresh. Only Tommy Meads and Billy Mercer the keeper kept their places aginst a Bury side who ended the season in 5th place in Division One.

So how did the Town reserves get on in the first team? They only went and won it 3-2. Johnny Dent, who was more of a regular starter got one of the goals, as did George Wilson, scoring in his one and only Town First XI game. And so did Harry Raw.

The missing players came back in as Town beat the Blades 1-0 at Maine Road, but then lost to Blackburn in the Final. And as the backlog caught up with the players, Harry got more game time and his second Town goal in a 2-1 win at Filbert Street against Leicester City.

He scored his third Town goal early in 28/29, netting in a 4-1 win at home to Bolton. Then came a lengthy run out. Clem was finally coming to the end of his playing career and so Harry played the last 12 games of the season, including his FA Cup debut, beating West Brom in a 6th round replay at Leeds Road. He was on the score sheet again in league matches against Everton, Blackburn and Liverpool.

So with Clem retiring, he took the manager's job and gave Harry, his old deputy loads of game time. He scored five goals, two of them again in another win at Filbert Street. He also had a big hand in the Cup run, all the way to the Final, where he won himself a runners up medal as Town were beaten by Arsenal, sorry Herbert Chapman's Arsenal.

That was his big season at Town and then after nine more games, he was transferred to WBA, from where his career seems to have halted. No records on Wikipedia about his time there. Nothing. not a sausage. Zip. Bugger all!

Not even whether he's still alive or not. Though at 119 years old today, I think we know the answer to that. Anyway, he must've stuck around these parts because a work colleague of mine said he lived on his road in Birkenshaw in the 80s. Might've been him or maybe his son. It's a long time since he came in and asked if I'd ever heard of him.

Talking of relatives, one of them has inherited Harry's collection of Town memorabilia and kindly allowed the Huddersfield Town Collection to post loads of photos on their website. Have a click and have a look.

And they've filled in a bit of the stuff missing from Wikipedia, including where he went after West Brom.....

“… although he had spells at West Brom and Lincoln until 1937, he always regarded Town as his big love and stayed close to Billy, Tommy Wilson, Roy Goodall, and Marshall ‘Bon’ Spence. He even wore the badge from his Cup Final shirt on a blazer when he managed Crook Town in the 1940’s. Harry ended up at the steel works latterly – can’t imagine premier league guys doing that now. Stayed involved with Tow Law Town all his life – his son-in-law is still involved there now.”