[Lord Snooty]

July 28:

Today is the birthday of Iffy Onuora and also Emile Smith Rowe.

Iffy was born first of these two, on this date in 1967 and is 55 today. He was born in Glasgow, brought up in Liverpool and has Nigerian parents, so was able to have a choice which country to represent at international level. However, none of them ever picked him. 

He attended Bradford University, where he earned a degree in economics (but not maths, physics and bionics) and played for their football team, which is where Town's scouts saw him and Eoin Hand offered him a contract at the start of the 1989/90 season.

He only started six games that season, but came of the bench 22 times. He managed five goals though, the first one coming in a League Cup 1st round 1st leg game against Doncaster Rovers at Leeds Road and he followed that on the Saturday after with the winner in a 3-2 win at Walsall. An instant hero, with his strong, pacy running and the novelty value of being a black footballer, something we hadn't had much of since Lloyd Maitland made his debut in the 70s.

He made a load more starts in the next season, teaming up with new signing Iwan Roberts. The season after though, them two were joined by Phil Starbuck to form a formidable front three. Iffy made it into double figures, bagging 14 goals, which was behind Starby with 18 and Iwan with 34. A cracking strike force, which took us all the way to our first Play Offs, which we lost to Peterborough.

That was under the management of Ian Ross. When Neil Warnock arrived, he didn't fancy Iffy and so he was moved on to Mansfield. His last Town goal was in February 1994 in a 1-1 draw at home to Burnley. That was until much later in his career when he returned to play for his old mate Peter Jackson in the 2003/04 season.

That goal was in the Play Offs against Lincoln City at Sincil Bank, not a classic strike, but a flick off his eyebrows from a corner. But they all count. That extra goal took his Town tally to 41, which leaves him in 41st equal place with Terry Gray in our all time scorers chart, hopefully to be overtaken by Danny Ward in the very near future.

In between the two Town stints he played for eight other clubs, mainly in the lower leagues. But the biggest club was in the Championship, playing for Warnock at Sheffield United. Sadly, he only played eight times as a Blunt before getting an Achilles injury that ended his season.

He hung up his boots when he'd done his mini stint at Town for Jacko and got a coaching job at Walsall. However, their new manager, a certain muppet called Paul Merson sacked him to bring in another more experienced coach. Muppet!

Merson's loss was Swindon's gain as he went there as coach,working his way to the top and his first stint as manager. He had other stints in the hot seat. Firstly at Gillingham, replacing Ronnie Jepson, who ironically had replaced him at Leeds Road in the 90s. And then later on at Lincoln, he had eleven games standing in for Jacko while he was away getting treatment for throat cancer.

His last job in management was with the Ethiopian national team. That was quite turbulent and lasted less than a year, but there was enough going on for Iffy to write about it in a publication called There's some cows on the pitch, they think it's all over...it is now!, published in 2012 by JMD Media and co-authored by Graham Clutton.

Nowadays he's involved with the England u21s coaching set up but is also the Premier League’s first Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.

One of those boys that old Iffy would've been coaching will be young Emile. He was born in Croydon on this date in 2000 and is 22 today.

He of course, came on loan to us in 2020 from the Arsenal and scored the winner against West Brom that secured our place in the Championship. Before that, he had scored down at Craven Cottage in another defeat against Fulham, but his goal brought us back into the game at 3-0 down and then provided an assist for Steve Mounie to make it 3-2.

We could all see he was a classy player, but Danny Cowley kept taking him off or leaving him on the bench, which he later explained......

We have to be very protective of him which none of us like. I actually boo myself when I take him off, because it's not something I want to do.

Anyway, back at Arsenal, he made it into the first team. He made it into the England team as well, scoring his first goal against San Marino in a 10-0 win. Last season, he scored ten goals for the Gunners in the Premier League.

Kevin Stonehouse, who played a couple of seasons at Leeds Road for Mick Buxton, sadly died three years ago, on this date in 2019, aged just 59.

He came to us from Blackburn in 1982 and had a good scoring record. But unfortunately he never really hit it off for us. He arrived after legends Steve Kindon, Peter Fletcher and Ian Robins had packed in and the ineffective Terry Austin had moved on. It was a defender who kept him out of the team though. Buxton pushed Mark Lillis up top during an injury crisis and ended up scoring 20 goals and so Kevin never really got his place back.

He did score a famous Town goal though. It was in the 1984 FA Cup when we, as a 2nd Division club, played high flying 1st Division club Queens Park Rangers. Lillis had given us the lead, but it was Kev who scored the winner, which would be the last time that we beat a top flight club in the FA Cup until we beat Birmingham in 2008.

He later played for Blackpool and Darlington and was working as a Football in the Community officer and for Newcastle United when he died suddenly.