[Lord Snooty]

August 22:

Starting today's thread with a trip back to 1951. King George VI is still on the throne, Clement Attlee is the Labour Prime Minister and Huddersfield Town are still in the First Division, 31 years after winning promotion.

George Stephenson is Town manager, nine years after his brother Clem resigned following a magnificent pre war decade of top flight football at Leeds Road. However, the post war form had been very poor, with finishes in 20th, 19th, 20th, 15th and 19th since footy got back under way in 1946.

So when a crowd of 25,623 turned up at Leeds Road to see the Town play Man City on this date on a Wednesday teatime, they wouldn't have been expecting to see the Manc Blues get an absolute pasting.

But that's just what they got, with goals from Bill McGarry, Albert Nightingale (pictured) who got two, Harold Hassall and Jeff Taylor (who's brother Ken had just joined the club), gave Town a 5-1 win. And following on from a decent enough 2-2 draw down at Arsenal in the opening game on the Saturday before, we were in 4th position in the fledgling league table.

We didn't stay up there though, losing the next seven games. Nightingale flew off to Blackburn for a song. England international Hassall, trotted off to Bolton. Taylor moved to London, joined Fulham and became a world famous opera singer. Stephenson left in April, replaced by Andy Beattie, but the team got relegated.

Beattie got the Town back up, but after three seasons back in the First Division we were back down again. By 1959, he'd left and his buddy Bill Shankly was the manager and on this date, he took his team down to Portman Road for the opening match of the 59/60 season against Ipswich Town, who were managed by Alf Ramsey.

Bill McGarry was still in the side. Denis Law was in the squad, but missed this one. It didn't matter. His mate from Aberdeen, Gordon Low scored the second goal for Town, doubling the lead after Bob Ledger had got the first. Derek Hawksworth (who died last year aged 93) scored twice as Shanks's show ponies won 4-1.

Sadly for Town, Shankly left in December and spent the next decade getting Liverpool promoted back to the First Division and making them one of the best football clubs in the world.

By the time this date in 1970 came around, Town were back in Division One and following wins at home against Blackpool and Southampton, we were top of the league. Today we visited Anfield, the home of Shankly's Reds.

A crowd of 52,628 turned up to watch Liverpool take on the league leaders and most of them left happy as Terry Poole in the Town goal was beaten four times. They had future Town manager Ian Ross, playing at left back and future captain of A Question Of Sport, Emlyn Hughes alongside him in defence.

It was one of the not so well known names who opened the scoring though. John McLaughlin, an 18 year old striker, scored nine minutes into his debut and then scored again shortly before half time. He only scored once more in six years at Anfield.

It was a more regular scorer who got the two second half goals. That was Alun Evans, who would be their top scorer that season, before transferring to Villa when Shanks signed Kevin Keegan from Scunthorpe.

The defeat knocked the Terriers down to 9th.