[Lord Snooty]

September 11:

On this date in 1920, Huddersfield Town played Bradford City at home in the First Division. Hold on a minute! Bradford City? First Division?

Yep! They won the 2nd Division title in 1908 and so when we met at Leeds Road for this one, following our promotion, it was the first ever meeting. They had been in Division One for our entire existence so far, but got relegated in the next season and so it would be Huddersfield Town who became the northern powerhouse team.

City were out of the top flight for the next 77 years and so the next time we met at league level after the two meetings in 21/22, was in 1975 in the 4th Division.

This match though, came just after we had lost our first match (away at Burnley) after winning eleven games in succession. We won this game, to make it 12 wins in 13. It was a 1-0 win and the scorer was local lad Fred Lunn (pictured below). It was his first Town goal and he would go on to score his second in the next game, the return match at Valley Parade next week. And that was his Town career done. He was transferred to The Wednesday and later on played for Bristol Rovers and Southend Utd.

On this date in 1998, we traveled to Prenton Park for a Friday night game against Tranmere Rovers. This was in the 2nd tier, which was at this time known as Division One.

It was the season after the Great Escape, in which Peter Jackson and his sidekick Terry Yorath came to the club and saved us from an impossible looking position. After this match, the 8th game of the season, we went top of the league. Top of the 2nd Division for the first time since we won it back in 1969/70.

Sadly, it didn't last for too long, we had about six weeks there. Six weeks of singing; We are top of the league. I remember we were still singing it whilst 4-0 down at Norwich when it all ended. We finished the season in 10th and numb nuts new owner Barry Rubery sacked Jacko and Taff to bring in Steve Bruce.

Anyway, back to the match in hand. Marcus Stewart put us 1-0 ahead. Wayne Allison made it 2-0 in the 45th minute and that was the half time score. Andy Parkinson pulled one back for Rovers, but then big Wayne got another to restore the two goal advantage. Within a minute though, Jason Koumas had pulled another one back, leaving us with 20 nail biting minutes to hold on.

Twelve months on and life under Steve Bruce was going well. He'd gone about what would become his trademark of spending the owners' millions on building a squad, later to walk out leaving them up Schitt's Creek. Were we happy? Well, maybe, but the questions going around were like, how well would Jacko have done given this amount of dosh to splash around. He'd had to do his business using the tried and trusted Town method of free transfers and low budget lower league players.

Anyway, on this date in 1999, we went to Wolverhampton and won one-nil and that man Marcus Stewart got the winner from the penalty spot. The win came a fortnight after the 7-1 demolition of Crystal Palace and put us up to 5th in the table. We would only drop out of the top 6 for a couple of weeks for the rest of the season, right up to the last day of the season when we lost at Fulham to miss the Play Offs.