[Lord Snooty]

September 20:

Born on this date in 1930, in Huddersfield, was Jeff Taylor. He was the elder brother of Ken Taylor, who also played for Town.

He made his Town debut in November 1949 at centre forward, in a struggling Town team, who had just lost 6-0 at Man Utd. It was another defeat, 2-1 at home to Chelsea, but he was the one who scored for us. He scored four goals in his first five matches and finished that season as joint top scorer with Vic Metcalfe on 11.

He scored 13 in the next one, but Harold Hassall beat him to the top scorer's slot with 18. And in the next season, after scoring 29 goals in 71 games for the Town, he was transferred to Second Division Fulham. Not before he had the bad luck to play in our record home defeat, when we were beaten 7-1 at Leeds Road by Wolverhampton Wanderers.

This move to London, he later played for Brentford as well, heralded a change in direction for Jeff as he enrolled in at the Royal Academy of Music. There he studied piano and singing and performed in opera as a bass baritone. He also studied geography at London University.

Having dropped down to Division Three (South) with the Bees, Jeff decided to jack in the footy career at the age of 27 to become a full time opera singer, starting with a move back home to join the Yorkshire Opera Company.

But then his international career took off in 1962, when he was transferred to Paris, teaming up with Michel Roux in Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande. He had big gigs at Glyndebourne, before setting off around the world. He starred in Australia, Italy, Rotterdam and then the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.

Jeff then turned his back on fame and went into the teaching profession, becoming Professor of Singing at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music in Glasgow. He stayed there for 18 years.

In his football career he played 210 games, scoring 78 goals. He died in Holmfirth in 2010 aged 80.

Jeff left Leeds Road in the 51/52 season. That was the season we got relegated. At the back end of the season, George Stephenson resigned as manager to be replaced by Andy Beattie.

I've written a fair bit about Mr Beattie this year. Just doing it again because on this date in 1983 he died in Nottingham, aged 70.

He played for Preston and Scotland. Managed Barrow and Stockport before coming to Huddersfield and winning us promotion and a 3rd placed finish in Division One. He also managed Scotland at the 1954 World Cup (pictured below), Carlisle, Nottingham Forest, Wolves and Notts County.

On the pitch, we had a high scoring match at Leeds Road on this date in 1986. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of home games I missed when Mick Buxton was manager, all of them seem to have been high scoring. I missed the 7-1 Port Vale game, the 4-1 Reading game, the 4-3 win over Millwall and I missed this one today, a 5-4 win against Oldham Athletic.

Busy at work was the excuse for this one. Don't remember what was that important that I'd miss a Town game. Anyway, what I missed was two goals for Paul Raynor, two for Duncan Shearer and a Malcolm Brown penalty.