[Lord Snooty]

October 1:

Kevin McHale is 83 today. He was born in Darfield on this date in 1939. He played for Barnsley and England Schoolboys teams before Andy Beattie won the race for his signature to sign him for First Division Huddersfield Town. We'd dropped to the 2nd Div by the time he made his debut, aged just 16 in 56/57, against Leyton Orient at Leeds Road. He scored his first goal in the next game, a 2-2 draw at Filbert Street against Leicester City.

He had eleven seasons at Town, leaving just before I started going. In that time, we were mostly in mid table mediocrity, something we all aspire to but never seem to get nowadays. His time at Leeds Road spanned various eras though. He played alongside Bill McGarry, Vic Metcalfe and Denis Law in his early days and then the likes of Frank Worthington, Trevor Cherry and Jimmy Nicholson towards the end.

He left for Crewe Alexandra in 1967 and was in the top ten of both our all time appearances and goals charts. He's been shuffled down a bit since and now stands in 11th in the appearances with 375. And in the goal scorers, he's down to 12= alongside Iwan Roberts with 68.

At Crewe he helped them win promotion from the 4th Division, then went and played for Chester. Then into the non league, playing for and managing Hastings United and later on a bit closer to home, managing Emley.

According to the book Where Are They Now by Lee Morris, he went to work for David Brown Tractors later on and now lives in Honley.

On this date in 1927, we set a club record highest score. It only lasted for just over three years when we smashed it again against Blackpool.

It was an 8-2 home win against Cardiff City, a club we had built up a rivalry against, having beaten them to the Football League title in 23/24. Four years on, they were no mugs and were the current holders of the FA Cup. They didn't have long to wait for revenge when they beat us 4-0 at Ninian Park in the February.

Having won three titles and finished runners up once in the last four seasons, Town got off to a terrible start to 27/28, losing the first three games, but this win made it four unbeaten after that.

We had already got an 11-0 in the FA Cup in 1909, but this one was a record highest league score, although technically it didn't beat the highest winning margin score of 7-0 we had against Birmingham in 1913.

Bob Kelly started the rout with the first goal, going on to complete a hat trick. Johnny Dent got two, Alex Jackson scored one, Roy Goddall scored a penalty and Billy Smith rounded it all off. Scotsman Hughie Ferguson, who had scored the winner in the Cup Final, scored both the Bluebird goals.

The win took us up to 16th, but we would finish the season as runners up again, two points behind Everton this time. Cardiff would finish in 6th.

Five years later, Billy Smith scored again on this date in 1932. He score twice actually, in a 4-0 home win against Newcastle Utd. He was coming towards the end of his Town career and was 37 years old by now. Alf Young scored one. It was one of only six he scored for the club in his ten years here. And the fourth goal came from the centre forward.

After Dave Mangnall had scored 42 goals from this position in the previous season, manager Clem Stephenson couldn't settle on a preferred number nine when Dave got injured before the season started. He'd tried Frank Bungay, Billy Fogg and in this match Ernie Whittam. He scored the fourth.

This win had us up to 4th in the First Division table, but a six match losing streak at the end of the year, scuppered our title hopes, eventually finishing in 6th.

In the last decade, the 2010's, our fixture list had a strange number of fixtures on this date, five of them. We won four of them and drew one.

On this date in 2011, we played Brentford at Griffin Park. And we walloped 'em! This was the great Lee Clark team that went and won promotion via the Play Offs and it was young Jordan Rhodes scoring the first goal against the team he was on loan at before we got him.

One-nil at the break, it was two-nil after 70 minutes when Lee Novak exquisitely lobbed the keeper. Six minutes later, Jordan made it three, nodding in from close range from Novak's cross. He almost completed his hat trick a couple of minutes later, but hit the post. Gary Roberts was first to the rebound though and made it 4-0 to the mighty Terriers.


The drawn match in this sequence was up at the Riverside Stadium in 2013, a 1-1 draw with Middlesbrough. James Vaughan scored ours.


A year later, in 2014, another away win, this time against Wolverhampton Wanderers at Molineux. Harry Bunn opened the scoring and super Sean Scannell added a second before half time. The highlight of the game though was an absolute beauty from future Wolves legend, Conor Coady. Bakary Sako scored a late consolation for the home side.

Coady put the ball into his own net in the rematch in April as Wolves got instant revenge. But let's not dwell on that.


Two years on, another away win. Down at Portman Road against Ipswich Town in another successful promotion campaign. Elias Kachunga hit the post in a goal less first half. But then in the 58th minute Christopher Schindler, in the iconic yellow and black hoops, headed in from an Aaron Mooy corner and went to celebrate in the corner with the Town fans.


Three years later, we'd gone through the Premier League years and were back struggling in the Championship. We had got shut of Jan Siewert and replaced him with Danny Cowley, but by the time we went down to play Stoke on this date in 2019, both clubs were joint bottom of the Championship.

It was a dire game, but we finally got the first win of the Cowley era. Can you call half a season an era?

One-nil was the score and it was Juninho Bacuna with the goal after a great run down the right wing and a perfect pass from Adama Diakhaby. Yes really.

So four away wins in the last decade. Here, have a watch of these. Four away wins on this date. If only we had an away game today........