[Lord Snooty]

October 14:

Happy birthday to Lewis O'Brien today. Though hopefully not too happy and he spends tomorrow getting stuffed by Wolves.

He was born in Colchester on this date in 1998 and is 24 today. He comes from a family of Man City supporters though and came to join our Academy as an 11 year old.

He now plays in the Premier League. Meh!

On this date in 1978, three firsts happened. First of all, after going to matches with my dad, he'd stopped going altogether. So I then went with a mate from school. He'd got himself a job which meant he had to work Saturdays. So now I was going on my own to home games, like some kind of Billy no mates. And on this date, I took myself off to an away game on my own for the first time. I'd joined the Supporters Club and went on their coach to an away game at Somerton Park against Newport County.

The game itself had a couple of firsts. Mark Lillis made his debut for the first team, having come through the youth team. He played in midfield that day and would go on to play in every position in the Town team, including goalkeeper. He scored 63 goals in his time with us.

And talking of goal scorers, a legend of the Town 4th Division championship winning team, scored his first Town goal in this match. That was Ian Robins, who had recently signed from Bury. He's just above Lillis in the goal scorers chart, with 67.

The man who brought him to the club was Mick Buxton, who was in as caretaker manager following the final retirement party for Tom Johnston. Mick was struggling to turn things around and we lost this match at Newport 2-1. Thankfully the Board could see he was doing a good job and eventually put him in charge full time. The rest is history. He took us all the way up to mid table 2nd Division. After the defeat at Newport, we were 22nd in the 4th Division.

Anyway, I set off as Billy no mates on the coach. Soon found an old friend on there though, an old bloke called Joe who me and my school pal had sat with on the 201 bus occasionally from Woodkirk to Huddersfield for the home games. He was an interesting character, I'll tell more about him later in the year.