[Lord Snooty]

November 4:

Alf Young of Huddersfield Town and England was born on this date in 1905 in Sunderland. He started his career in Division Three North with Durham City and signed for Town in 1927, but was stuck in the resrves for three seasons as he played centre half and centre half at Huddersfield Town belonged to Tommy Wilson. And when Wilson was missing, it was Bon Spence as second choice. But when Alf did get in the team, he soon became unshiftable.

His debut came three days after a 1930 New Years Day 7-1 hammering at Bolton. He must've done alright, the defence only conceded once, in a 1-1 draw at home to Birmingham. But Wilson was back in for the Cup game at Bury on the following Saturday. Alf did get back for a few more games towards the back end of the season, actually playing the four games prior to the FA Cup Final against Arsenal. But Tom was the club captain and had a waxwork specially made for the Cup Final at Madame Tussauds, so there was no chance that young Alf would be in the side.

He finally displaced Wilson in the next season and after 500 games for the club, Tom left for Blackpool, leaving Alf to make the number 5 shirt his own. He was the regular centre half for the rest of the decade, right up to the start of the war, with manager Clem Stephenson making him club captain in 1935.

Having missed the 1930 Cup Final, he did eventually play at Wembley, leading the team in the 1938 Final against Preston. Sadly, in the last minute of extra time, Alf made a perfectly good tackle on the edge of the penalty area, which the referee deemed to be a foul, inside the area and pointed to the spot. Where's VAR when you need it?

He did stick around during the war, playing games for Town as well as York City and it was York who he played for after the war had finished.

Talking of the war. He played nine times for England, but the most famous match by far was one that is still talked about today. Well I've talked about it loads on here. I talk of course about the 6-3 win in Berlin against Germany, a match attended by Adolf Hitler and the England players were forced to make that salute as the anthems were played before kick off.

Ken Willingham, Alf's Town team mate also played in that one and apparently, the two of them had the piss taken by the rest of the Town team when they got back. But the decision to do this had not been taken lightly. Two years earlier, Hitler had been livid that the GB Olympic team had not acknowledged him and the British Ambassador Neville Henderson had been summoned to make sure it was carried out this time.

Stanley Matthews later recalled that the team were livid and told Henderson where he could shove his salute. But he had to talk them round for the sake of apeasement and persuaded them that the salute would not constitute an endorsement of the N@zi regime. It worked a treat and four months later, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain came home from talks with Hitler, proclaiming peace in our time, whilst waving a bit of paper in his hand.

As we all know, quoting from Blackadder in the last conflict. It was all bollocks!

So Alf played in the three league games for Town in the 1939/40 season that got chalked off when the war got underway. So those three don't count in his total of 309 matches for the club, which puts him in 21st position in the all time appearances chart, having been overtaken recently by Jonathan Hogg.

After hanging up his boots, he became a coach at Town before he went off coaching in Denmark and got involved with the national team. He had one game in charge, as caretaker manager and that was in 1956, a World Cup qualifier against Ireland in Dublin, which the Irish won 2-1.

He also had a short spell managing Bradford PA before returning to Leeds Road as a coach for Eddie Boot and then was a scout for the club before his retirement.

He died in Huddersfield in 1977, aged 71.

On the field of play, on this date in 2017, we beat West Bromwich Albion at the John Smith's Stadium in the Premier League. It was David Wagner verses Tony Pulis and it was the game in which Rajiv van La Parra scored that wonder goal, the one that Ben Foster could only stand and watch as the ball went flying over his head.

It was a nervous end to the game though as dopey ref Roger East sent Christopher Schindler off for a second yellow card offence. But we held on and Wagz went running on the pitch at the end to give heroic goalkeeper Jonas Lossl a massive hug.

Oh happy days. What the chuff went wrong? Not just for us, but the Baggies as well?