[Lord Snooty]

November 12:

Huddersfield Town reached the Final of the FA Youth Cup in 1973/74, but lost 2-1 on aggregate to Tottenham Hotspur. The tradition at the time was for the finalists to each host a team of England Youth hopefuls and on this date in 1974, Town's Juniors did face the England Youth XI at Leeds Road.

The England team had two players who did indeed go on to have stellar careers both at club level and international. Ray Wilkins of Chelsea, also known as Butch and so called in the programme team line ups, was one of them. Bryan Robson of West Bromwich Albion was the other. Wilkins went on to gain 84 England caps and Robson got 90.

Also in the England team were Dick Taylor and Paul Bielby. Taylor was the Town keeper who had played in that Youth Cup Final. He went on to play for England at Youth level on a couple of occasions, before getting into the Town first team. He played over a hundred times for the Terriers, before a back injury wrecked his career, causing him to retire at the age of 25.

Bielby was at Man Utd, playing 4 games in their first team. But we signed him from Hartlepool in 1978 and he wasn't all that good sadly.

Lining up for the Town that night, LLoyd Maitland the first black player to play for us, Peter Hart, the future Town skipper and Vicar of Walsall and Steve Spriggs who at four foot eleven and a half inches tall, was the smallest player to play in the Football League. He only played in four games for Town, but went on to become Cambridge United's record appearances holder with 416. Size isn't everything, you know.

So who won the match? Absolutely no idea. Answers on a postcard to the usual address please. 

On this date in 1927, we had our record away win, a win that still stands today. It was a 7-1 win against Sheffield United. It has since been equaled by 6-0 wins at Bury and Stockport. This huge victory came just six weeks after we'd beaten Cardiff 8-2 at home, in the season where we finished as runners up to Everton.

Jack Chaplin was the Town manager and the scoring was opened for Town by Tommy Meads. This was one of only two goals he scored for us before transferring to Reading and later on, he played around 200 games for Spurs, before finishing at Notts County. The other scorers were more familiar names with Billy Smith, George Brown and Alex Jackson all getting two each.

Despite those two big wins, we were still only 13th in the table, but of course, we had a better second half to the season.

On this date in 1994, Neil Warnock took his Town side to play Doncaster Rovers at Belle Vue in the first round of the FA Cup. Town were top of the Third Division, despite last week's loss at York City. Donny were struggling, with a knobhead chairman who soon after this game, set fire to the stand after the council refused to build him a new stadium.

We won this one 4-1 with four legends of the 90s on the score sheet. Darren Bullock, Andy Booth, Ronnie Jepson and Iain Dunn got the goals.

Hopeful of a good Cup run this season, we disappointingly went out at Lincoln City in the next round.