[Lord Snooty]

December 17:

On this date in 2011, Town went down to Hillsborough for a League One match against t'Owls. We still had Lee Clark in charge and they had Gary Megson.

We raced into a two goal lead with young Jordan Rhodes scoring two headed goals in the 12th and 16th minutes, both down the other end from where we were sat. He almost had a hat trick with a shot from outside the area going just wide.

But then twelve minutes after scoring our second, Wendy was level with goals from ex Hibs defender Rob Jones, another header, and the French defender Réda Johnson poking home following a goalmouth scramble.

Clark was pulling his hair out in the second half as first Ben Marshall weaved his way in and shot past Ian Bennett to give the home side the lead. Then Chris O'Grady, who always seemed to score against us, scored again from a hopeful long punt into the box when the Town defence decided to just leave him with a free header. Four-two to the Wendies.

Loads of Town fans walked out, some of them breaking seats as they went (dickheads!). But then Rhodes completed his hat trick in the 77th minute, as they were wandering down Leppings Lane and were back on the A629 by the time he scored his 4th to equalise in the 7th minute of injury time to send us all barmy who had bothered to stay.

We have a couple of legends with birthdays today, one of them sadly no longer with us. That one is Ray Wilson who died in 2018. He was born in Shirebrook, Derbyshire in 1934. Like his old school pal John Coddington, who's birthday I mentioned yesterday, Ray did his National Service shortly after coming to Leeds Road when he'd left school. It was Bill Shankly who had him playing as an overlapping left back and so good was he that even though he was a 2nd Division player, he was selected to play for England.

He made his England debut in April 1960 against Scotland and by the time he left us to go to Everton, he was our most capped player with 30. That figure was later beaten by Jimmy Nicholson who got 31 caps for Northern Ireland as a Town player. One of those caps that Ramon got as an Everton player was the 1966 World Cup Final at Wembley when England actually won it against West Germany and thus setting the bar so high for future England teams that none of them have ever got near to since.

Here's our Ray in probably the most famous picture ever of a football match, he and Geoff Hurst lifting Bobby Moore and the Jules Rimet Trophy on their shoulders.

The other birthday today is that of Steve Kindon. He was born in 1950 on this date in Warrington and is 72 today.

Steve's a big barrel chested bloke with deceptive pace. To look at him, one would think he looked a bit of a carthoss, but he really was a thoroughbred. He actually won the fastest footballer in Britain title seven times (according to Wikipedia) and when he first joined Town, I was amazed when he started running at the opposition defence.

He was signed for Town from Burnley by Mick Buxton in 1979 and joined the formidable pairing of Ian Robins and Peter Fletcher in a brilliant front line that fired us to the 4th Division championship. He scored 14 goals in that half season and continued that form in the next one, top scoring with 19 as we just missed out on promotion.

Sadly he got a knee injury in the next season which eventually ended his career, with 37 goals from 82 games.