[Lord Snooty]

December 19:

Twelve months and six days after our record league victory, 10-1 at home to Blackpool, the Tangerines returned to Leeds Road for another First Division fixture on this date in 1931. Having been rock bottom of the league and looking certainties to go down, they managed to escape the drop by one point, relegating Leeds United and Manchester United instead.

So here they were again. And once more, they left with an absolute walloping. Only 5-0 this time. Well at least we managed a clean sheet.

Town had four team changes from the side that got that record win a year earlier. Billy Smith was back in the team, now aged 36, in place of Jimmy Smailes, who had been transferred to Second Division Tottenham Hotspur shortly after the game in which his left wing trickery had destroyed the Blackpool defence.

George McLean, who scored four times in the 10-1 win, was missing for this one. He was still at the club, but it was Charlie Luke on the right wing this time, a 22 year old signing from Bishop Aukland, who would go on to have a prolific scoring record for the club having made his debut in the draw down at Arsenal in the previous week.

Billy Carr replaced Levi Redfern in defence. Inside forward Harry Davies had returned to his old club Stoke City and his place was taken in this line up by George Crownshaw. And it was the Crownshaw boy who opened the scoring in this game, played in front of 11,072 spectators.

Fifth placed Town went two-nil up with Luke getting the first of his 47 goals for the club. Joe Robson, scored a hat trick in the game last season and he scored twice in this one. This was only one of six games that he played in this season. He was in for Dave Mangnall, who would clock up a record total of 42 goals for the season, including the record run of scoring in eleven consecutive matches, which I wrote about a lot in the earlier part of the year.

Bob Kelly, the England international got the last goal of the game to finish off an accomplished 5-0 victory. That took us up a place to 4th in the table, which is where we finished.

Five years on from that, we had a visit from Liverpool on this date in 1936. Only two players remained from the side that beat Blackpool 5-0 and they were the England defenders, Roy Goodall and Alf Young.

They had both played in the game two years previously when we hammered the Reds 8-0. Just like the second Blackpool match, we only managed to score half as many goals this time against Liverpool, having to settle for just a 4-0 win. 

Len Butt, an inside forward we had signed from Macclesfield Town, grabbed his fifth goal of the season to open the scoring. Ex Newcastle striker Jimmy Richardson, who had scored twice in the 8-0 win, scored twice again. And Motherwell legend, Willie MacFadyen, rounded off the victory, scoring on his debut. He had scored 235 goals in 378 league games for Motherwell and was inducted into their Hall Of Fame earlier this year.

Whatever happened to the Huddersfield Town Hall of Fame? We had a vote on the top ten players a couple of years ago, but that seems to have gone all quiet.