[Lord Snooty]

December 22:

On this date in 1990, a huge crowd of 4,841 crammed into the Leeds Road stadium for a 3rd Division match against Bury on a cold Saturday afternoon. It was dark not long after kick off as we'd just passed the shortest day and the floodlights were on from the start. Town's players weren't awake from the start though and the Shakers took an early lead.

They almost went two-nil up from a breakaway, but their attack was abruptly ended by Town keeper Lee Martin, running out of his area to make a tackle. He got it badly wrong, leaving the ref no option but to send him off. Town down to ten men and a goal down, doesn't usually make good reading.

Here's what happened next in the words of Kieran O'Regan via the Examiner website; "Everyone was looking around to see who might go in goal (there were just two subs in those days) and only myself and Iffy Onuora fancied it. It came down to me because I'd played a lot of Gaelic football in the juniors with Nemo Rangers, who are one of the most famous clubs in Ireland, although I'd never practised in goal during any football training.

I remember the back-four starting to play superbly that night, with Ken O'Doherty outstanding, and I didn't really have an awful lot of keeping to do. What threw a spanner in the works, though, was that we got a penalty, and I was the penalty taker!

I remember walking up the pitch thinking, for goodness sake score, or at least don't hit it near the keeper so that he can boot it back down the field before I can get back. Thankfully, I hit it low into the corner, the whole of the ground lifted because of it and we went on to get a great win with a Iwan Roberts header.

Someone asked me afterwards what I'd have done if I'd hit the post with the penalty and my reply was, a new world record for the 100m!"

In the 1923/24 season, the Football League fixtures computer was still doing back to back games. That is, we were playing teams home one week and then away the next. As such, we had just played Arsenal away and so on this date in 1923, we played them at home.

I wrote about the away game at Highbury last week when we won 3-0 with a Charlie Wilson hat trick. Well, he only went and did it again as Town beat the Gunners 6-1 in a magnificent display at Leeds Road, which really made the Arsenal directors sit up and wonder how they could persuade Herbert Chapman to go manage them instead.

Of course, they eventually did, but not until he'd seen his Town team win the Football League title twice in succession.

Clem Stephenson scored twice in this one after George Cook had opened the goal floodgates. Charlie's three goals took his tally to nine in the last four games. He top scored in the season that we went on to win our first league title with 18 in the league and a couple in the FA Cup as well.

Huddersfield Town famously won the league three times in a row. Then finished as runners up twice. That's 1st, 1st, 1st, 2nd and 2nd in five seasons. Not bad, eh?

That was followed by a 16th. Why that happened, I don't know. The season got off to a poor start with only three wins in the first ten games. Then another bad sequence of five defeats in six games. For some reason, our lads with Jack Chaplin now in charge, were struggling.

Then came big wins against Burnley (7-1) and Sheffield United (6-1) and we were up and running at last.

On this date in 1928, West Ham United came up to Leeds Road and those big wins continued with a 4-0 hammering of the Hammers. It was another hat trick occassion, with Alex Jackson, the brilliant Scottish international getting the threesome this time.

Billy Smith got the other as Town rose to 12th in the table. This win started an unbeaten run of eight games which had us back up to 6th, but a poor second half of the campaign saw this roller coaster of a season ending with us in a lowly 16th, with only an FA Cup run to the semi finals as compensation.

It's a former Town manager's birthday today. I won't wish him a happy one, because I'm talking about the much loathed Mark Robins, the man who turned us from an exciting, fast paced, free scoring team under Lee Clark and Simon Grayson, to the tippy tappy, pass around the back four, slow paced garbage football we still have to endure to this day.

He was born in Ashton-under-Lyne in 1969 and is 53 today.