[Lord Snooty]

December 29:

Fred Robinson, the left back for our brilliant Fourth Division champions season, was born on this date, in Rotherham in 1954 and so is 68 today. He was signed by Mick Buxton in 1979 from Doncaster Rovers to replace Phil Sandercock who had transferred to Northampton.

A tough tackling, no nonsense proper defender, he made his debut in the first match of 79/80, a League Cup first round first leg game at home to Crewe. His main task in the team was to protect the delicate Dave Cowling, a man so skillful, but so soft that he was made a target of by opposing defenders, in the days before such talents were protected by referees. So successful was Fred at this that Cowling made enough pinpoint crosses into the box to the likes of Ian Robins, Peter Fletcher and Steve Kindon that we scored 101 league goals in the campaign.

I'd love to see the stats for how many assists he got, but those things weren't an actual thing back then. But we're not talking about Dave, this is Fred's day. He was such a hard man, he had a hard man's tash as well, and Kindo said in an interview (probably for the Final Whistle video) that either the man would get past Fred, or the ball would get past, but never the two together.

He scored one goal in the 79/80 season. I couldn't remember it, so looked it up. It was a penalty against Crewe in a 3-0 home win. His only other goal came early in the following season in a 1-1 draw with Carlisle.

Sadly though, after two great seasons at Leeds Road in which he made 82 appearances, a knee injury forced him into early retirement at the end of 81/82. He worked for 20 years at Holset's Engineering firm according to the book Where Are They Now by Lee Morris, still lives locally and goes to watch Town regularly.

Here's Fred and his moustache, middle row, third from the right. Happy birthday Fred.

Fred played against one of his old clubs on his 25th birthday on this date in 1979. That was an away game at Belle Vue, the home of Donny Rovers.

We had suffered a surprise defeat on Boxing Day, away at the Shay, beaten 2-1 by Halifax Town. Steve Kindon made his Town debut in that game after signing just before Christmas. No silly transfer windows back then, kids.

In this game at Doncaster, Steve scored his first Town goal, the winner in a 2-1 victory, after Brian Stanton had given us the lead.