[Lord Snooty]

Watching My Grandparents War on Channel 4 the other night, Keira Knightly's nan was working at the port in Greenock when the Americans landed.

I bet it hasn't changed much since then either.

[Lord Snooty]

Got this photo off @FootbalWW1 on Twitter.

[Lord Snooty]

September 28:

Three birthdays today. Born in 1949 and so celebrating his 73rd birthday today is Geoff Hutt, the left back of our glorious 69/70 2nd Division champions team. He came into the side when Billy Legg was injured in a car crash and made his debut in an away game at Oxford in 1969.

He stuck around through the good times and the bad and the even badder, like dropping all the way to the 4th Division. By the time he'd left in 1976, he'd clocked up 277 appearances, putting him in 28th position at the moment in our all time appearances chart.

After us, he went to the Netherlands playing for Haarlem, before coming back to Yorkshire with York City and then Halifax Town.

Also celebrating today, a 34th birthday is the son of Mrs Filthy-Carpets, Lee Novak. He was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1988. Signed by Lee Clark for the Terriers in 2009, he was part of a fantastic attacking line up with Jordan Rhodes, Theo Robinson, Gary Roberts and Anthony Pilkington.

He scored 42 goals for us, which puts him in 38th equal in our all time goal scorers chart, level with Bob Kelly and Ronnie Jepson.

Don't know what he's up to these days now he's hung his boots up. He was playing at Billy Bantam's Circus before deciding to retire.

And another one. Born in 1969 and so it's 53 today for Nico Vaesen. He was born in Hasselt in Belgium and is possibly the best goalkeeper ever to pull on a Town shirt. His Town debut didn't last long, rushing out of his goal to make an interception after ten minutes, getting it all wrong and getting sent off. In the days before huge subs benches, midfielder Marcus Browning had to go in goal.

He more than made up for that error though, going on to win the Player of the Season. He was the last Town keeper to win it before Lee Nicholls won it last season.

Signed by Peter Jackson, Nico played almost every game of his three seasons with us and was probably the only position that Steve Bruce didn't tinker with.

He now works in football management and consultancy.

So today's question. Who's the best? Vaesen or Nicholls? Or somebody else? Alex Smithies? Danny Ward? Tim Clarke?

Upon the field of play, Mick Buxton and his merry men had the chance to go top of the 4th Division with a Friday night victory at Stockport County, before everybody else played on the Saturday. And they took that chance, on this date in 1979. The previous match had been the 7-1 win against Port Vale and this was a 2-1 win at Edgeley Park. Goals for Town came from Micky Laverick and Peter Hart. I think I was still in that Spanish airport while this was going on.

Anyway, we bounced between 1st, 2nd and 3rd for the rest of the season, but of course, ended it in first place.


We had a 6-0 win three years later on this date in 1982. It was in the 3rd Division against Orient at Leeds Road. It wasn't a great start to the season and we didn't win a game until matchday 6, a 2-0 win at home to Oxford. This game with the O's was matchday 7 and moved us up to 14th. We would be in 2nd before December started and at the end of the season, won automatic promotion for the last time to date.

So a poor start to the season doesn't mean we can't get promoted.

The six goals in this Tuesday evening game were scored by Colin Russell, Mark Lillis, Daral Pugh, Dave Sutton and a couple from Brian Stanton.


On this date in 2004, we had our only ever meeting with Morecambe so far. It was in the FL Trophy, known at the time as the LDV Vans Trophy. The FL had decided to invite a few of the top sides in the Conference into the competition and Morecambe were one of those. We were in League One.

And it was the League One side who won, at the John McAlpharm Stadium, by a score of 3-0. It was goal less in the first half but then David Mirfin scored, Junior Mendes scored a penalty and then Lee Fowler wrapped it all up in injury time.


And finally, Esther. We won last season, on this date in 2021. Another cracking game that I missed. It was the 3-2 home win against Blackburn Rovers. Neither myself or Amelia were feeling well and as the game was on telly, decided to stop at home and watch it.

Town scored first, Álex Vallejo scoring his one and only goal for the club in what turned out to be his last match. He got injured, what seemed a minor injury, kept him out for the rest of the season.

One nil to the Terriers at half time, it was 1-1 after 57 minutes when Ben Brereton Díaz equalised. They were only level for three minutes though as Danny Ward put us back in front with a header from a pin point Sorba Thomas cross.

But then in the 65th minute, Rovers were level again after Naby Sarr went in wild on Díaz, who got up to take the penalty.

Town weren't giving up though despite the set back and Wardy won it heading home after Harry Toffolo nodded a Danel Sinani cross back into his path. Whoo-hoo!

[Lord Snooty]

September 29:

There was a great wailing and a gnashing of teeth in the city of Liverpool, well the red half anyway, on this date in 1981. That's because the ex Town manager and hero of Liverpool FC, the great Bill Shankly died.

He'd had a heart attack three days earlier and was admitted to hospital where his condition was said to be "not life threatening". However, he had another one, at 00:30 on this date and was certified dead at 01:20. He was 68.

Tributes poured in from across the globe. The Labour Party Conference held a minute's silence and Liverpool chairman, John Smith described him as "the most outstanding and dynamic manager of the century".

He managed Huddersfield Town following the resignation of his good pal Andy Beattie, from November 1956 to December 1959.

Many years later, in an attempt at corporate marketing, Town opened up a room which they labelled Shankly's Boot Room, but there is a more permanent shrine to the old boy at Anfield with the Shankly Gates.

A modern day Town hero was born on this date in 1994. Steve Mounié. He was born in Parakou, which is in Benin, which is in West Africa and he's 28 today.

He had three seasons with us and had one of the most memorable, nay sensational Huddersfield Town debuts in the history of the club, scoring twice in our Prima Donna League first game, down at the Palace.

Nineteen goals in 55 (+ 40 sub) appearances doesn't sound a great total for a striker who was our record signing, but just imagine how many he would've scored if he'd stayed and had Sorba Thomas or Danel Sinani crossing the ball in for him last season.

So today's question. Big Stevie Munster, legend or waste of money?

Upon the field of play, we beat Everton at home on this date in 1923 en route to our first ever league title. This was a week after we had drawn 1-1 at Goodison and this one was a 2-0 win with goals from George Brown and Clem Stephenson.


Gonna finish today with two heavy defeats. On this date in 1951, we had our record home defeat, which still stands today. It was a 7-1 defeat against Wolves. The daft thing is that we scored first through Vic Metcalfe, but then somewhat lost our way.

Jimmy Dunn got a hat trick, Jimmy Mullen scored twice and Johnny Hancocks and Jesse Pye got one each.


A couple of weeks ago, we beat West Ham in a League Cup 2nd round 1st leg, 1-0 at home when Alex Dyer scored. On this date in 1997, we went darn sarf to the smoke for the 2nd leg at the Boleyn Ground, full of hope, but not really much confidence. This was a team, managed by Brian Horton, that hadn't won a league game yet.

And we lost again. It was 3-0 to the Hammers and it was John Hartson who scored all three.

Horton's time at the club was nearly over.

[Lord Snooty]

September 30:

Let's start with a big win. On this date in 1933, we beat Sheffield United 6-1 at Leeds Road. Having finished the last three seasons in 5th, 4th and 6th, Town would go on to finish 2nd, our third and final runners up position at the top of English football.

It would be Herbert Chapman and his Arsenal team who would win the league, the second of their hat trick of titles. But today we faced the Blades and not only were we the sharpest tool in the box, we blunted them so much that they ended up getting relegated as the bottom side.

Three goal scorers for the Town, managed by Clem Stephenson, each scoring twice. First up was Batley born Jack Smith, who went on to be a legend at Newcastle and Man Utd. George McLean got two as well. He came from Forfar but was a Bradford Park Avenue legend, scoring well over a hundred goals for them before joining us. He scored 46 goals in his time with us and is 31st equal in our all time goal scorers chart. Also scoring a couple was wing half Wilf Bott from Featherstone.

Moving on to after the war when Town were struggling in the First Division and a record defeat at Division One level. It was the actual heaviest club loss until Man City in 1987 in Div 2. Clem's younger brother, George Stephenson was now Town manager and on this date in 1950, he took his downward spiraling Town side up to Ayresome Park and they got hammered 8-0 by Middlesbrough.

This came after a pretty decent start and we were actually top after four matches. But a 6-0 reversal at Newcastle and a 6-2 defeat down at the Arsenal really put a dampener on the Town's red hot start. The week after Arsenal, saw the team lose 4-3 at home to Sheffield Wednesday and this Boro debacle was three defeats in a row.

There were some Town players in the team that I've written about on here before. Jeff Taylor the opera singer, Conway Smith the son of Town legend Billy Smith, Eddie Boot the future Town manager and Vic Metcalfe, who my auntie used to catch the bus from Mirfield with. I wonder if she gave him some stick on Monday morning.

Boro were managed by one of Chapman's Arsenal legends, David Jack and had the Golden Boy of England at inside forward, Wilf Mannion, who now has a statue at the Riverside Stadium, based solely on this performance against the mighty Huddersfield Town. He scored a hat trick in this match, as did Alex McCrae, with Johnny Spuhler and Geoff Walker getting one each.

On this date in 1967, we beat Blackburn Rovers at home 2-1. Brian Clark got the first, before going on to Cardiff later in the season, where he would become a European Cup Winners Cup scoring hero. Our winning goal came from John Coddington. He's 13th in our all time appearances chart, having played 356 matches for the blue n white stripes. Sadly for him though, by this stage of his career he wore the blue n white quarters of Blackburn and this was an own goal.


On this date in 1995, we beat West Bromwich Albion 2-1 at the Hawthorns. It was our first season back in the 2nd tier, with Brian Horton taking over from Neil Warnock, who had walked out on us after winning promotion to join south west giants Plymouth Argyle.

It was our first away win of the season and new signing Tom Cowan scored the first. Andy Booth got the second and Bob Taylor scored for the Baggies.


And in 2003/04, we had been relegated to the bottom tier again for the last time ever and the first time since we were promoted in 1980. Since we were last down there, automatic promotion and relegation had been introduced between the Football League and the Conference and so on this date in 2003 we had our first ever meeting with Kidderminster Harriers.

The game was played at the McAlpine Stadium and we won it 1-0. It was young scoring sensation Jon Stead who got the goal, his ninth so far in the season which would see him transferred to the Premier League with Blackburn Rovers and the team, managed by returning hero Peter Jackson, promoted via the Play Offs.

[Lord Snooty]

October 1:

Kevin McHale is 83 today. He was born in Darfield on this date in 1939. He played for Barnsley and England Schoolboys teams before Andy Beattie won the race for his signature to sign him for First Division Huddersfield Town. We'd dropped to the 2nd Div by the time he made his debut, aged just 16 in 56/57, against Leyton Orient at Leeds Road. He scored his first goal in the next game, a 2-2 draw at Filbert Street against Leicester City.

He had eleven seasons at Town, leaving just before I started going. In that time, we were mostly in mid table mediocrity, something we all aspire to but never seem to get nowadays. His time at Leeds Road spanned various eras though. He played alongside Bill McGarry, Vic Metcalfe and Denis Law in his early days and then the likes of Frank Worthington, Trevor Cherry and Jimmy Nicholson towards the end.

He left for Crewe Alexandra in 1967 and was in the top ten of both our all time appearances and goals charts. He's been shuffled down a bit since and now stands in 11th in the appearances with 375. And in the goal scorers, he's down to 12= alongside Iwan Roberts with 68.

At Crewe he helped them win promotion from the 4th Division, then went and played for Chester. Then into the non league, playing for and managing Hastings United and later on a bit closer to home, managing Emley.

According to the book Where Are They Now by Lee Morris, he went to work for David Brown Tractors later on and now lives in Honley.

On this date in 1927, we set a club record highest score. It only lasted for just over three years when we smashed it again against Blackpool.

It was an 8-2 home win against Cardiff City, a club we had built up a rivalry against, having beaten them to the Football League title in 23/24. Four years on, they were no mugs and were the current holders of the FA Cup. They didn't have long to wait for revenge when they beat us 4-0 at Ninian Park in the February.

Having won three titles and finished runners up once in the last four seasons, Town got off to a terrible start to 27/28, losing the first three games, but this win made it four unbeaten after that.

We had already got an 11-0 in the FA Cup in 1909, but this one was a record highest league score, although technically it didn't beat the highest winning margin score of 7-0 we had against Birmingham in 1913.

Bob Kelly started the rout with the first goal, going on to complete a hat trick. Johnny Dent got two, Alex Jackson scored one, Roy Goddall scored a penalty and Billy Smith rounded it all off. Scotsman Hughie Ferguson, who had scored the winner in the Cup Final, scored both the Bluebird goals.

The win took us up to 16th, but we would finish the season as runners up again, two points behind Everton this time. Cardiff would finish in 6th.

Five years later, Billy Smith scored again on this date in 1932. He score twice actually, in a 4-0 home win against Newcastle Utd. He was coming towards the end of his Town career and was 37 years old by now. Alf Young scored one. It was one of only six he scored for the club in his ten years here. And the fourth goal came from the centre forward.

After Dave Mangnall had scored 42 goals from this position in the previous season, manager Clem Stephenson couldn't settle on a preferred number nine when Dave got injured before the season started. He'd tried Frank Bungay, Billy Fogg and in this match Ernie Whittam. He scored the fourth.

This win had us up to 4th in the First Division table, but a six match losing streak at the end of the year, scuppered our title hopes, eventually finishing in 6th.

In the last decade, the 2010's, our fixture list had a strange number of fixtures on this date, five of them. We won four of them and drew one.

On this date in 2011, we played Brentford at Griffin Park. And we walloped 'em! This was the great Lee Clark team that went and won promotion via the Play Offs and it was young Jordan Rhodes scoring the first goal against the team he was on loan at before we got him.

One-nil at the break, it was two-nil after 70 minutes when Lee Novak exquisitely lobbed the keeper. Six minutes later, Jordan made it three, nodding in from close range from Novak's cross. He almost completed his hat trick a couple of minutes later, but hit the post. Gary Roberts was first to the rebound though and made it 4-0 to the mighty Terriers.


The drawn match in this sequence was up at the Riverside Stadium in 2013, a 1-1 draw with Middlesbrough. James Vaughan scored ours.


A year later, in 2014, another away win, this time against Wolverhampton Wanderers at Molineux. Harry Bunn opened the scoring and super Sean Scannell added a second before half time. The highlight of the game though was an absolute beauty from future Wolves legend, Conor Coady. Bakary Sako scored a late consolation for the home side.

Coady put the ball into his own net in the rematch in April as Wolves got instant revenge. But let's not dwell on that.


Two years on, another away win. Down at Portman Road against Ipswich Town in another successful promotion campaign. Elias Kachunga hit the post in a goal less first half. But then in the 58th minute Christopher Schindler, in the iconic yellow and black hoops, headed in from an Aaron Mooy corner and went to celebrate in the corner with the Town fans.


Three years later, we'd gone through the Premier League years and were back struggling in the Championship. We had got shut of Jan Siewert and replaced him with Danny Cowley, but by the time we went down to play Stoke on this date in 2019, both clubs were joint bottom of the Championship.

It was a dire game, but we finally got the first win of the Cowley era. Can you call half a season an era?

One-nil was the score and it was Juninho Bacuna with the goal after a great run down the right wing and a perfect pass from Adama Diakhaby. Yes really.

So four away wins in the last decade. Here, have a watch of these. Four away wins on this date. If only we had an away game today........

[HerefordBull]

Over the year reading this I have grown to like the yellow and black front hoops away kit! ...........expect it was a little like marmite with the fans though?

[Lord Snooty]

Very marmite it was. I thought it was horrendous when we first saw it. But now, obviously it's iconic.

[theo_luddite]

It was nearly as awful as that black and yellow chess board monstrosity back in the day when the long gone Greenhalls Brewery (from that there Lancastria of all places !!!!) were the shirt sponsors.

http://www.breweryhistory.com/Defunct/Pi...OldDog.htm

https://i0.wp.com/museumofjerseys.com/wp...cks-01.png

Yes, we wore it in that game too (hover your mouse over the link if you need to see what I mean) - no wonder I'm not too fond of it.

[Lord Snooty]

October 2:

On this date in 1999, the great half a season under the management of Steve Bruce got back on track with a 4-1 win against Sheffield United at the McAlpine Stadium. I say back on track because we had lost surprisingly 4-2 at Barnsley in the previous week.

This one though was magnificent. Some of the matches in this first half of the season were possibly the best football ever seen at the new stadium and we got off to great start when Chris Beech scored after 13 minutes. Clyde Wijnhard made it two on 28 mins and the Terriers led 2-0 at half time.

Shaun Murphy, an Aussie defender not a tubby snooker "magician", pulled one back for the Blunts just after the break. But then a true magician, Marcus Stewart made it 3-1 in the 57th. And he cast another spell on the United defence in injury time to finish the game off as a 4-1 win for the Town.

Incidentally, the Sheff Utd side had Martin Smith up front, who would join Town later in the season when Town controversially let magic Marcus go to Ipswich.  

On this date in 1955, Town's Bill McGarry won the third of his four England caps in a friendly match away in Denmark. The match was played at the Idrætsparken Stadium in Copenhagen and the Three Lions won it 5-1.

Goals came from a penalty scored by the future Leeds statue Don Revie and a couple from Bolton's Lofty the Lion, Nat Lofthouse, to make it 3-0 at half time.

Revie made it 4-0 before the Danes pulled one back. The fifth England goal was scored by Geoff Bradford. Not a very well known name outside of Bristol. He was a one club man, playing his entire career at Bristol Rovers and this was his one and only game for England. He is the only Rovers player to represent England whilst at the club.

This was McGarry's first game back in the England team after last year's World Cup Finals in Switzerland and he must've done alright as he kept his place for the next one in the Home Internationals against Wales.

Here's a picture of him with the unmistakable devil eyes of Don Revie poking up at the bottom of the photo.......