Terriers Treading New Waters!
Terriers Treading New Waters
This season’s newcomers feature “the Terriers” from Yorkshire, Huddersfield Town. Forty-seven years have elapsed since they last graced the top tier of English football, when they were promoted alongside Blackpool. Should they require any reminders of how fickle our beautiful game can be at the top-table these days, they need look no further than the plight of the Tangarine coloured Seasiders in recent years with their humiliating fall from grace to League Division 2, which translates in old money to League Division 4.
Allow me to indulge in a healthy dose of pure nostalgia, as I take you on a footballing journey back to the summer of 1977, forty years ago, when goal difference first came in to play. Manchester United had just won the FA Cup and the mighty Liverpool under the great Bob Paisely had won the double of League Division 1 and the European Cup, when it was genuinely a competition exclusively for Champions!
When the new season commenced, few supporters dared contemplate an end to Liverpool’s dominance at home and abroad. The arrival of newly promoted Nottingham Forest went largely unheralded, apart from their vociferous boss in the shape of one Brian Clough. After all they had only just secured the final promotion berth, one point ahead of Bolton and very much in the shadow of Wolverhampton Wanderers and Chelsea.
It would be the season when Manchester United would break the British transfer record, capturing Gordon McQueen from Leeds United for the staggering fee of £495,000 and Everton’s Bob Latchford would win the generous £10,000 prize offered by a newspaper for scoring 30 league goals in a season.
This was also the season when Wimbledon joined the ranks of the Football League and Swansea City and Watford would embark on a remarkable journey to the top table of English football, following promotion from the fourth tier. When one also considers the exploits of the crazy gang from Plough Lane, one wonders if a side from the fourth or fifth tiers could emulate these remarkable feats today, given the excessive financial demands of the modern game.
As Forest continued to set the pace at the top of the table, the first real sign that we were witnessing a changing of the guard came when the two teams were pitted against each other in the League Cup final on 18thMarch 1978. The final under the twin towers ended in a stalemate with both defences stubbornly resolute.
The replay at Old Trafford courted great controversy with the Liverpudlians, seemingly on the wrong end of a couple of dubious refereeing decisions. The upshot of this however was that a John Robertson penalty dictated that Clough’s charges had secured the first major trophy of the season and had dealt a major blow to Liverpool’s sense of invincibility.
Their 19 year wait for a trophy was over and the old First Division League Title trophy would be added to the City Ground trophy cabinet come the end of the season. As if these achievements were not sufficiently stellar in nature, every expectation even from the most rose tinted spectacled Forest supporters would be surpassed during the following couple of seasons, when the men from Sherwood Forest in true Robin Hood cavalier style would conquer Europe by putting Malmo and Hamburg to the sword, as John McGovern hailed aloft the European Cup twice, in an era when it was truly the Champions League in everything but name.
Despite humble Leicester City’s recent heroic exploits, it would surely be too much to expect that the Terriers can repeat Clough’s magic, despite the fact that their manager Wagner has conjured some magic already and his footballing philosophy would be music to his ears, as far as Old Big Head was concerned.
For those who believe in coincidences, there are some interesting connections between these two great footballing outposts. It is well documented that Nottingham Forest recorded an impressive 42 match unbeaten run, when they took the top flight by storm. Less well known is the fact that on 19thNovember 2011 Huddersfield Town broke their unbeaten league games record by beating Forest’s neighbours from the other side of the Trent, Notts County.
After a 14- year absence from the top table, Huddersfield Town would end the season in 15thposition with Nottingham Forest in 16th at the end of the 1970-’71 season. The following season both clubs were relegated to the second tier. Ironically, that season 1971-72 was the season when Cloughie led unfashionable Derby County to the League Division One title, denying Leeds United a famous double. Soon after, Leeds United players and supporters would suffer further humiliation, all be it for only 44 days, during his ill-fated reign as Leeds’ manager following the departure of Don Revie to manage the national side.
Incredibly, by the time Brian Clough returned to the big time with Nottingham Forest during the summer of 1977, the once proud Huddersfield Town had continued their downward spiral to League Division Four.
It has taken the Terriers 45 years to return to the promised land and given their impressive start, who can deny them the luxury of dreaming that the dogged terriers can repeat the cunning tricks displayed by the foxes, as they outwitted the big money spenders of the Premier League!
Aled Evans
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