TALK OF THE TOWN
They share their training ground with a bowls club and eat meals with the fans. No wonder Huddersfield are the...
IT WAS raining sideways on the M62 above Huddersfield yesterday. It is the self-proclaimed highest motorway in Britain and at 9.30am nobody would have needed any convincing.
An hour later on Leeds Road — about half a mile from where Huddersfield Town will host Newcastle tomorrow lunchtime — the old folk were playing bowls at the club’s training ground. In this part of Yorkshire, it takes more than a rain shower or promotion to the Premier League to stop play.
Huddersfield have shared their Canalside training ground with the public since they bought the site from ICI in 2010. It was part of the deal that the 16 snooker, bowls and croquet teams who used it would remain.
Former Town manager Simon Grayson used to hold press conferences in a hut with croquet mallets stacked up behind him. David Wagner may enjoy considerably better facilities than that but yesterday his first-team players were still queueing up to eat alongside those who were coming here back in the days when the Premier League was something they used to watch only on the TV.
‘ I thithinkk it kkeeps ththe playersl honest,’ Huddersfield owner and chairman Dean Hoyle told the
Financial Times last week. ‘Coming in here and having to face the fans after a defeat . . . some of the old boys don’t mince their words.’
As always, progress doesn’t come without any change at all.
Wagner’s team, joint ‘ top’ after last Saturday’s win at Crystal Palace, will soon have their own private players’ lounge — still a work in progress — and the local paper recently revealed that some bowlers and snooker players are looking to move elsewhere after the club cut their facilities.
‘There are football stalkers coming into the club and asking the players for pictures,’ a spokesman for the bowlers said. ‘They are not happy about that.’
Nevertheless, Huddersfield Town and the community they nourish seemed to be rubbing along pretty well yesterday.
‘It’s nice to see the supporters walking around the training ground,’d’ saidid KKasey PPalmer,l on loan from Chelsea. ‘You can see how much it means to them. The club and community are so well connected. I can’t see it being a problem.’
It was 1972 when Huddersfield last hosted a game in the top flight, so no surprise to find Wagner in a state of barely disguised agitation.
‘ I am very excited,’ said the German, his voice rising. ‘I think there will be an extraordinary atmosphere in the stadium. It has to be. It is the first time in 45 years so, yes, we need some Premier League style support.
‘We are not an experienced team so last week really helped us to have more trust and belief in ourselves.’
Chairman Hoyle has promised his club will ‘stay humble’ during their top- flight residency but Wagner has already said, quite rightly, that his team are not ‘here just to say hello’.
The 45- year- old considered lleavingi afterft winningii lastlt season’s’ Championship play-off final, only to sign a two-year contract. So he is here to make his mark, despite the odds stacked against him.
Trapped between the football behemoths of Manchester and Leeds, Huddersfield believe they have a catchment area for supporters of about 20 miles.
WHeN they won the old First Division three times consecutively between 1924 and 1926, their average attendance was just 18,500.
Last season they earned promotion with a wage bill of £11million. Newcastle and Brighton came up with corresponding figures of £60m and £26m.
So the scale of the challenge is clear even if their 3-0 win in south London has bred some lovely optimism. New Huddersfield striker Steve Mounie — an £11m signing from Montpellier — scored twice at Palace and immediately talked of one day emulating the achievements of his hero Didier Drogba.
‘He played one game and did a good job,’ smiled Wagner yesterday. ‘But putting Didier Drogba and Steve Mounie in the same sentence? Maybe this is not the time! But look, maybe expectations are rising and I will not stop that.’
The last season Huddersfield were featured on Match of the Day a youthful looking Barry Davies was bemoaning the number of yellow cards ( 59) and indeed supporter arrests (70) at that day’s football.
The bust of Herbert Chapman sits proudly in the entrance to Canalside. It wasn’t only with Arsenal that the great man won trophies. Of the three stars — one for each league title — on the Huddersfield badge, two were put there by him. He was sacked the season they won their third.
Record goalscorer Andy Booth is a club ambassador, meanwhile, and the great Frank Worthington is regularly invited to games from his home down the road.
So Huddersfield host Newcastle with a foot firmly in the past and also the present, and that’s probably the way it should be.
A scheme started by Hoyle ensures 1,000 healthy breakfasts are served to schoolchildren in the area every single day.
The aim at the John Smith’s Stadium tomorrow is to prove that Huddersfield this season will be nobody’s free lunch.