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WHAT a time to be a Huddersfield Town fan!

In 10 years since Dean Hoyle became a board member at the club – and chairman since June 2009 – supporters have enjoyed two wonderful promotions and now a survival season in the toughest division of them all. It has never been easy being a Town fan. While many of our rivals around West Yorkshire have drunk from, at one time or another, the golden chalice which is the Premier League, Town fans have had to look on from below, wondering if their chance would ever come.

Hence the tears of joy which greeted promotion at Wembley almost a year ago, when Christopher Schindler slotted that shoot-out winning penalty to take Town from the Championship to the promised land.

That outpouring of emotion reflected the struggle which had gone before.

Ahead of Hoyle’s first promotion in 2012, Town had lost in the play-off semi-finals (to Millwall) and in a final, to Peterborough at Old Trafford.

Then, after Lee Clark had been replaced by Simon Grayson, Town finally climbed out of League One and into the Championship – but only after becoming the first team in history to win a penalty shoot-out after missing their first three spot-kicks (against Sheffield United).

I did say it’s never been easy being a Town fan.

Mark Robins and Chris Powell came and went (with Mark Lillis taking temporary charge on three occasions) before Town went ‘left field’ to appoint a German from the Bundesliga second-team structure who few had ever heard of.

David Wagner rejigged the playing staff and the club’s style of play but, more than that, created a whole new philosophy which the supporters readily bought into.

He used his first few months at the club wisely, but when Town were beaten 4-0 and 5-1 in their final two matches of 2015-16, there were plenty left pondering a future of continuing struggle. They need not have worried. Wagner put his own stamp firmly on the squad in the summer of 2016 and, very quickly, the Wagner Revolution was engagingly in full swing.

New heroes emerged such as Chris Lowe, Christopher Schindler and Michael Hefele from Wagner’s home country, while loan signings sparkled – step forward Liverpool goalkeeper Danny Ward, Chelsea midfielders Kasey Palmer and Izzy Brown, Ingolstadt attacker Elias Kachunga and, of course, Australia’s finest Aaron Mooy from Manchester City.