Memories of those Leeds Road toilets!
and it wasn’t only foreseeable, it was very clear from the proclamations coming out directly from the club that this was the strategy, that we wanted to get rid of these people, that we needed to get the wage bill down.
So if you’re going to do that, then you have to have a plan, not to replace them like-for-like, but to make sure that you have a bit of squad depth, and also you bring in players that are competitive at this level, and by that I mean that they are proven to be competitive at this level.
I think in the club’s defence it was a transition period, not just in terms of the ownership and a lot of players going out who had been the bedrock and spine of that team over the previous two or three years, but also if you look at it in terms of director of football, backroom staff, all this stuff.
A lot of things had to be done in a very short space of time with a lot of uncertainty, probably, from funding right down to who you needed to be in place.
So it was just a really unfortunate six months.
ON April 30, 1994, Huddersfield Town played their last game at Leeds Road, with Neil Warnock’s side beating Blackpool 2-1 courtesy of goals from Simon Baldry and Phil Starbuck.
The club moved to what was then called the McAlpine Stadium for the start of the following season, and though 26 years have passed since then, you will still find Town fans who will tell you it just isn’t the same as it was back in the old days.
We asked you for your memories of the ground, and one thing in particular came up – the smell of urine from the terrible toilets (‘basically a wall and a gutter’) mixing confusingly with the scent of Bovril in the air around the ground.
Here are some of your favourite memories...
Gate B is where the famous Leeds Road Tea Boy was. He used to get the teas for the other stewards and come back with them on a tray. The Cowshed used to rinse him every week: ‘TEEEEEEA AAAAAAA BOOOOOOOOOOY!’ Then they’d start chanting: “Tea Boy, get us a brew, Tea Boy, Tea Boy get us a brew...
One of my favourite memories of the final day was them introducing legendary players at half-time, players I’d read about in books but never seen other than a grainy black and white photo.
Then the Blackpool subs came out to warm up. One of the older Town players, Albert Nightingale, who was 70 and donning a splendid suit, then ran after them and with the crowd cheering, took the ball and skinned a couple of Blackpool subs as they chased an old man but couldn’t get the ball back.
Eventually he stopped and knocked it back put his hand to his chest and doubled over with a huge smile on his face. Great moment.
Changing ends at half-time to sample the Cowshed atmosphere, standing on the Terrace side with my dad, the goal surges when it was still all-standing, and the worst toilets I’ve ever seen! Happy days...
Trudging around to change ends at half-time...and the time we got relegated, sold our best players and in recompense got some rubbish flags on poles on the scoreboard!