A summer to savour the wonder after 45 years of famine
For Huddersfield’s fans the glory trumps the cash – and now the glamour nights are back
The walk from Huddersfield train station to the John Smith’s Stadium is almost a mile, and takes you downhill for most of the way before rising sharply upwards at the end. You pass Centro’s Pizza on your right, Huddersfield Market on your left, and if you are in a hurry, dodge across six lanes of traffic on the ring road. Then you round a bend, and there it is: atop a hill, looming above you like a beacon, the songs filling the skies above.
Now, improbably, that journey is on the Premier League itinerary. Now, thrillingly, those sights and sounds and smells are part of the Premier League liturgy. People always go on about the cash on play-off final day. But unless you are a club chairman or an agent on the make, it has never been about the money, but the glory. And after almost half a century, the glory days and glamour nights are returning to Huddersfield.
Forty-five years have passed since the Terriers last had a chance to add to the three league titles they won in the past century under Herbert Chapman. This is a part of the world that used to send teams to the top flight as regularly as it returned Labour MPS. One by one, the Yorkshire giants – Leeds, both Sheffield clubs, Bradford, Barnsley, Hull – have fallen. Now, for once, the White Rose triumphed over Waitrose.
Nothing against Reading, you understand. But like all longrunning soap operas, the Premier League is enriched rather than diluted by variety. It needs new characters, new settings, new passions, new stories. And the story of how a little-known German manager named David Wagner led a squad of little-known players to the world’s richest league is a tale to rival them all. “It is a celebration that everyone has waited 45 years for,” said Wagner, having apologised for smelling of champagne. “Now we know our limit. The limit is the Premier League.”
It was billed as the £170million match, and after more than 130 minutes of turgid nearly-football, there was a strong argument for distributing the money among the watching public for having to sit through it. But if ambition and enterprise are any barometer, then the correct team emerged victorious from the lottery of penalties, even if Huddersfield’s record of six consecutive shoot-out victories suggests there was nothing fortuitous about it.
Wagner’s side may not have wanted it more, but they hunted it more. They pressed from the front, they pushed their full-backs on, they risked more to try to obtain it. As they have done all season, they punched above their weight. “I said to the players before the play-offs: you are heroes,” Wagner confided. “But you have the opportunity to become legends. And they are now legends.”
What can Huddersfield expect from the Premier League? A dogfight, from the very first. The gulf between the top six and the rest has compressed virtually everyone else into a relegation battle. This season, in terms of points, Southampton – in eighth place – were closer to being relegated than to seventh. Very few teams will be safe from relegation before spring. That pressure, that intensity, that pounding dread, is something Huddersfield will have to get used to.
Wagner’s existing formula will need to be enhanced, or modified. Virtually every Premier League team operate a form of intense forward-pressing these days. Defensive errors are punished with clinical efficiency. The vast majority of clubs are well run, well trained, very fit and very rich. Wagner’s meticulous eye for detail and preternatural gift for bonding a squad will be tested to the hilt.
What can the Premier League expect from Huddersfield? That, in many ways, is the more exhilarating question. New fans, most of whom are taking advantage of season-ticket prices that have been frozen at the current level of £199. New stars in the likes of Elias Kachunga and Izzy Brown, if Huddersfield can persuade Chelsea to loan him for another season. New experiences and new memories, as Liverpool and Manchester United pull off the M62 and into the borough of Kirklees. New dreams, and new dreamers. “I’ve been supporting this club since 1969,” chairman Dean Hoyle said after the game. “We can give lots of people hope, smaller clubs that keep believing. You can achieve the impossible.”
A long, hard season of toil awaits. But for now, all is wonder.