Huddersfield

Just as an aside, & I thought about this as I was writing, I wonder if the London rule had some bearing on the creation of separate Scottish competitions? Obviously, in the early days the FA Cup was a British competition, albeit very few Scottish teams ever entered (Queen's Park & a team called Clydesdale are the only ones I can think of without Wikipedia). The football league when created was pretty much a league for Lancashire & the W Midlands. Were the drivers for Scottish competitions about nationality or just practicalities?

For the pedants amongst us (I know, I know) there were some inaccuracies. There were two Blackburn teams at the time, Olympic & Rovers, not just a single Blackburn team. Suter actually signed for Rovers, but it was Olympic who were the first non-public school team to win the FA Cup, so he didn't play in that final. Also for the extreme pedants, the famous 5-5 draw (Old Etonians v Darwen) shown at the beginning actually went to a second replay, which meant three trips to London for the Darwen players (there was a rule I think that from the quarter-final onwards all games had to be played in London) & that may have had some bearing over time on the attitudes of Northern & Midlands teams as to how the sport was being organised. His move from Darwen to Rovers didn't go down well though & I think there's truth, as shown in the programme, that some of the first instances of football hooliganism were between their fans after he moved, & trouble continued on & off for the remainder of Darwen's league existence. Moving on a bit in history, I read a brilliant book a little while ago; 'Erbstein: football's forgotten pioneer', which is about Erno Erbstein. His great influence was Herbert Chapman, & going back to your 1-0-9 formation, Chapman is quoted as having said "A team can attack too much." One of his many great innovations was to create the idea of players whose primary job was to defend. Erbstein (a Jew who somehow managed to dodge the concentration camps only to die in the Superga plane crash) took those ideas, both to Hungary (his birthplace) & Italy (where he mostly worked). It's no coincidence that those two countries, Italy especially, became amongst the early international powerhouses. I'd say it's at this point that the development of the game left both our countries!

It was a manic day. Loads of us went across on double decker buses & felt a bit like sitting ducks at times. I still know a few of Town's 'top lads' from that era (not blokes you'd mess with even nowadays most of them) & I've heard a few of them say that along with maybe the likes of Millwall, they were always wary of the Ointment as they had some absolute psychos in & amongst them. I think there's a book somewhere or other that one of their lads wrote.

Were you there (Valley Parade that is) by any chance the last game of the 1983 season? We'd just won promotion & took (depending on who you believe) anything up to 10,000 across. I've been to plenty of games where violence either happened or was threatened, but I can't ever remember such an intense atmosphere of hatred anywhere. City had a notorious firm (The Ointment) who were out in force & there were significant numbers of City fans who spent the entire game trying to get into our end & cause mayhem. There was a bloke - an absolute tank - just to the right of us & when the Police moved in to nick him it took about half a dozen of them a good 15 minutes to get him out of the ground...he was absolutely lacing into them. I'd have loved to have been a fly on the wall when they got him back to the station

I'd definitely like to get to an England-Scotland game one of these times, but I think I'd love to see one of the really mad derby games around the world. I have a mate who watches Polish football a lot & reckons some of the derby games there (even lower division ones) can be well worth watching. Plus maybe some of the South American ones. A lot of derby games though that are under the radar can be good to see (as others have mentioned). Our away games at Bradford were always a bit tasty to say the least, especially back in the 80s.

I just spent about 5 minutes trying to work out how the hell you could do an overhead backheel so I googled it...that was definitely some goal!

I’ve read a fair bit on this over the years & I don’t think you can really say either of us invented it as such. The game evolved in various ways, & those developments came from all over. In terms of unifying rules & creating a structure, then you probably are looking at English public schools, but that wasn’t about inventing the game but rather codifying it in a way that they could compete with each other. Professionalisation & the first key technical developments in the game almost certainly originated in Scotland. At least, Fergus Suter was the first known & semi-legitimate professional. The passing game you mention almost certainly originated in Scotland. The whole notion of professional sport is linked into lots of other sociological/social history developments at the time. In terms of league competitions, these were started in England, but by a Scot. So, much like the first international game, perhaps best to call it a draw!

His announcement that he predicted a pandemic also fails to stand up to scrutiny:

"I call it the super duper missile". My 2-year-old grandson can used more advanced language than that to talk about his toy spaceship.

I watched Alias Grace recently. It's based around the true story of Grace Marks, a servant, who may or may not (no Googling if you don't want spoilers) with another servant, have been involved in the murder of her employer & the housekeeper where she worked in the mid-1800s. The story is built around interviews with a psychiatrist (that bit is made up I think) but I enjoyed it a lot.

If you don't mind paying, you could try here: https://www.enfa.co.uk/ The first of those clubs may have been removed though to avoid embarassment. Sorry: edited as I remembered that's mainly English. I don't know if they have a Scottish equivalent.

I wouldn't. I don't think my wife reads the board, but you can't be too careful.

I've got a copy downloaded - just trying to finish a couple of other books I've got on the go then I'll make a start on it, but it definitely looks up my street. I have a mate (mate of my lad's strictly speaking) who wrote a book (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Where-Are-They-Now-Huddersfield/dp/1912027607) - I think it's a paper version only & obviously a bit of a limited audience, but he was pretty relentless marketing it on all sorts of social media platforms. I'm not really much of a salesperson to be honest, but I guess key is fathoming out who might want to read it & where you'd find them. Is there any sort of trade union, ex-workers group or maybe Facebook page for people who worked there?

I never saw them live but oddly was listening to a lot of their music just a week or two back. They were absolutely one of my favourite bands ‘back in the day’. I think the first punk album I ever bought was Rattus Norvegicus. Although other tracks get more kudos off that album, I rate Ugly as one of the finest things they ever did. Any song that can fit in mention of a poem by Shelley, a double murder attempt & a statement about the class system in between various lyrical nonsense has to be worth a listen!