HE’S the first to admit his spell as a Huddersfield Town player never took off – but Brian Greenhalgh believes his couple of seasons at the club were crucial to his footballing education.

At 63, the Southport-based former striker is still involved in the game, and an occasional visitor to the Galpharm, in his role as chief scout for Championship outfit Watford.

And while his West Yorkshire stint failed to yield the goals he produced in the colours of Preston, Aston Villa, Cambridge and Bournemouth, he still has happy memories of a stay which coincided with two of the most memorable post-War Town campaigns.

Town boss Ian Greaves signed Greenhalgh for £15,000 from Leicester on the same day in July 1969 that the East Midlands club parted with star striker Allan Clarke, who joined Leeds for 10 times that amount.

Having made his name by banging in the goals for Preston and Villa, Greenhalgh had spent the bulk of his four months at Filbert Street as understudy to Clarke and Andy Lochead.

A move to Second Division rivals Town represented the chance to claim regular first-team football at a club with ambitions of reaching the top flight.

Greaves’ side did indeed go up in 1970, with the team skippered by Jimmy Nicholson winning the divisional title, but Greenhalgh played only the first five matches of the season.

And just when he seemed to be making an impression as Town jousted with the giants the following campaign, he found himself back out in the cold – and on the transfer list.

The fact that he went on to plunder 47 goals in 116 league appearances for Cambridge is testament to Greenhalgh’s penalty-area prowess.

So what went wrong at Leeds Road?

“It wasn’t for the want of trying, but a combination of injuries and a loss of form and confidence meant it just didn’t work out,” explains Greenhalgh, who had netted nine goals in 19 league games for Preston and 12 in 40 for Villa, forming a potent partnership with Brian Godfrey – the pair were nicknamed the BG’s – at both clubs.

“I was delighted when Huddersfield came in for me, because they had a good name in the game, and Ian Greaves was a very driven young manager.

“He was straight-talking, which I liked, and I knew he was putting together a team with a nice balance of experience and youth.

“He had the likes of Jimmy Nicholson, a Northern Ireland international, and Colin Dobson, who were both smashing players.

“Then there was Roy Ellam, a really rugged defender, Jimmy McGill, who supplied the bite in midfield, full-back Dennis Clarke, who I felt never got the recognition he deserved, and emerging lads like Geoff Hutt, Bobby Hoy, Trevor Cherry, Jimmy Lawson and of course, Frank Worthington.

“They were a great bunch of lads, and while we worked hard – we used to laugh about which one of us would be the first to be sick as the manager had us running up and down Kilner Bank – we played hard as well.

“The social side of the game was a little different in those days, and we used to have some terrific nights out in Leeds and Manchester.

“I was in digs with Terry Poole, the goalkeeper who like me, came from Chesterfield, and we got on really well.

“The only problem was my inability to get in the side, and that was frustrating, because they were exciting times for the club.

“I well remember the feeling in the town when it became clear we were on the way to promotion to the old First Division.

“That gave fans the prospect of matches against the likes of Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool, and the supporters had waited a long time for it to happen.”

Greenhalgh suffered a succession of injuries, the worst of them a fractured metatarsal picked up during the 1970 pre-season.

“It took a while to establish the exact nature of the injury, and eventually I was in pot,” he adds.

“When it came off towards the end of September, I hit a good patch of form in the reserves, scored in a West Riding Cup game over at Bradford City, and was brought back into the first team for a match over at Burnley which we won 3-2.

“We followed up by beating West Brom and drawing with Manchester United and Everton, and I was starting to feel I was getting somewhere.

“But we were very up and down all that season, and I finally lost my place again and ended up going on the transfer list.”

Greenhalgh turned down a deadline-day move to Bolton before finally joining Cambridge the next pre-season, having made 17 appearances.

“It might not have worked out, but my time at Huddersfield taught me a lot,” he says.

“I realised you have to keep working hard even when you aren’t getting the rewards.

“I’d still been scoring goals in the reserves at Town, so I knew I could do it, and sometimes a change of scenery makes all the difference, because when I got to Cambridge, I started to find the net again.”

Greenhalgh helped Cambridge, who had only been elected to the Football League in 1970, win promotion from Division IV in 1973, before spending the 1974-75 season at Bournemouth and 1975-76 at Watford.

He then played for a string of non-league teams, including Dartford, Carshalton, Maidenhead and Staines, while working as a sales rep for a food firm.

Greenhalgh, who has two sons and two grandchildren, became a partner in a St Albans-based company which supplied optics and bar equipment before his old Preston teammate Howard Kendall invited him to become chief scout at Everton, where he was manager.

Now working for Watford, he’s still enjoying the challenge of keeping the management team fully updated on potential targets.

“I find the job exhilarating,” he smiles. “It’s a great way of keeping involved in football while staying out of the politics of the game, which I’m not that keen on!

“As well as going to games myself, I organise a team of part-time scouts and the aim is to have a constantly evolving file of players so that the club have plenty of options when recruiting.”