WHAT a fantastic all round team performance from Huddersfield Town that was on Tuesday night at Bramall Lane.
From start to finish, from the front to the back, every one of them stood up to be counted. Some excellent high tempo attacking football with pace and a work ethic and determination to win that saw them do the ugly bits and throw bodies in the way when they had do. Energy, heart, pride and passion.
Such a cruel shame then that so many of our supporters could not show the same attributes towards the cause.
So, Messrs Boycott and Boycott, just how did you feel that late evening, seeing the result, hearing the performance on the radio, reading it the Examiner? Still fully vilified in your actions for avoiding the game or are you tinged with regret for missing it?
I for one could not have wished for a better result or team showing as an end result to this game for you to look upon.
You deserve nothing more than that to ponder yet the team deserved so much more from you.
That should have been witnessed by a bustling and boisterous 4,000 travelling Town fans.
So, to the boycott, a boycott buoyed by depthless comments that only leant towards making the Huddersfield support in general, appear to be second rate and, to a point, embarrassing.
What were your individual considerations by following this uprising?
Was it the actual ticket price or the tier pricing that has been in place at Bramall Lane since its Premiership status?
I think a long hard look should be taken if this situation ever arises again or if indeed we gain promotion this season and move onwards into the championship where this system is quite common place among the top end clubs and ticket prices in general are in excess of £25. Will you boycott these games?
Our home ticketing price will have to go up to help support our progress. Do you not understand this part of a football club that wants success? Will you boycott the home games or do you expect Dean Hoyle to simply finance the growth without your help?
I don’t recall you being sympathetic towards Leeds United when we hit them with a significant ticket price the first season we played them after their relegation.
I have just seen my football club pull off possibly the best performance under Lee Clarke in Sheffield United’s back yard, the league leaders, unbeaten, in front of 20,000.
Well worth the £28 and a pint for the driver on the way home.
How foolish do you feel missing it for the sake of an extra tenner?
Mark Bartram
Dalton
Need more local trains
NORMAN Mellor wrote a good letter ‘Trains would be better’ (Examiner, September 13) about the sad loss of local branch lines following the Beeching axe.
Our roads struggle to cope with ever-increasing volumes of traffic.
Roads to Kirkburton, Meltham and Holmfirth run alongside disused trackbeds. It doesn’t take a genius to conclude that something’s not right about this.
The government is keen to spend a dizzying £32 billion (and the rest) on HS2, an ambitious project to get expense account businessmen between a handful of favoured cities at 200mph.
Maybe this money would be better spent on re-building the UK’s railway network to pre-Beeching levels, thus presenting millions of ordinary people with a viable transport alternative to their cars.
Uncle Grumpy
Golcar
No to Tesco in Holmfirth
I WOULD like to thank Nick Lavigueur for raising a balanced view on supermarkets (Examiner, September 14).
He mentions, however, that plenty of people ‘hate’ Tesco.
While I cannot speak for others, I would welcome Tesco if they wanted to invest in Holmfirth by building a suitably sized store in Holmfirth town centre.
However, they wish to build an out-of-town superstore over a kilometre from the town centre, which is likely in my view, to act as a competing retail centre, drawing trade out of Holmfirth without bringing any in.
Situated between several villages it would also compete with the village centres that could lose their village stores.
My protest would also be just as strong whichever supermarket tried to build on that site.
As for the jobs argument he raised, the number of retail jobs in an area is decided by the amount people can spend.
If there is no extra expenditure then new stores simply result in job displacement from other stores.
If either the Tesco or Asda proposals in Huddersfield go ahead they would absorb all available grocery spend in south Kirklees for several years, hence building a store in the Holme Valley as well would not, in my opinion, create any net new employment.
Dominic Stankiewicz
Keep Holmfirth Special
Make-up memories
AFTER reading your article about Shelley College and girls wearing make-up it brought back memories of my school days when, after turning up at Rawthorpe Senior School in the late 1960s with make-up on and hair piled on top of my head, (thinking I was the bees knees) I was frogmarched to the girls’ toilets and had my face scrubbed until red and shiny and made to take my hair down and put it in a suitable style for school.
I was told in no uncertain terms it was not a fashion show and I was at school for learning.
I do think removing mirrors is a bit drastic and with make-up or without it will not stop pupils succeeding in anything they put there minds to.
Ann McNae
Huddersfield
Dangers of diabetes
DIABETES is one of the biggest health challenges facing the Yorkshire and Humber region today.
It is vital that people with the condition receive enough support to manage their condition which is why I am writing to ask your readers to get involved in Diabetes UK’s new 15 measures campaign.
Diabetes UK believes there is a minimum level of care that all 236,000 people diagnosed with diabetes in the Yorkshire and Humber region deserve and should expect from their health service.
As such, we have launched a 15-point checklist outlining the essential health checks and specialist services that people with diabetes need to stay healthy.
We want to encourage your readers, whether they have diabetes themselves or know someone who has, to use the checklist to ensure they are getting the care they need.
If there are any gaps in care, people should then take the checklist to their healthcare team and raise the issue with them.
Diabetes is serious and can lead to devastating complications including blindness, amputation, kidney failure and heart disease.
With the right care and education, people with diabetes can live long and healthy lives.
To get a copy of the checklist and to inform Diabetes UK of any gaps in diabetes care via an online survey, please visit www.diabetes.org.uk
Barbara Young
Diabetes UK Chief Executive
Let’s have fewer MPs
THE government’s plans to cut the number of MPs and thus the number of constituencies to 600 looks good on plan, but we all know turkeys don’t vote for Christmas.
So we can expect this one being kicked along with other contentious issues beyond the next election. Adjusting constituency sizes to be more equal would be fair, no argument on that one.
An alternative way to cut the price of politics would be to put a limit on the number of terms that anyone may be elected to any public post. Perhaps two, maybe three terms?
The savings there would accumulate from reducing the bloated golden handshakes, pensions and other benefits accruing from length of ‘service’.
Another benefit would be the lessening of the common sense consuming effect that the Westminster bubble has on many an elected politician.
In addition, many people have taken a pay cut and reduced hours in the past few years.
Link MPs pay to average pay. If we take a 20% cut to meet a four day week they do too. Bingo – bags of savings.
The sight of Ed Miliband this week was another example showing quite clearly the separation of the language and thinking of normal folk, from the PPE educated/lawyers4U political class with their strained, rehearsed, artificial mannerisms.
Let Parliament be filled with people who have done a day’s work and who are not disconnected from real people and the real world.
Who knows, we might have less fiddling, less dithering and hand-wringing, better and more relevant legislation and even a little bit of that dirty word (for the liberal ‘intelligentsia’), patriotism.
Gez Sharp
Huddersfield
Time to get baking
AS a Great British Bake-Off judge and celebrity cookery writer I am appealing to your readers during National Cupcake Week to get creative in the kitchen for Meningitis UK.
From a Mad Hatter’s tea party to a bake-off with your friends, there is so much fun you can have with the charity’s Time 4 Tea fundraising initiative this autumn.
Meningitis is the disease which parents fear most. As a mother and grandmother, to find a vaccine which would protect future generations would be a wonderful achievement.
I’m offering one of my favourite cake recipes – Ginger and Treacle Spiced Traybake – to everyone who signs up at meningitisuk.org/time4tea or by calling 0117 947 6320.
Party balloons, colourful bunting and a selection of Twining’s tea samples are some of the treats you can expect in the Time 4 Tea pack along with my delicious recipe.
Mary Berry
Celebrity cook, cake-baker and cookery writer
