It’s 2:55pm on August 6, 2016, last season, and a new Town team is taking to the pitch to play Brentford - a team that outclassed us in our previous match. What was I thinking? I remember clearly.
I thought about how we’d bought players who were leaders, favourites and standouts at their old clubs. We might not have heard of them but the fans at their old clubs didn’t want them to leave.
I thought about how, during the previous season, David Wagner’s system had squeezed an extra 30 per cent from the average group of players he inherited, and how I’d gone round telling friends that if he was given players with more ability, the system would work even better.
I thought about Town being in the top half of the table. I even thought about them flirting with the play-offs.
And as the teams shook hands I was trying to decide whether to ignore the voice in my head, the one I put there myself, the one that tells me: don’t have too much faith because they’ll break your heart. They’ve done it before; built your hopes up only to fail at the first difficult hurdle. (Like the England national team keep doing.)
The Brentford games starts and the team begins to deliver and already I’m ignoring the little voice because there is something about the team and the way it plays that sucks me in and gives me no choice but to believe in them. And when I look round the ground, I know I’m not alone.
As the season progresses, the team ticks every box needed to become truly loved by supporters. They exhaust themselves. They’re skillful. They attack-attack-attack. They overachieve against better paid and supposedly superior teams. They never give in. They keep sticking it to every know-it-all who says they won’t do it.
They jump EVERY hurdle.
We’re used to it now. We trust them. But we shouldn’t forget what it was like, back before Brentford, when the Premier League was still a distant dream and we were like most supporters - living with a dull ache.
Let’s remember it next time a player screws a shot wide or takes the wrong passing option or lets Harry Kane through on goal. Remember, forgive and encourage them again.
As an aside - I’m glad we attacked Tottenham every chance we got and don’t care that it probably made it easier for them to win. I don’t agree with the pundits who said we should have set up as the away team or played a containing game. That isn’t what’s got us where we are.
Bill has supported Huddersfield Town since August 1970, travelling up and down the country and visiting around 50 away grounds in the process. Having retired from his job with Pennine Housing in Halifax two years ago at the age of 56, the lifelong Town supporter is currently pursuing his dream of becoming a published author.
