the times | Saturday May 28 2022 1GS 9
Sport
seats after wilderness years
second leg against Sheffield United at
the City Ground and the noise
generated was scary. After the sour
atmosphere of recent years, the unity
throughout the club now — from the
chief executive, Dane Murphy, to the
supporters and players — is fantastic.
Steve Cooper, the head coach,
deserves huge credit for the change of
mentality in the players. Under Chris
Hughton there was a defensive
mindset but Cooper, having been with
Liverpool, England and Swansea City,
is all about exciting, progressive
football, involving youth and getting
everybody off their seats.
Everything he says is positive —
about focusing on the game plan and
sticking to the process. He’s been a
breath of fresh air.
It will be great to see Joe Worrall
lead the team out at Wembley. I’ve
known Joe since he was 12, when I
coached him at Forest’s grassroots
development centre. Ryan Yates was
in that group too. They’re great kids.
The club is in their blood. My son,
Callum, who came through the
academy with Joe, is still best mates
with him and Joe was kind enough to
get us tickets.
For Joe, at 25, to be captain, to
represent a city that he’s grown up in,
it’s a dream — one I experienced
myself. I hope he can lead Forest back
to the Premier League.
6 Steve Chettle, 53, played more than
500 games for Nottingham Forest
between 1986 and 1999, winning the
League Cup in 1989 and 1990, and the
First Division title in 1997-98. He is now
director of football at Basford United,
the Pitching In Southern League
Premier Division Central club.Huddersfield fan Woodworth and his
son Robin will be among thousands
heading to London this weekendHuddersfield Giants
Founded 1864
Ground John Smith’s Stadium
Division 1/Super League titles 7
(1912, 1913, 1915, 1929, 1930, 1949,
1962)
Challenge Cups 6 (1913, 1915, 1920,
1933, 1945, 1953)
2022 Super League position 4th
Highest attendance this season
6,519 v St Helens (April 18)Huddersfield Town
Founded 1908
Ground John Smith’s Stadium
First Division titles 3 (1924, 1925,
1926)
FA Cups 1 (1922)
2021-22 Sky Bet Championship
position 3rd
Highest attendance this season
23,407 v Luton Town (May 16)How clubs compare
When the poet laureate Simon Armit-
age titled a section of his book All Points
North “Huddersfield is Hollywood”, he
had no idea that this weekend the town
would be transported elsewhere. For
two days Huddersfield is London.
The mill town is set to experience a
weekend like no other. Huddersfield
Giants will contest rugby league’s Chal-
lenge Cup final against Wigan Warriors
at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium today,
a trophy they have not won since 1953.
Tomorrow it is the turn of Huddersfield
Town in the Championship
play-off final at Wembley, bat-
tling with Nottingham Forest
for a return to the Premier
League and the so-called
£170 million reward that status
entails. Supporters will make
their way from John Smith’s
Stadium, the ground shared by
the clubs, to the capital.
On Thursday, the rugby
squad’s bus was waved off by
supporters, and Dean Hoyle,
the football club’s chief execu-
tive, set off on a 201-mile bike
ride to Wembley to raise money
in honour of Daryl Hopson, a
supporter who died of cancer
last month. Coaches will be set-
ting off before 9am on both
match days. Supporters will also
flock to Huddersfield’s station
for rammed public trains, or for a
chartered service by a company
that runs day trips to the seaside.
To the elders, the rugby club are
Fartown — the district in which
the team used to play — but they
are Giants to those in the Super
League era. The football club are
simply Town. The latter inevitably
command more supporters, with
Armitage and Sir Patrick Stewart
among their number, but there is
plenty of crossover.
Ken Davy, 80, will attend both
matches. Davy bought Fartown,
second-division strugglers at the time,
in 1996 and led the consortium that
rescued Town from administration in- Sixty-two years ago he was not a
sports fan or a Huddersfield native, but
as a photographer aboard SS Oriana he
became friends with Russ Pepperell,
the rugby club’s captain in the 1953
Challenge Cup final. Davy’s future wife,
Jennifer, loved rugby league. “I’m sure
it helped the romance a bit,” he says.
Today Davy and the head coach, Ian
Watson, will walk out at Tottenham
Hotspur Stadium. It is a family affair for
Davy: his great-grandson, Xavier, is the
mascot, and he has dedicated the final
to Jennifer, who died in 2017.
Supporter Bryn Woodworth will be
accompanied by his son, Robin, and
Martyn Waddington by his brother,
Michael, and nephew, Joshua. Wad-
dington’s father, Keith, will appear too.
Lawrence’s best friend from childhood
is coming to London for both games.
Waddington, like Woodworth, is a
rugby fan first but has close ties to foot-
ball: his dad grew up on the terraces at
Town’s ground, and his brother used to
serve pies at the away end. “You can’t
say no, can you?” Waddington, 48, says.
hope of being ‘mini miracle men’
A whole town is coming
to London for two finals
and watch out for Peter Ramsden, com-
ing down the street carrying the cup,”
Woodworth says. “She knew that he
wasn’t going to come down our street
half an hour after the game had fin-
ished. She said later, ‘Well, it kept you
quiet for half an hour.’ ”
Woodworth went to Fartown’s subse-
quent Challenge Cup final defeats in
1962, 2006 and 2009. For the last of
those, he flew from Austria, where he
and his wife lived at the time, on the day
of the match. The 1962 final was his first
trip to London, taken on a chartered
train. This year there will be a similar
service, only for the game tomorrow.
James Palmer set up Retro Rail-
tours with his father, John, in 2008.
Typically Palmer, 32, organises day
trips to Margate, Blackpool or the
Edinburgh Festival. With lots of
clientele in Huddersfield they have
put on a return journey to Wembley
Central on Sunday — just as they
did for the 2017 play-off final, when
Town last made it to the top flight.
As of Wednesday afternoon, about
500 tickets had been purchased —
£89 for a standard return, suste-
nance included.
First, though, Fartown will seek
to end 69 years without Challenge
Cup glory. Before and after the First
World War, Fartown were domi-
nant. Huddersfield was where
rugby league was born, when the
Northern clubs seceded from
union at the George Hotel in 1895.
Twenty years on from the schism,
Fartown held all four trophies at
once, and won the Challenge Cup
again in 1920. This prefaced the
football club’s golden era: Town
won the FA Cup in 1922 and were
champions of the Football League
in 1924, 1925 and 1926. “Town had
won the First Division Champion-
ship three times in a row some-
time back in the Stone Age, so
there was history, and therefore
hope,” Armitage wrote.
Huddersfield has had big days in the
past, though: on April 24, 1920, Fartown
contested the Northern League final at
Headingley and Town the FA Cup final
at Stamford Bridge. On April 25, 1953,
Fartown won the Challenge Cup at
Wembley and Town drew their penulti-
mate game of the season en route to
promotion to the first division.
The rugby players are returning to
Huddersfield tonight, meaning they
will miss Town’s turn tomorrow. Carlos
Corberán’s side were unfancied over
the summer but finished third.
Jermaine McGillvary, a Fartown
legend, will get a chance at 34 to win the
Challenge Cup. Lawrence was 19 when
he was left out of the squad in 2009, and
at 32 looks set to miss out again.
Individually, Huddersfield’s rugby
and football players are preparing
themselves for glory or dismay. They
are about to be put through the mill.
“Both clubs have had their ups and
quite a lot of downs, which is another
nice story to reflect on that they’re
actually enjoying better times now
than they have done in the past,”
Woodworth says. “It gives the town a
real sense of identity and belief that we
can compete at the highest levels in two
of the country’s major sports.”Elgan Aldermanto
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Hd“My dad’s 82. I was saying to him, ‘This
isn’t going to happen [again] in my life-
time, Dad, never mind yours.’ ”
Woodworth, 73, was four when
Fartown last won the Challenge Cup.
He lived halfway between the Hudders-
field clubs’ old grounds and would flit
between rugby and football. Peter
Ramsden, man of the match in the 1953
final, lived down the street. “I clearly
recall my mum, when the news of the
score came through — because my dad
and my elder brother were big Hud-
dersfield supporters — that they’d won,
she told me to go to the front windowZAC GOODWIN/PAKick-off Tomorrow, 4.30pm
TV Sky Sports Main Event
Radio talkSPORT
Referee Jon Moss
Huddersfield (probable; 3-4-3)Forest (probable; 3-4-1-2)Huddersfield Town v
Nottingham ForestL NichollsB SambaT Lees J Hogg L ColvilleO Turton J Russell L O’Brien H ToffoloJ Colback J Garner R Yates D SpenceS McKenna S CookP ZinckernagelJ WorrallS Thomas D Ward D HolmesS Surridge B Johnson