Skip to main content

Sometimes, Unbelievable Things Happen....

Yesterday was an amazing emotional roller coaster ride.

Against all predictions, my team, Halifax Town, triumphed in the FA Trophy at Wembley yesterday.

We were the better team on the day, opponents Grimsby Town had won last week in the Play-Off Final to get back in to the Football League, but their big guns - Padraig Amond, Omar Bogle - never got going on the day.

When your team has just got to Wembley for the first time in their 105 year history, it all takes some taking in. Yes, we were the better team. Yes, player of the year Scott McManus - who sadly had to leave the field later having picked up a suspected cruciate ligament injury - scored a brilliant goal, a sublime curling shot from his right foot to put us 1-0 up. We never looked back, and despite some pressure from Grimsby, we didn't buckle.

So Town - every player performing out of their skins - emerged as winners.

But it was still hard to believe, even when the cheers went up as the game ended with Town 1-0 winners. The team heading up the steps to pick up the trophy. The champagne being sprayed over the team with a winners hoarding behind. This was all happening to my team. Unbelievable!

Tears were shed, there was laughter, and before that, tension, frustration. Every emotion under the sun. It is even now so hard to take in. A team that until 2009 had with odd exceptions seen little success. Fans, family, friends, folk from way back when, were all overcome by the emotion and significance of this victory.

But look at the papers, the websites; all of them are reporting the fact that FC Halifax Town are the 2015-16 FA Trophy Winners.

And it is hard to believe. But I'll take that....

Wembley Stadium 22/05/16

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Calder Valley Ale Trail - UPDATED May 2025

The essential guide to the pubs and bars that line the railways in the towns and villages of the beautiful Calder Valley in West Yorkshire, an area which has a lot to offer and captivate the visitor. Here's the latest, updated version.... The original Rail Ale Trail heads through the Pennines from Dewsbury through Huddersfield to Stalybridge, or vice versa, depending on your starting point. Made famous by Oz Clarke and James May on a TV drinking trip around Britain several years ago, it reached saturation point on weekends to such an extent that lager and shorts were banned by some pubs and plastic glasses introduced to the hordes of stag dos, hen parties, and fancy-dressed revellers that invaded the trans-Pennine towns and villages. There are some great pubs en route and whilst things have calmed down from a few years ago, they can still get very busy on a summer Saturday in particular. However, only a few miles away to the north, there is another trail possible which takes in s...

Through The Garden Gate To The Tetley....

I went over to Leeds last weekend for a wander around which took in a visit to the newly re-opened Tetley, but first I called in at one of the city's finest architectural gems.... *****UPDATE, May 2026***** Unfortunately, The Garden Gate is now closed, seemingly permanently. Meanwhile, Kirkstall Brewery will be vacating the Tetley at some point during 2026 as the site owners proceed with the full restoration of the building. The two-year refurbishment project will create a public market hall and around 13,000 sq ft of office space. And so sadly more of Leeds's illustrious pub and brewing heritage is lost. ************ The Garden Gate is one of Leeds' most historic pubs, with a spectacular Grade II-listed interior which is up there with the finest not just in the city but in the country as a whole. Situated in the area of Hunslet about two miles out of the city centre in the middle of an unassuming low-rise housing estate, it stands alone on a quiet pedestrianised street in...

Amongst The Ghosts of Years Gone By....

A historic and attractive village set in the Pennine hills high above the tourist hotspot of Hebden Bridge, Heptonstall has often been overlooked but has recently been attracting an increasing number of visitors in its own right. I took a trip over there last weekend to have a look around this fascinating place where fact and fiction and truth and legend are often intertwined. And of course, whilst I was there I checked out the local pubs too.... Heptonstall is not so much steeped in history as completely drenched in it. Take a walk around the steep, cobbled streets between the solid gritstone buildings with their mullioned windows and the ruined church of St Thomas Becket and its historic graveyard with its worn and weathered gravestones, and you feel surrounded by the ghosts of years gone by. And whilst vehicles are allowed in the village on an access-only basis, with the 596 bus able to pass through on its way to other hilltop settlements nearby, the lack of much traffic makes it a ...