How Neil Warnock inspired Huddersfield Town triumph

Neil Warnock has fond memories of his first spell in charge of Huddersfield Town, but he admits that taking the club to promotion via the play-off final on May 28, 1995 required him to give what he says is the toughest team talk of his entire career.

Warnock oversaw the first game at the newly-built Alfred McAlpine Stadium, as it was then known. He led the club to the Autoglass Trophy final in his first season at the helm before leading them to the second tier of promotion after a 2-1 victory over Bristol Rovers at the old Wembley.

A falling out with the board at the end of that season meant Warnock did not go up with Town, instead staying in the same division by moving to Plymouth Argyle – but he does not allow that to cloud his memories of the good times he had in West Yorkshire first time around.

Warnock said: “I want people to remember my teams, I want them to enjoy it, I want the fans to think ‘wow’, and I’ve been fortunate.

“I mean, I’ve been criticised about long ball and all that but that’s a load of rubbish really. It’s just that at Notts County I had a team that couldn’t pass water so I got labelled with that! But here we played some good football.

“With Sinbad (Lee Sinnott) and Scally (Pat Scully), they thought they were Beckenbauer didn’t they, and I said if you ever lose it by playing I’ll have you, so make sure we play it early doors and then we’ll play from there. But I thought in the other half of the pitch we played some really good football, and I thought we were exciting to watch, and I think the fans loved it.”

The high point of Warnock’s reign came in his final game in charge: the 1995 Second Division play-off final, when Town emerged victorious over Bristol Rovers thanks to Chris Billy’s late goal to make it 2-1.

But Town had to endure the setback of conceding a Marcus Stewart equaliser on the stroke of half time just moments after Booth had put Warnock’s side ahead. That gave the then-Terriers boss a huge challenge to lift his side in the old Wembley dressing room, with Booth saying that it was ‘like we were 3-0 down’ despite the scoreline actually being level.

Warnock said: “The Bristol Rovers game was the most difficult half time talk I’ve ever had in my career, and people say ‘really?!’, and I say ‘yeah, really,’ because we’d battered them first half and then we’d scored in injury time, and then we conceded in injury time.

“So from being on a high knowing we could win it easy, we go in the dressing room and everybody’s head was down if you remember, and I went in the shower room with Mick [Jones, assistant manager] and I said ‘bloody hell, Mick, this is my hardest I’ve ever got to do this’. And we’d played so well!

“I can remember saying ‘lads, you’ve played so well’ – I’ve got so many goosebumps Andy, coming here talking… – but I remember looking at you all and saying ‘wow, you’ve played that well, they’ll be going in there thinking, ‘how the hell have we come in here 1-1?!’.’

“I said ‘but what they don’t realise is we can get better second half, we can come away winning this game lads, you lads enjoying it, you’ll be heroes forever at Huddersfield, so grasp the opportunity’. It was great, we deserved it.”