The warning signs had been there for Huddersfield fans during the 1986-87 season. Former player Steve Smith had just about managed to keep the Terriers’ heads above water, with three consecutive wins in May preventing relegation to Division Three.
There would be no such escape during the following campaign, though. In fact, the 1987-88 season for Huddersfield would go down in history as their worst ever. The bare statistics of just six wins in 44 league matches paints the picture; but it was one of the 28 defeats that is still talked about to this day.
Out of football since leaving Fulham in 1984, Macdonald had been managing a pub in Worthing, before his return to the sport. “I have a gut feeling about Malcolm Macdonald,” Chairman Roger Fielding announced after the appointment. “He has been out of the game for a while and I think he has something to prove.”
“I’m ambitious,” Macdonald stated. “I want to be a First Division manager. I’ve given the squad 24 hours to decide how much they want to be First Division players. There is tremendous potential here and my aim is to build a super team.” It didn’t quite work out as Macdonald had hoped.
Spending nights in his hotel room watching videos of Huddersfield’s home matches, Macdonald would have been alarmed at the most recent defeat, a 4-1 dismantling at the hands of Middlesbrough. Even more worrying was Huddersfield’s away form, with the team shipping 14 goals in the five matches on their travels.
The porous nature of the defence away from Leeds Road continued in Macdonald’s first three matches on the road. Conceding three goals at each of Reading, West Brom and Ipswich, Huddersfield’s abysmal run continued. Although Duncan Shearer impressed up front, and Macdonald gained his first win against eventual champions Millwall, the forthcoming visit to Maine Road did not look an enticing prospect.
Manchester City, managed by Mel Machin, were hardly flying high at the time. Relegated the previous season, City were tenth in the table and would only finish one spot higher come the end of the campaign. The failure to gain promotion may have been disappointing, but any City fans amongst the crowd of 19,583 at Maine Road on Saturday November 7 were to witness a match that would live long in the memory.
Missing top scorer Imre Varadi for the visit of Huddersfield, Tony Adcock stepped into the City starting line-up. Signed from Colchester in the summer, the striker had struggled to make an impact in his few appearances at the club, but the Huddersfield match would give him the opportunity to shine in his brief time at City.
If the dress for success phrase is to be believed, then Huddersfield were already on the back foot before the match had even started. Sporting a hideous yellow and black checked away kit, the visitors had chances early on, but fell behind after 12 minutes, when Neil McNab fired in from outside the area. “We started off so well in the first quarter of an hour and could easily have scored a couple of goals,” Macdonald said in the post-mortem.
With a team so low on confidence, it was hardly surprising that heads dropped as the goals continued to flow. Paul Stewart doubled the lead in the 28th minute, and when Adcock and David White netted, City held a 4-0 lead at half-time, leaving Macdonald and his players with operation damage limitation on their minds.
Paul Simpson remained the creative heartbeat of City as the second half progressed, his crosses allowing Adcock (53) and Stewart (66) to add to their tally. It would be Adcock who would win the race for the match ball, profiting from more comical defending and completing his hat-trick after 68 minutes.
Huddersfield may have hoped that City would take their foot off the pedal. Yet three goals in the final ten minutes completed the humiliation. Throughout the afternoon, Huddersfield’s execution of the offside trap would have caused George Graham nightmares. Stewart benefitted from one example of this when he scored his third with nine minutes left.
White added his second of the day and City’s ninth before the tiniest bit of silver lining appeared on Huddersfield’s grey cloud. A penalty from former City midfielder Andy May reduced the deficit, but even then, things got worse for Macdonald’s team. Breaking through Huddersfield’s shoddy offside trap, White took the ball round keeper Brian Cox with a minute remaining to complete the rout.
“Yes, I think you could say that was perhaps my most humiliating day within football,” Macdonald told the press afterwards. Perhaps? “Once City went in front for some reason we just totally went to pieces. It was altogether just a total shambles. We’ve got a problem of apathy. For some reason players went against the whole principle of defending and against instructions.”
Machin had sympathy for his opposite number. “I feel for him a great deal. It must be terrible for him because he has only just arrived at the club and still has so much work to do. I could see the anguish and despair etched on his face as he sat in the dugout.”
Huddersfield reacted positively to the embarrassment, taking seven points from the next nine, and by December the club had sneaked out of the automatic relegation spots. Drawing twice against City in the FA Cup – including a 0-0 at Maine Road – there was hope that the corner had been turned. Alas, just two league wins in 1988 saw the club drop out of Division Two, and Macdonald leave football for good.
“I feel bitterly disappointed that things have not worked out,” Macdonald proclaimed after his resignation in May 1988. “If only others in the club had matched my effort perhaps we could have stayed up.” Regardless of his protestations, Macdonald’s 206-day stay at Huddersfield will forever be remembered as an unmitigated disaster. That his last ever league win was against City in April would have been very little consolation to anyone involved with the club.
Three days after the Huddersfield match, Adcock would repeat his hat-trick heroics against Plymouth in the Full Members’ Cup. But by January he was gone, leaving for Northampton in an exchange deal involving Trevor Morley. He may not have been at City for a very long time, yet Adcock would play a key role in one of the club’s most notable matches of the 1980s.
Three different hat-tricks in a league match – the first time since 1962 – City’s largest margin of victory in their history, and Huddersfield’s club record defeat. The players, supporters, and club officials of Manchester City and Huddersfield Town at the time will have a very good reason to remember, remember the seventh of November.
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