By Jake Verity

When you’re a football fan, there are some things you sign up for. Giving up weekends to trudge through the turnstiles. Those unexpected results that dictate your mood. The pre-match pint through to the after-game analysis. The miles you clock up over the calendar year to watch eleven men kick a ball.

But that’s not all. There are the fixtures that feel like a push to attend, but the 90 minutes on a Saturday draw you in regardless. The big cup ties you dream of, to take on a Premier League team with the hope of pulling off that cupset everyone will remember. The game against the top of the league, where you have the chance to send a message to the rest of the division.

And then there are the derby days. The ones where it really matters. Where pride is on the line. A topic of conversation in the office all week through to the first fixture you look out for in the summer. It’s the two fixtures you really care about. The ones that you really don’t want to lose.

Well, the good news is that by being a Bradford City fan, you’ll get all of these over the next few weeks.

A welcome change

After our promotion from League Two ended in the most incredible way, our start to life in League One has been everything we wanted and more. Despite our brief reality check at Doncaster, this football club has exceeded all expectations after an amazing August.

But now we face a choice. We can make this a September to remember. Or an awful start to Autumn. Of course, there’s probably an in-between. But that doesn’t fit the drama this piece needs to convey.

Because all of us are feeling optimistic for this season. No matter what you thought Bradford City’s return to the third-tier might become, it’s been pretty much perfect.

Sell-out crowds and big cup ties. A brand of football to get behind, and the results to match. But as the clock ticks down and we get ready for this Saturday at Valley Parade, we do so with a huge task at hand.

Claiming those all important bragging rights, to show we’re the best of the west, when it comes to Yorkshire pride and has been made clear this week, Yorkshire football.

The significance underlined

So as we go into tomorrow, let’s not pretend we don’t care. Because we all do.

And they do too.

We’ve lacked a West Yorkshire derby for far too long. For context, our last two came just months apart back in the 2014/15 season. Halifax away at The Shay, kickstarting an unforgettable FA Cup run. And beating that other club down the road.

Taking on Town is a different, and admittedly welcome difference from ‘rivalries’ we’ve taken on over the last few years. The whole Carlisle thing grew tiring. Harrogate became a fixture we dreaded. And Doncaster Rovers are proving very difficult to beat.

But this Saturday is really unique, because for many Bantams, it’ll be the first time seeing us play against Huddersfield.

The world was a very different place when we last played each other in the league 18 years ago.

Both clubs have been on very different journeys since then. Huddersfield have of course been to the Premier League, while we’ve languished in the bottom two divisions. But during that time we have fairly improbably been to a major cup-final, while they have failed to reach the quarter-finals of any competition. 

Despite these differences, what’s most remarkable is we’ve somehow shared the same number of promotions since we last played each other in the league. And going into this weekend, we are only a point apart in the same division.

The good news is that Bradford City AFC are a club well on their way back. An average attendance of 19,638 this season contrasts starkly to a side that were struggling with a very empty looking ground during a desperate period during the 2023/24 season.

A big moment for both teams

The rivalry between Bradford City and Huddersfield Town was once considered a race to the Premier League. With the way this season has started, this game could already be a big moment in what might be an emerging race to the Championship.

There’s reason to be optimistic. After all, we have the statistically second-best striker in the whole football pyramid for minutes per goal. Will Swan’s currently occupying second spot behind Erling Haaland and you’d expect that he’s got every chance this weekend of battling the Norwegian for top-spot.

That’s not all when it comes to having reason to be hopeful. We’ve only lost once all season. And we haven’t lost at Valley Parade since losing to Tranmere Rovers back in March. In fact, we’ve only lost three home games over the last year. Going back to that earlier analogy of us being a very different club 18 months ago, we’ve already won a third of the games at home this season, as we did in 2023/24.

Anyway, the point is simple. We are turning up to the game on Saturday against Huddersfield as more than equal competitors. While those precious statistics have good reason to make many of us think that as all good runs come to an end, we should go into this game with confidence.

And there’s no doubt that a Graham Alexander team will do exactly that. This Bradford City side has been a complete joy to watch this season. The club feels more united than it has for years. The squad is not only extremely talented, but seems to have a real desire and togetherness to want to win.

From South Wales to St James’ Park

That’s exactly why a game at Cardiff and a cup tie against Newcastle are the perfect fixtures to follow this weekend.

First of all, those two fixtures are a serious step up for us. A nice change from facing the likes of Carlisle and Newport. But the fantastic situation we find ourselves in is as follows:

Win this weekend and we can go into both of those games with maximum confidence, and also enjoy the fact we’ve been top of League One for at least half an hour. Fail to get a result, and they are the perfect games for us to get ourselves going again, both of which will see a huge travelling support.

The Newcastle game will be particularly interesting. Obviously because we have little to lose. But the real reason is the fact that they’ve got a tough fixture list on either side of our game: Barcelona the week before, Arsenal the following weekend. Rotation is likely, and any result is possible.

The Pecking Order

At the start of August, it felt like the time to take a bit of pressure off and go into this season with the ambition of enjoying ourselves. To think about how exciting it is to be a City fan again. That generally hasn’t changed. But it kind of goes out of the window for this weekend.

This is about putting a marker down, showing that we are the club we know we’ve become and cementing our status as a force to be reckoned with.

Towards the end of last season, we faced two starkly contrasting possibilities. Huddersfield or Halifax making the first West Yorkshire derby in years. Though I’m pleased it’s the former, there’s no time for sentiment.

This is the time to win.

Because if we do, and continue to keep winning over the coming months, there’s a possibility that next season’s West Yorkshire Derby will be a league fixture we’ve been waiting 25 years for.

Categories: Opinion, Previews

Tags: BCAFC, Huddersfield Town