Huddersfield Town's trip to Bolton is not just a any old FA Cup game

Saturday's trip across the Pennines has landed in just exactly the right circumstances to make it feel like the most important cup game the Terriers have faced in years

Maybe this comes from the privilege of supporting a club that has won the competition several times in my lifetime — in very dramatic fashion, on two occasions — but it’s always been difficult for me to get excited about the prospect of watching Huddersfield Town in the FA Cup. Or any cup competition, for that matter.

There have been memorable cup games in my six and a half years writing about the Terriers. Victory over Burnley in 2022, defeat at Nottingham Forest later the same year, this season’s wins over Leicester and Sunderland in the League Cup.

Most infamous of all, of course, was Town crashing out to non-league Tamworth live on BBC One in the first round of the FA Cup this time last year — a year to the day from Saturday’s trip to Bolton, in fact.

That 1-0 defeat was a low for Michael Duff, and fans never forgot about it. But even then, that loss came after Town looked to have turned the corner from an awful run of form. They had won three and drawn one of their previous four league games. The draw was a perfectly creditable goalless stalemate at Wrexham that both sides were happy with on the day. Town didn’t lose again until late January.

But this year, there’s no question that Lee Grant needs his side to get a result at Bolton, for all kinds of reasons. We can’t think of the last time a cup match felt quite so important to Town. Only that trip to the City Ground under Carlos Corberan comes close, and that was for the opposite reasons.