Huddersfield Town fans wake up to a whole new world after earning promotion to Premier League

There were Huddersfield Town fans queuing outside the club shop, desperate to get their hands on the last scraps of blue and white merchandise, more than nine hours before the open top bus parading David Wagner and his squad wheeled into a raucous St George’s Square shortly after six last night.

For many, the realisation that Huddersfield will be playing Premier League football at the John Smith’s Stadium next season had still to fully sink in on Tuesday. But the euphoria that has enveloped this honest market town in West Yorkshire certainly provided another arresting snapshot of football’s enduring capacity for fairy tales.

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Glynn Battye, a lifelong Huddersfield fan, had travelled almost 4,500 miles from his home in Clearwater, Florida, to Wembley to watch Christopher Schindler’s shoot-out penalty against Reading in Monday’s Championship play-off final send thousands like him into dreamland. Battye – “a Yorkshire name” he says proudly, his thick local accent interspersed with an occasional American twang – had left Huddersfield for the US in 1983.

But he was back in his old stomping ground on Tuesday, the broadest of grins etched on his face, as he mooched around for souvenirs before joining the sea of blue and white that delighted in serenading Wagner, chairman and owner Dean Hoyle and a group of history making players. Battye can remember the last time Huddersfield were in the top flight, 45 years ago, a lifetime ago for those young boys and girls who excitedly kicked a ball around St George’s Square in the town centre in anticipation of the arrival of their heroes.

“I’ve followed them since Ian Greaves was manager here and took them up in 1970,” Battye, 60, said. “I flew in on Saturday, just before British Airways had their IT blackout. I’m ecstatic, it’s unbelievable, a dream. Now I’ve got to try to save up to come back for the first Premier League game in August.”

Driving in to Huddersfield on Tuesday, the sense of pride was evident long before the party really got started, a jubilant Wagner led the fans into a chorus of “Huddersfield! Huddersfield!” and Hoyle joked that the manager had “invited himself round for a coffee in the morning” to plot the route ahead. “I’ve trusted David, he’s asked for everything and I’ve given him everything,” Hoyle said. “He’s delivered. Sometimes people ask and never deliver, he and these players have delivered Premier League football so if going forward David says ‘I need …’, we will try to deliver.”

In the Elenor Rose bridal store on New Hey Road en route into the town, a giant white wedding dress was draped in a Huddersfield shirt. The window of Hunters estate agents on John William Street, a stone’s throw from the main square, was adorned with flags and posters congratulating the club on their promotion. In St George’s Square itself stands a statue of Harold Wilson, the Huddersfield born former Prime Minister and it wasn’t long before he had a scarf wrapped round his neck. Posters urging locals to vote for Labour’s Barry Sheerman or the Conservatives’ Scott Benton in the forthcoming general election were soon lost to a deluge of blue and white. Car horns beeped, vuvuzelas were blown.

As Gareth Southgate, the England manager, said Tuesday: “Sport gives people a chance to dream. It makes a difference to a town, a city, a community, a country. You can take people out of day-to-day miseries... having to listen to the election all the time! There is power in sport.”

Huddersfield sold more merchandise in the 10 days following their play-off semi-final triumph against Sheffield Wednesday than they did in the entirety of December, their busiest month, and by the time Luke Cowan reported for work on Tuesday morning,the majority of the club retail manager's conversations were spent politely apologising for most products being sold out.

Cowan and his staff did well to be so perky. They had only finished partying a few hours earlier with Wagner and the players at the Cedar Court hotel although, remarkably, no one reported late for duty. Huddersfield is certain to be fuelled by adrenalin for days to come yet.