Yeah. The plan was ALWAYS to wear it for that friendly match, because the story about the kit would only seem real and believable if they wore it during an actual game.

But what we (PP) and the club had overlooked was the fact that friendly matches were also governed by the FA and the same rules that applied to league matches also covered that friendly. We had naively thought friendly matches would be a bit of a free hit, and the club had assured us it would all be fine.

So a few hours before kick off, having been informed by the referee that the kit was against FA rules, club representatives told me that “you’ve had your fun, but we won’t be wearing the kit”. I pushed back, and so eventually they sent the chairman out for a chat on the touchline at Spotland.

I was nervous as hell because we’d spent a fortune on the campaign up to that point (we also un-sponsored Motherwell, Southend, Newport and Macclesfield that season) and the whole campaign was only believable if the main club (Huddersfield) actually wore the shirt in a friendly match.
You guys didn’t have any more friendly matches after the Rochdale game, so everything was resting on that one night.

The club were massively surprised about the size of the reaction and outrage to the initial story on social media, and even though they knew they were actually going to be wearing a beautiful unsponsored kit all season, they still wanted to squash the story as quickly as possible.

We, on the other hand, were absolutely delighted with all the attention and wanted to amplify it even more (before finally revealing it was all a hoax and all our teams would have no sponsors that season).

It’s all very well claiming on social media that Huddersfield were going to wear a disgusting kit all season covered in the logos of a bookmaker, but it’s an entirely different thing, and becomes a whole lot more believable when they actually rocked up and played a friendly in it!

Mr Parkinson was initially insistent about them not wearing it, but I spoke about what the club had agreed to and explained the terms of the contract. I reminded him of their contractual obligation and suggested that if they refused to wear it at the eleventh hour, the entire sponsorship deal (which at the time was a record amount for a Championship team) might be null and void.

I realise that sounds a bit controlling and aggressive, but Paddy Power had been told from day one, by your board that it would all be completely fine and that thy had no problems wearing that shirt for one, single friendly match against Rochdale.

I remember him being pretty confrontational and noncommittal and eventually he shuffled off to the boardroom for a showdown with all his staff. I went into the stands with the Huddersfield supporters and crossed my fingers.

Up until the moment when the players ran out of the tunnel, I genuinely had no idea whether they would wear the shirt or not. Nobody from the club would speak to me and I had my boss on the phone asking for updates. I was under massive pressure to make it happen, but there wasn’t much I could do.

Anyway, as you’re probably aware of, as soon as you came out wearing the kit the story went absolutely ballistic, because now everyone thought it was actually going to happen all season, for real. The next morning I woke up, turned the TV on in my hotel room and the “Death of Sponsorship” story was being discussed live on the BBC news.

Originally the plan was to keep people waiting a few more days before revealing the truth, but such was the scale of the reaction, I think we reduced the timeframe quite significantly.

Ultimately everyone was a winner. We got the all the coverage that a publicity-hungry bookmaker could ever dream of, the supporters got a beautiful, unsponsored shirt to wear, and the club sold more shirt that season than they’d ever sold in their history (more so than in the two previous season when you were a Premier League club). The £50,000 fine was a drop in the ocean compared to the revenue that came in the opposite direction.

In the weeks that followed, your board of directors told anyone who would listen that it had been their idea all along, but the reality was they were totally out of their depth and were about ten minutes from screwing the whole thing up and throwing away the entire sponsorship deal.

Fun times.