The Football Pink

Bradford came into this one with six straight clean sheets and Michael Duff yet to see his side concede a goal. Jon McCracken had gone 686 minutes without picking the ball out of his net. Joe Low ended all of that inside four minutes, and by the hour the 23,776 at Valley Parade knew the derby belonged to Huddersfield.

It came from a long throw. Ilias Bronkhorst's looping throw-in was only half-cleared, Cameron Humphreys lobbed it back into the box, and when Aden Baldwin's second clearance bounced up, Low swung himself into an overhead kick and hooked it into the top corner. His somersault celebration wasn't quite as good as the finish.

City answer, then fade

To their credit, Bradford came back hard. Matt Young was booked for flying out of his goal and catching Jake Beesley, then had to parry a low Corey O'Keeffe free-kick through a crowd of bodies. Will Swan glanced Kayden Jackson's low cross just wide, and Matt Pennington had a shot deflected past the post from another fine O'Keeffe delivery. At half-time it was 1-0 and still anyone's game.

Duff changed it at the break. Nick Powell and Adam Phillips came on, and City went to a 3-1-4-2. Within three minutes it had gone wrong. Huddersfield broke from a Bradford corner, O'Keeffe slipped, Joe Taylor fed Derensili Sanches Fernandes, and he slid it between McCracken's legs.

Six minutes that settled it

Three minutes later, Sean Roughan crossed from the left, Taylor rose at the back post, and his header crept in. A side that hadn't conceded in six games had now let in three in 51 minutes.

From then on, the 2,755 in the sold-out away end had their party. They goaded Duff, Huddersfield's former manager, and sang the name of Martin Drury, who used to coach at Bradford. Bali Mumba went down under pressure from McCracken but got no penalty, and Taylor fired into the side-netting.

Bradford's afternoon got worse on 69 minutes, when captain Antoni Sarcevic pulled back Bronkhorst and got his second yellow. Home supporters were already heading for the exits, and they didn't see Phillips limp off late on.

Huddersfield finished with 17 shots to Bradford's 14 and six on target to three. Their first three shots all went in, and Drury made a point of it.

Our first three shots were goals and that shows our ruthless mentality. The players were talking about scoring five goals today because they wanted to double up what Bradford have conceded this season.

Martin Drury, Huddersfield head coach

He admitted the first half had been "quite a poor game of football" and that Bradford "looked a little bit more connected" early on. After the break, he said, "we had more control", and he singled out the away end: "At times, it felt like a home game with the noise they were making."

"A bitter pill"

Duff, serenaded by the visiting fans for much of the second half, didn't dodge the errors.

It's a bitter pill. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong in the second half. We started the second half well for three minutes and then we take a short corner for some reason. It's two individual errors in two minutes and the game's almost dead at that point and then the red card.

Michael Duff, Bradford City boss

He insisted City had been the better team before the break: "I don't think that's me being biased, there's numbers that will tell you that." "You've got to suck it up," he told the Telegraph & Argus. "The last half an hour, you've got people wanting to get after the ball, but you don't want to turn it into a four, five or six."

Last season Huddersfield were beaten, and beaten well, on this ground. This time they leave two points clear at the top, with Stockport winning at Edgeley Park, and their promotion credentials look very real. For Bradford, it was their heaviest home defeat since March 2024. Duff's last word: "Deep breath, hopefully it's a one-off."