Giant killers: Non-league Tamworth stun Huddersfield in FA Cup first round

Tom Tonks’ long throw-in helped non-league Tamworth secure a famous FA Cup upset against League One promotion hopefuls Huddersfield.

A Premier League side as recently as 2019, the West Yorkshire club suffered a humiliating first-round loss at the Lamb Ground on Friday evening in front of the TV cameras.

Man of the match Tonks’ long throws caused chaos throughout and helped Tamworth seal a memorable 1-0 win, with Town goalkeeper Chris Maxwell fumbling one of them into his own net just before half-time.

There are 57 places between Michael Duff’s visitors and the part-time National League outfit, who would have quickly added another had Maxwell not denied Daniel Creaney.

The Terriers did little to trouble Tamworth goalkeeper Jas Singh as Andy Peaks’ hosts held on.

Tamworth manager Andy Peaks said his side’s 1-0 win against Huddersfield was just reward for their progress over the last two years.

Peaks said: “We were looking forward to it because if you can’t enjoy nights like this, you shouldn’t be involved in football.

“Obviously the result makes it 10 times better but I wanted people to come and celebrate what we’ve done the last couple of years and this was a reward to get a tie likeHuddersfieldand then be on TV.

“People have said about the way we play, we play like that every game, we’ve not got loads and loads of extremely skilful players, we just work hard, we’ve got a good shape, they put a good shift in.

“I said to them before the start, whatever happens do yourself justice, don’t let it pass you by, and they didn’t, they were brilliant.”

Opposite number Michael Duff, in contrast, questioned his team’s mentality as he admitted they were beaten by the better side at The Lamb Ground.

Duff said: “Not good enough. Outrun, outfought, outbattled, beaten by a better team in the end.

“Started the game really poorly, concede a goal from the obvious threat, no quality in our play, every cross went in the keeper’s hands.

“We’ll be all over the papers tomorrow for all the wrong reasons. I said to the players in the meeting room, ‘make sure your heads are right’, and they clearly weren’t.

“There’s no excuses. We’ve played three different formations, we’ve had a lot of the ball but not sure the keeper has made enough saves, and if we’d have started the game like we did from the 80th minute onwards we’d have been all right, but we didn’t.”

Tamworth are joined in the second round draw by Notts County, who thrashed Alfreton 5-1.