On Saturday 29 November, I visited Huddersfield Town to write a piece with a difference: a day as the club mascot Tilly the Terrier.
This was either the assignment I was born to do, a madcap idea that snowballed thanks to Huddersfield’s help or both – I’ll let you decide that. It contained things that I’ll never do again but thoroughly enjoyed.
The following is a list of everything I learned on a day that I’d foreseen as funny and silly (and it was both) but ended up being entirely heartwarming…
1) For a fair while, there has only been one Huddersfield Town mascot: Terry the Terrier. When supporters asked where Tilly had gone, Terry would mime sleep (which somehow raises more questions than it answers, given the time lapse).
That produced an interesting reaction when Tilly returned for one match on Saturday. There was a lot of “Where have you been?” and me miming sleeping. And let me tell you: that is a much less persuasive answer when the question is being asked by an adult.
2) It’s a long old day. I arrived at the ground at 12pm for a full debrief, largely by Terry. We were costumed up by 12.45pm and outside the ground to start welcoming supporters. We then met the mascots and posed for photographs with them in the home dressing room and in the home dugout.
After more welcoming outside the ground, we then had two separate pitchside presentations to groups of children. After more welcoming in the rain, we did one and a half laps of the pitch to wave to supporters and pose for more photos with kids who had rushed to the front of the stand. At half-time, we did the same.
3) The first rule of mascot club: we are never seen in public in costume without the head on. There was one moment when, pitchside, I knelt down to pose for a photo, leant to the side by mistake and my head wobbled badly. That would have been a top 10 worst moment of my life; luckily I had a massive paw to save the situation.
4) All day, I asked myself a question (internally): do young children think that mascots are real?
Do they think that they are massive versions of animals – which, let’s face it, is enough to scare adults? Do they process it rationally and understand that there is a person inside the costume? Or do they exist in a hinterland of blissful ignorance where they don’t even ponder it for a second, merely bask in the glorious innocence of it all.
It’s that last one, isn’t it? I am now jealous of all kids and their stupid non-overthinking.
5) If you put on the bottom half of a mascot costume and that mascot has a long tail, you realise fairly quickly if you have put it on back-to-front.
6) There is a lack of agreement between the relationship between Terry and Tilly. Children shouted at me that I had a boyfriend. Adults said, in a wonderful West Yorkshire accent, “Yer mehht is back, Terreh”.
A club employee suggested, not unreasonably, that we could be brother and sister. The DJ/announcer outside the ground referred to me as “Terry’s missus” and for some mad second I felt offended on her – my? – behalf.
I’m calling it a platonic relationship: we’re mates. It’s 2025 for goodness sake. And if there were two oversized furry dogs in the same town and they both happened to be big fans of the local football club, of course they would be friends.
The heat is almost unbearable, like sitting in a sauna
7) If you ever do this, all you will think about on the way to the ground, in some rush of panic as if your brain has been protecting you from it all week but can hold back the barrier no more, is: “Please don’t injure a kid. Please don’t injure a kid. Please don’t injure a kid. Please don’t injure a kid.” I didn’t injure a kid.
8) I can’t believe that it has taken until now to mention it, but the one thing everyone says about being a mascot is that the heat is almost unbearable and they are not lying. You put your head into a plastic vice that holds everything in place, but it also contains very little air and, even on a miserable late-November day, is immediately like sitting in a sauna.
After 10 minutes, sweat is running down your forehead and into your eyes. Your instinctive reaction is to wipe it away but a) big furry hand and b) big furry head.
So you just screw up your expression to try and divert the moisture down the sides of your face, safe in the knowledge that on the outside you’re always smiling. This ended up sounding like a Jake Humphrey LinkedIn post.
9) For that reason, I am officially nominating anyone who wears a mascot suit in an official capacity at a football club in August for an MBE. Yes they sometimes use cold pads stuck to their foreheads, but to be honest that level of dedication only increases their cause.
10) The weirdest part of being a mascot is the silence. You aren’t allowed to talk, obviously, because no kid wants to hear a female dog talking in the accent of a 40-year-old bloke from Nottingham.
It’s really, really difficult. I’m a chatter, a waffler (Ed: we’ve read your stuff, yeah). I once did a sponsored silence at school and I still dream about how bad it was now. I communicated with Terry and my brilliant chaperone helper through the medium of mime – drink, thumbs up, low ceiling so watch your massive head, timeout, there’s a kid near you so don’t injure them.
But the whole day is spent with children asking you questions: “How are you? Where have you been? What do you think the score will be? How old are you? Who is your favourite Town player?” And your natural response, as a total amateur, is to answer through speech because that is the normalised behaviour. And you can’t.
I felt like I’d done a double legs session at the gym
11) OK, I lied about the heat. The hardest thing is the pain in your leg muscles. Because the mascot is massive and children tend to be small, every photo you do – and a low-end estimate would be 150 across the day – requires you to crouch down.
Crucially, there were also massive puddles on the ground and nobody wants a mascot suit to get drenched, so you can’t let your knees touch the floor. If each photograph takes 10 seconds on average (adult fumbling for phone camera, getting their children to stand still, face the right way and smile), you are holding the pose for 25 minutes in the day, plus the up and down squats that come with it.
And all the time, you can’t use your massive arms for balance because you’re waving, blowing kisses or doing a heart gesture towards the camera. It is absolutely knackering. On Sunday morning, I felt like I’d done a double legs session at the gym and I’m a man who doesn’t do any legs sessions at the gym.
12) It’s weird that we call the furry costumed thing and the kid(s) that lead the players out onto the pitch by the same word. Surely Susie Dent can pause subtweet coating off the bad guys on X for a day and come up with something new?
13) I don’t think that I can think of an odder moment in my life than walking around the pitch of a football stadium dressed as a six-foot dog looking for my mum to find me and take a photograph. If that was a dream I’d lie in bed the next morning and Google to see if it meant anything instructive about my subconscious psyche. Instead, we simply move on.
14) I must detail that Huddersfield Town went about this exactly the right way. In the weeks before the day, I did six training modules around safeguarding, child protection and reporting. I also completed an Enhanced DBS check before the assignment was even possible.
On the day, I was given full instruction, a chaperone and Terry was a wonderful platonic friend throughout and before I got dressed there was a full debrief and the expectations of me during the afternoon. I am acutely aware that this wasn’t about me, but Tilly. And mercifully I am able to separate the two.
For that, I just want to thank Huddersfield Town. Every employee I met was welcoming and friendly. They were already in my secret “top five friendliest Football League clubs” list and have moved even further up the chart as a result. There is a reason that they have finished second of 72 in the EFL’s Family Excellence ratings two years in a row. Good on them for that and for everything else.
15) You don’t watch the game as a mascot, but instead go inside, get half-undressed and cool down your body temperature (again: yes, even in November). I didn’t know it until Saturday, but it turns out that watching Huddersfield on a TV next to Andy Booth and some lovely club employees while partly dressed as a mascot is my new happy place. Probably won’t happen again, mind.
16) My biggest surprise of the day, and it is a lovely one, was how many adults seemed genuinely cheered by seeing the mascots.
We posed for photographs with pensioners who said hello to us as if we were old friends meeting for a drink. We stood with groups of beery lads who liked the idea of a banterous image that they will never look at again. We met with away supporters and with young couples who thought it might be a funny reminder of the day.
For all of those people, it’s ultimately a very silly thing. But I’m of the view that the more silly, harmless things you had in your day that made you smile, the better that day probably was.
17) But really – and obviously – mascots are for children. And because I have never sired nor raised a child, I’d sort of overlooked just how much they matter. Which I accept is unforgivable when you’re being a mascot for a day.
It’s not just that children like meeting the mascots, but that the mascot is wearing the kit of their favourite football club and so offer a very childish (in the best possible way) moment in the grown-up experience of going to a football match.
They run at you and want a hug. They high-five you with unerring power. They ask you questions as if you are their friend at school and they pose for photos that makes their accompanying adults grin just as wide when they’re taking the photo.
Mascots are important because they are not important, just like football. And I think that’s pretty cool. And I didn’t injure a kid.
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