WEDNESDAY, MY PART IN THEIR DOWNFALL
Through the title of this chapter, I am not trying to say I was the main reason that we overtook a few years of Wednesday rule, far from it. I played my part to the full but I was just one of a new breed of game youngsters that got together in the early 80s who took it to Wednesday and eventually overpowered them. Through the years, I have been arrested five times for Wednesday/United-related trouble.
I was born into a family of big Blades supporters, and my granddad was the foundation of my love of United. He was as biased a Blade as you’ll ever see. United could lose 5–0 but it was never the team’s fault; no, the opposition were dirty players or the referee never gave us a thing, any excuse to defend his beloved club.
My cousins were all Blades and, when the new South Stand was built in 1974, we bought season tickets together for this stand that seemed a million miles away from sticking our faces through the white railings and hanging our scarves from our wrists on the John Street terrace. (In 2006, when United had plastic seating fitted to the South Stand, they sold off the old wooden seats. I went down and bought the very same seat that I’d christened in 1974, when United drew 1–1 with Derby County. The seat has been fixed to a wall overlooking my koi carp pond in the garden.)
At 15 or 16, I got into the piss-poorly named new romantic scene and started going to clubs like the Crazy Daizy on High Street and the Limit on West Street. I stopped well fuckin’ short of putting makeup on like a lot of lads did who were into the scene. I’d dance the night away flicking my stupidly overgrown fringe to the latest tunes like Visage’s ‘Fade to Grey’, Spandau Ballet’s ‘To Cut a Long Story Short’ and Kraftwerk’s classic ‘The Model’. The clubs not only played the new romantic stuff, they also played great music from the Jam, Clash, Madness, the Cure and the Specials.
The Crazy Daizy had a bad reputation for trouble and my dad had warned me about going in the club, after all I was only 16, and 16 then ain’t the 16 it is now. The club had seen a lot of trouble between rival groups of blacks and whites but, as a 16-year-old, I thought I knew better. It was in the Crazy Daizy nightclub that I had my first taste of violence Sheffield Wednesday style. One of Wednesday’s older lads who I didn’t know from Adam at the time came up to me and demanded, ‘Take that fuckin’ badge off or I’ll smash you all over,’ referring to my Blades badge.
I refused and the Wednesday lad sloped off. Later I was punched from the side while having a piss in the toilet, then volleyed into the piss-troff by the Wednesday lad and his mates. The bully was a well-known knobhead called Granville who ran coaches for Wednesday’s firm and was one of their main actors. I think the incident left an over-riding impression on me and a hatred of Wednesday that hadn’t been as strong as it was before the incident took place.
A year after the Crazy Daizy attack, I was in Steely’s (Roxy’s) nightclub when I got talking to a lad called Kav who worked with me. My new romantic clothes had now been replaced by Slazenger and Pringle jumpers and Adidas trainers. Kav hung around with a lot of Wednesday and probably their main lad at the time was a big black fella called Harry. He saw my United badge and spat lager on it. The young Blade went for him and I was bundled away by Kav. No doubt I would have been mullered but it was my shirt and club that had been spat on. Kav later fucked Wednesday off and not only became a great friend of mine, he became a great United lad too.
I also remember Wednesday coming in the Red Lion at the bottom of West Street and basically the 50 or so of them battered the 10 blades in there. I was 17 and the little posse of Blades were mostly pups and Wednesday’s main actors thought it funny to knock the fuck out of us. More recently, Wednesday thought it funny to smash one of our game lads all over with bottles when 100 of them went in a pub while we were at West Ham. No, that’s not bullying, it’s fuckin’ shite.
What I’m getting at is I was subjected to the bullying side but didn’t go on and on about it in BBC, in fact, I never even mentioned it. It happened on both sides, as shit as it is. In a Wednesday book, it seems to focus on United being nothing but bullies – it’s bollocks and the author knows it. OK, United had a couple of lads that overstepped the mark but so did Wednesday.
During the same period that United were supposed to be big-time bullies, 50 of us walked into the Golden Ball in town and in doing so 15 Wednesday were trapped in the corner, did they get battered? Did they get a slap? Did they fuck, in fact a few arguments took place and I and a few of the townies stood firm against the out-of-town Blades who wanted to smash Wednesday there and then. One thing’s for sure, if the boot was on the other foot, the boot would have been used.
Wednesday knew they had the upper hand but their arrogance during the late 70s and early 80s was to prove their downfall. It was quite weird at times in our city; both sets of lads would often drink together in the Blue Bell in town. People like Smids from United were good mates with Bender from Wednesday and in certain situations the two groups would drink in the same pub without a hint of trouble.
Leeds United’s visit to Hillsborough in September 1982 confirmed this when an 80-strong United firm went in the Blue Bell on High Street. Inside were over 100 Wednesday. Both groups didn’t really mingle together: our mob was at one end of the pub, the other firm were at the opposite end and the middle ground was for the few people that knew each other, keeping a sort of peaceful barrier between the two mobs, as there was no doubt a few who wanted to knock seven shades out of each other but in the name of Sheffield they bottled their hatred up for once. Even though Sheffield turned out over 200 mixed lads, they would not fight side by side as this day proved.
Leeds actually got into town and Wednesday left the Bell to engage them in combat. United stayed put, which, looking back, was weird really. News came back that Wednesday had been done by Leeds and that Leeds were heading our way via the hole in the road. We left the Bell via the back doors and in the little alley between the Dove and Rainbow and the Bell it kicked off with Leeds. Ribina shoe shop was raided and stiletto heels were used by United’s lads against Sheffield’s most hated city. The stilettos were the last thing Leeds had to worry about as Trimmer had a ratchet screwdriver and he twice plunged it into the back of the neck of some poor Leeds lad.
Leeds backed off and we argued that we had done Wednesday’s work for them as they weren’t up to it. Later that night, the unlikely peace between Wednesday and United turned into violence as both sides clashed in town. It was probably the last time the two groups tolerated each other. It had been a situation that seems unbelievable nowadays and one that most lads didn’t want in the first place but, because a few respected lads knew each other and got on, the others tried to keep the cart on the rails.
The shoots of a new breed of fan at Bramall Lane were beginning to stir around this time. United’s plight on the pitch was at an all-time low, and defeat to Walsall in the final game of the 1979–80 season saw the Blades ply their trade for the first time in English football’s basement, the Fourth Division. Wednesday fans mockingly call the day United were relegated ‘Thank Givens Day’, after Don Givens missed a last-minute penalty that would have kept United up.
Perversely, the relegation actually made the club’s fans stronger; everywhere we went we took big numbers and, to 16-year-old lads like me, it was an ideal time for serving an apprenticeship in terms of football violence. The youngsters, of which we had many, surfaced into this new world, a world of tennis, golf and designer wear and fighting at football, the Casual movement had erupted on to the scene and, with it, a new breed of football hooligan.
Wednesday, for their part, failed to see this new breed emerging in big numbers across the city. They treated our firm with contempt and that was Wednesday’s downfall. Three years later and with numerous battles under our belts, we were ready to take it to Wednesday and take it to Wednesday we did, with bells on.
The older United lads began to realise that these young lads in Fila and Tacchini were well up for the challenge and a new optimism swept the hooligan corridors around