From Issue 7
We're alive
(on Chris Wilder's departure)
(on Chris Wilder's departure)
Issue 6 of Dem Blades poured scorn on those who still sing “…like a gallon of maggots.” See p73.
What a way to find out. Further investigation has revealed that “…like a packet of biscuits” is also incorrect. This at least explains some of the funny looks. But ultimately it has only added to a sense that everything I’ve ever known (since 12 May 2016) has been taken away.
It’s what Arsene Wenger refers to as “the brutality of football”, in his recently published autobiography about being a Sheffield United supporter: My Life in Red and White.
Wenger also asks: “Does the world of football carry such violence within it?” I’ve not read the book, I just saw some quotes in The Guardian, so I don’t know the context for this statement, but I think the answer is categorically, YES. In 2020/21 we have known the literal violence of squad-changing injuries, and we have suffered the emotional violences of being unable to attend matches, witnessing the worst start to a season in Premier League history and ultimately losing the best manager the club has had in decades.
Regular readers of Dem Blades will be quick to recall the ups and downs of my own relationship with Chris Wilder; from the time he ignored my enquiry regarding the colour of a supporter’s jacket, to the time he took me to court for harassment, to the highly favourable (and obvious) comparison I made between his pioneering football techniques and the post-war New York school of abstract expressionists.
The point is this: the man has been an inspiration - to players, pundits, peers and the writer of fictitious articles in football fanzines. He is a manager who sees it – and says it – through the lens of a supporter. He is hard working. He has entertained. He has brought success. He has led a revival. He has United. The Wildonian Era will not quickly be forgotten, at the Lane and beyond.
Of course like all iconic figures, he has not done it alone. The fine working partnership forged between Wilder and the quiet and understated Alan Knill is surely up there with the greats: Holmes & Watson, Jagger & Richards, Jake & Elwood, Han & Chewie, Bert & Ernie.
And speaking of things that come in pairs, let me leave you with this.
My wonderful red and white friends, could it be…..?
I don’t want a pat on the back for losing but we’re alive…… We’re alive, we’re together and we’re going to give it a right go.
What a way to find out. Further investigation has revealed that “…like a packet of biscuits” is also incorrect. This at least explains some of the funny looks. But ultimately it has only added to a sense that everything I’ve ever known (since 12 May 2016) has been taken away.
It’s what Arsene Wenger refers to as “the brutality of football”, in his recently published autobiography about being a Sheffield United supporter: My Life in Red and White.
Wenger also asks: “Does the world of football carry such violence within it?” I’ve not read the book, I just saw some quotes in The Guardian, so I don’t know the context for this statement, but I think the answer is categorically, YES. In 2020/21 we have known the literal violence of squad-changing injuries, and we have suffered the emotional violences of being unable to attend matches, witnessing the worst start to a season in Premier League history and ultimately losing the best manager the club has had in decades.
Regular readers of Dem Blades will be quick to recall the ups and downs of my own relationship with Chris Wilder; from the time he ignored my enquiry regarding the colour of a supporter’s jacket, to the time he took me to court for harassment, to the highly favourable (and obvious) comparison I made between his pioneering football techniques and the post-war New York school of abstract expressionists.
The point is this: the man has been an inspiration - to players, pundits, peers and the writer of fictitious articles in football fanzines. He is a manager who sees it – and says it – through the lens of a supporter. He is hard working. He has entertained. He has brought success. He has led a revival. He has United. The Wildonian Era will not quickly be forgotten, at the Lane and beyond.
Of course like all iconic figures, he has not done it alone. The fine working partnership forged between Wilder and the quiet and understated Alan Knill is surely up there with the greats: Holmes & Watson, Jagger & Richards, Jake & Elwood, Han & Chewie, Bert & Ernie.
And speaking of things that come in pairs, let me leave you with this.
- Dalglish (Liverpool, 1985-1991 & 2011-12)
- Rednapp (Portsmouth, 2002-04 & 2005-08)
- Pulis (Stoke, 2002-05 & 2006-13)
- Mourinho (Chelsea, 2004-07 & 2013-15)
- Pearson (Leicester, 2008-10 & 2011-15)
My wonderful red and white friends, could it be…..?
- Wilder (SUFC 2016-2021 & 20xx – 20xx)
I don’t want a pat on the back for losing but we’re alive…… We’re alive, we’re together and we’re going to give it a right go.
Ascendency
The gaffer
Atop a bus
Preparing to
lift aloft
silverware
The first in years
Arises, slips
and disappears
Atop a bus
Preparing to
lift aloft
silverware
The first in years
Arises, slips
and disappears
From Issue 6
Blades against racism
I’m United. I could have been Wednesday. I grew up two miles from Hillsborough but my dad grew up following SUFC, home and away, first team and reserves. Birley Blade, and blood is thicker than water.
‘I didn’t choose to be born,’ my kids tell me when they don’t like what I’ve said about something they’ve done. Or not done. ‘I didn’t choose for it to be you,’ I sometimes want to retort. Harsh. But it makes me think who chose for me to be born? Actually, I’m with the kids – it wasn’t me. That’s a leveller.
Growing up was fine for me. Secure, uneventful, occasionally disappointing. I remember when I was seven me and dad being among the hundreds turned away from Bramall Lane because of an unexploded WWII bomb discovered by some workmen. The explosive power of history not yet defused. I was too young to attend the rescheduled fixture the following Tuesday evening. And when I was fourteen me and my dad and my brother were brave enough to watch the 1993 FA Cup Semi-final with some blue and white mates. I was livid at a little girl who really rubbed it in when SUFC lost. She wasn’t even that bothered about football. She just knew she was cheering for the dominant team at the time, and it’s easy to brag when someone has given you the upper hand.
In 2020 I am following the dominant Sheffield team. I have at long last been given the upper hand, although some say I’ve always had the upper hand. I hadn’t thought about it to be honest. I’ve been underexposed. I remember the legendary strike force of Brian Deane and Tony Agana but they were just great footballers. For a while there was a family who lived in the rented house behind ours. I remember seeing the little lad looking back at me from his window. But like the other tenants, they weren’t there for long and were soon replaced by a white family with a girl who was always shouting and screaming – the sound almost as bad as my blue tormentor in ‘93.
I didn’t chose to be born to a Blades supporting dad in a stable family living in a white part of Sheffield. I didn’t earn the right to a secure, uneventful, occasionally disappointing, very decent upbringing.
I can’t change my life story but it’s a fact that I have one and I would like it to be respected and not dismissed, which I think is how everyone probably feels. It gets challenging when my life story turns out to be privileged in a way that for some is enviable, even unimaginable, when compared with their own life stories. But to run away from that is to ignore what is irreducibly – and unjustly - human.
I don’t want to be satisfied simply with box ticking alignment with a cause. Life stories lead to causes, not causes to life stories and there are life stories I am increasingly beginning to realise I should hear.
Sheffield has seen in recent years how things can change. As I have written less seriously elsewhere in the pages of this issue, there are those in life who engage, explore and endear a pioneering spirit and in the process achieve something united out of seeming chaos. Could I be one of them?
‘I didn’t choose to be born,’ my kids tell me when they don’t like what I’ve said about something they’ve done. Or not done. ‘I didn’t choose for it to be you,’ I sometimes want to retort. Harsh. But it makes me think who chose for me to be born? Actually, I’m with the kids – it wasn’t me. That’s a leveller.
Growing up was fine for me. Secure, uneventful, occasionally disappointing. I remember when I was seven me and dad being among the hundreds turned away from Bramall Lane because of an unexploded WWII bomb discovered by some workmen. The explosive power of history not yet defused. I was too young to attend the rescheduled fixture the following Tuesday evening. And when I was fourteen me and my dad and my brother were brave enough to watch the 1993 FA Cup Semi-final with some blue and white mates. I was livid at a little girl who really rubbed it in when SUFC lost. She wasn’t even that bothered about football. She just knew she was cheering for the dominant team at the time, and it’s easy to brag when someone has given you the upper hand.
In 2020 I am following the dominant Sheffield team. I have at long last been given the upper hand, although some say I’ve always had the upper hand. I hadn’t thought about it to be honest. I’ve been underexposed. I remember the legendary strike force of Brian Deane and Tony Agana but they were just great footballers. For a while there was a family who lived in the rented house behind ours. I remember seeing the little lad looking back at me from his window. But like the other tenants, they weren’t there for long and were soon replaced by a white family with a girl who was always shouting and screaming – the sound almost as bad as my blue tormentor in ‘93.
I didn’t chose to be born to a Blades supporting dad in a stable family living in a white part of Sheffield. I didn’t earn the right to a secure, uneventful, occasionally disappointing, very decent upbringing.
I can’t change my life story but it’s a fact that I have one and I would like it to be respected and not dismissed, which I think is how everyone probably feels. It gets challenging when my life story turns out to be privileged in a way that for some is enviable, even unimaginable, when compared with their own life stories. But to run away from that is to ignore what is irreducibly – and unjustly - human.
I don’t want to be satisfied simply with box ticking alignment with a cause. Life stories lead to causes, not causes to life stories and there are life stories I am increasingly beginning to realise I should hear.
Sheffield has seen in recent years how things can change. As I have written less seriously elsewhere in the pages of this issue, there are those in life who engage, explore and endear a pioneering spirit and in the process achieve something united out of seeming chaos. Could I be one of them?
From Issue 5
'The 1960s Collection' featured in the Pukka Pie Poetry Corner. Each a living memory from the head of Andrew's very own Blades-supporting dad; recalled from the mists of time, crystallised into coherence and encased in poetry.
Kop Wit
My old man told me
that the Kop at Bramall Lane
used to be
an all standing affair
and when the crowd surged and the men jostled
against each other, sometimes, for a joke,
one of them would shout:
“Here, mind these eggs!”
that the Kop at Bramall Lane
used to be
an all standing affair
and when the crowd surged and the men jostled
against each other, sometimes, for a joke,
one of them would shout:
“Here, mind these eggs!”
The Lancashire Job
It was the same decade as the film,
but rather than crossing the Alps
they crossed the Pennines.
Sunny, like in Italy;
a bank holiday Monday.
A football match was also involved but not
an England game on this occasion and not
as a cover up for criminal activity.
Rather, the trip was to see
Sheffield United FC
vs Blackpool FC.
But the congestion around Preston
was as bad as Croker’s Turin traffic jam.
That wasn’t part of their plan, but like Croker
undeterred by the mob,
they were determined to get through
and see a United team play.
“Hang on a minute lads, I’ve got a great idea.
The reserves are playing at Blackburn, aren’t they?”
Span the car round, like a mini cooper on the roof
of the Lingotto factory,
and headed east, twisting and turning,
at some speed,
almost as if chasing
$4 million in gold.
I still don’t know whether they beat
the Lancashire traffic
and made it to the game
or whether they found themselves
on Big William’s bus
-metaphorically speaking -
with football remaining
tantalisingly out of reach.
but rather than crossing the Alps
they crossed the Pennines.
Sunny, like in Italy;
a bank holiday Monday.
A football match was also involved but not
an England game on this occasion and not
as a cover up for criminal activity.
Rather, the trip was to see
Sheffield United FC
vs Blackpool FC.
But the congestion around Preston
was as bad as Croker’s Turin traffic jam.
That wasn’t part of their plan, but like Croker
undeterred by the mob,
they were determined to get through
and see a United team play.
“Hang on a minute lads, I’ve got a great idea.
The reserves are playing at Blackburn, aren’t they?”
Span the car round, like a mini cooper on the roof
of the Lingotto factory,
and headed east, twisting and turning,
at some speed,
almost as if chasing
$4 million in gold.
I still don’t know whether they beat
the Lancashire traffic
and made it to the game
or whether they found themselves
on Big William’s bus
-metaphorically speaking -
with football remaining
tantalisingly out of reach.
Arnold Lavers vs Eintracht Frankfurt
In 1961 Arnold Lavers ran from one corner of Cherry Street, all the way
to the other corner of Cherry Street,
making any arrangement to meet at Arnold Lavers on the corner of Cherry Street
liable to misunderstanding.
(Arnold Lavers was the name of a timber merchants,
not a man who ran up and down Cherry Street.)
That’s what happened to me dad and Roy,
trying to meet up with me Grandad.
Someone must not have been thinking straight
because on eventually realising
that it was the other corner of Cherry Street,
how did they not pass each other?
Instead, the two parties stomped and paced several times
round the ground,
during which time there arose
the red and white roar of three goals scored.
In the end, they met on Shoreham Street,
and made it in for the second half,
in time to see the next, and final, goal,
when Eintracht Frankfurt pulled one back.
to the other corner of Cherry Street,
making any arrangement to meet at Arnold Lavers on the corner of Cherry Street
liable to misunderstanding.
(Arnold Lavers was the name of a timber merchants,
not a man who ran up and down Cherry Street.)
That’s what happened to me dad and Roy,
trying to meet up with me Grandad.
Someone must not have been thinking straight
because on eventually realising
that it was the other corner of Cherry Street,
how did they not pass each other?
Instead, the two parties stomped and paced several times
round the ground,
during which time there arose
the red and white roar of three goals scored.
In the end, they met on Shoreham Street,
and made it in for the second half,
in time to see the next, and final, goal,
when Eintracht Frankfurt pulled one back.
From Issue 1
The boy in the painting
In the mid-1920s, Sheffield-based artist Stanley Royle produced a painting. The painting shows a gable-end and a farmyard at the top of Trap Lane in Bents Green. In the foreground are two figures, a woman and a boy. The painting has never been publicly displayed. But here is a bit about the boy.
When I re-committed myself to following Sheffield United 10 years ago it was because I’d recently moved back to the city and going to Bramall Lane on match days conjured up memories of doing the same with my dad in the late 1980s. That, and finding Football Heaven, unchanged and unstoppable, still on the air. It felt like a homecoming.
Moving back to Sheffield also meant I became Percy’s new next door neighbour. Percy is 100 this month and he only stopped renewing his season ticket for Bramall Lane six years ago. The first time since the late 1950s. Back then his season ticket got him a spot on the first row of seating in the John Street Stand, level with the halfway line. Seating that was a series of long wooden forms, running the length of the stand. Percy, with characteristic wit, said that if the bloke on one end shifted along the bloke on the other end fell off.
To get to my end terrace I passed Percy’s backdoor every day. We’ve always talked a lot about football. I soon discovered that my memories of a handful of games in the Stancliffe / Booker era was as a day to Percy’s thousand years. Well, his ninety years to be specific, give or take. He’s been to so many games that in the mind they start to merge. Football became a part of life. “I always enjoyed going” Percy told me, something to look forward to week by week, even after poor games when everyone filed out, downcast, with the shared – but ultimately untrue – declaration that they’d “not be comin ag-ee-an”. Or the time when Percy left a match early to catch the tram, with United 0-2 down, only to arrive home to a final score of 3-2, courtesy of the Wagstaff brothers (Barry and Tony, both in the squad for much of the 1960s).
But there are particular instances that Percy has shared, things which have stayed with him. Like his earliest Bramall Lane memory, of Billie Gillespie, the bald headed (not shaved in those days) Irishman, leading the team out of the tunnel from the John Street Stand where the changing rooms were located, and seeing for the first time, as an eight year old boy circa 1927, the red and white stripes and the black shorts.
A Saturday job working in a shop and then military conscription limited match attendance during the 1930s to the Christmas day fixture. An 11am kick off, with a decent and - as Percy remembers it - all male crowd, all in festive spirits. The fixture carried on for a while after the war because Percy remembers seeing ex-German PoW Bert Trautmann playing in goal for Man City against the Blades.
A cricket pitch and pavilion used to take up the area now occupied by the South Stand and the Cherry Street car park. Back in the days before fan segregation, supporters would skirt the edge of the cricket pitch when swapping ends at half time. Big fixtures would attract big crowds and extra seating and standing room was created out of the space, although not always to great effect. On one occasion in the 1940s, Percy’s brother, along with 68,000 others, went to see a cup tie against Leeds and had to stand on the cricket pitch. “He never saw owt when he got inside,” Percy said.
Percy can remember weather-blighted games when the fog and the Sheffield smog were collectively heavy enough to settle on the pitch. As long as the ref could stand on the centre spot and see both goals the game went ahead. “It stuck in my mind as regards the fog business.” As the fog thickened it created a peculiar atmosphere, “a roar from the mist” as Percy described it, so you knew something was happening at the other end but you couldn’t see what. Eventually it would lift and give new momentum to the players.
For a time Percy and five pals were regulars on the all-standing Kop and Percy tells of the surge from behind when an attack was on, and being pushed against the wooden railings. Later when they started going as a family, with son Steve and wife Betsy, they opted for the calmer Bramall Lane stand. Steve, age 10 or so, always sought out a particular spot near the front of the terracing where the concrete was raised and he could get the best view. A good job too. Percy can remember seeing a section of wooden railing on the Kop collapse and “folks all piled on one another”.
When you have followed a football club for as long as Percy has, there is a sense of transcendency. The successes will come and go and come again and it’s worth sticking with it for more than the results. One of Percy’s favourite footballing occasions was the trip to Wembley for the 1993 FA Cup semi-final. “Everything worked out perfectly, although obviously the result was wrong.” Sole Blade in his carriage on the train down, but with a palpable sense of collective nerves and anticipation. Then, on the way back, sat with a shopkeeper and his lad from Chesterfield, fellow season ticket holders at the Lane, with seats, it turned out, just a few rows behind Percy’s. A friendly face, a wave, a few words at matches, and seeing the lad still coming years later, now a young man.
I’ve asked Percy which players he has most enjoyed watching. I got a decisive, threefold answer. Joe Shaw for consistency, Jimmy Hagan for ball control and Tony Currie for pure, strong and tricky football (and sitting on the ball during United’s 5-0 thrashing of Arsenal in 1973, revenge for Alan Ball doing the same a few years earlier). To Percy’s great pleasure Tony himself hosted our table when me and Percy attended a pre-match meal in November 2009, held in honour of the over 90s Senior Blades. Being there was for me, a young whippersnapper, like sitting with the upper echelons of an already exclusive club. We were given Directors box seats to watch the match, a 1-0 thrashing of Peterborough (we got a penalty); but it was a victory, which was all we required to top off the day.
Stanley Royle saw a scene he wanted to paint: Percy and his mother stood outside their home in Bents Green, the house in which Percy was born. Thereafter, Percy, a veteran of the Second World War, 30 years of committed service at Escafeld Wholesale Grocers, a weekly swim at Heeley Baths even in his early nineties (trunks and towel hanging on the washing line in our shared backyard), Sunday morning phone calls from Steve in Australia, Sunday lunchtime pints at The Sportsman on Redmires Road with a group of fellow oldies. And throughout, across all of 77 years, husband to Betsy who, in their later years together, he cared for at home until she passed away in 2016. Following Sheffield United, for Percy, has been one part of a fulfilling and enduring life lived in the city. My friendship with him is a rare privilege, a unique opportunity, a simple one off, worth more than every SUFC victory I’ll ever see.
Here’s to the boy in the painting. Happy 100th birthday.
When I re-committed myself to following Sheffield United 10 years ago it was because I’d recently moved back to the city and going to Bramall Lane on match days conjured up memories of doing the same with my dad in the late 1980s. That, and finding Football Heaven, unchanged and unstoppable, still on the air. It felt like a homecoming.
Moving back to Sheffield also meant I became Percy’s new next door neighbour. Percy is 100 this month and he only stopped renewing his season ticket for Bramall Lane six years ago. The first time since the late 1950s. Back then his season ticket got him a spot on the first row of seating in the John Street Stand, level with the halfway line. Seating that was a series of long wooden forms, running the length of the stand. Percy, with characteristic wit, said that if the bloke on one end shifted along the bloke on the other end fell off.
To get to my end terrace I passed Percy’s backdoor every day. We’ve always talked a lot about football. I soon discovered that my memories of a handful of games in the Stancliffe / Booker era was as a day to Percy’s thousand years. Well, his ninety years to be specific, give or take. He’s been to so many games that in the mind they start to merge. Football became a part of life. “I always enjoyed going” Percy told me, something to look forward to week by week, even after poor games when everyone filed out, downcast, with the shared – but ultimately untrue – declaration that they’d “not be comin ag-ee-an”. Or the time when Percy left a match early to catch the tram, with United 0-2 down, only to arrive home to a final score of 3-2, courtesy of the Wagstaff brothers (Barry and Tony, both in the squad for much of the 1960s).
But there are particular instances that Percy has shared, things which have stayed with him. Like his earliest Bramall Lane memory, of Billie Gillespie, the bald headed (not shaved in those days) Irishman, leading the team out of the tunnel from the John Street Stand where the changing rooms were located, and seeing for the first time, as an eight year old boy circa 1927, the red and white stripes and the black shorts.
A Saturday job working in a shop and then military conscription limited match attendance during the 1930s to the Christmas day fixture. An 11am kick off, with a decent and - as Percy remembers it - all male crowd, all in festive spirits. The fixture carried on for a while after the war because Percy remembers seeing ex-German PoW Bert Trautmann playing in goal for Man City against the Blades.
A cricket pitch and pavilion used to take up the area now occupied by the South Stand and the Cherry Street car park. Back in the days before fan segregation, supporters would skirt the edge of the cricket pitch when swapping ends at half time. Big fixtures would attract big crowds and extra seating and standing room was created out of the space, although not always to great effect. On one occasion in the 1940s, Percy’s brother, along with 68,000 others, went to see a cup tie against Leeds and had to stand on the cricket pitch. “He never saw owt when he got inside,” Percy said.
Percy can remember weather-blighted games when the fog and the Sheffield smog were collectively heavy enough to settle on the pitch. As long as the ref could stand on the centre spot and see both goals the game went ahead. “It stuck in my mind as regards the fog business.” As the fog thickened it created a peculiar atmosphere, “a roar from the mist” as Percy described it, so you knew something was happening at the other end but you couldn’t see what. Eventually it would lift and give new momentum to the players.
For a time Percy and five pals were regulars on the all-standing Kop and Percy tells of the surge from behind when an attack was on, and being pushed against the wooden railings. Later when they started going as a family, with son Steve and wife Betsy, they opted for the calmer Bramall Lane stand. Steve, age 10 or so, always sought out a particular spot near the front of the terracing where the concrete was raised and he could get the best view. A good job too. Percy can remember seeing a section of wooden railing on the Kop collapse and “folks all piled on one another”.
When you have followed a football club for as long as Percy has, there is a sense of transcendency. The successes will come and go and come again and it’s worth sticking with it for more than the results. One of Percy’s favourite footballing occasions was the trip to Wembley for the 1993 FA Cup semi-final. “Everything worked out perfectly, although obviously the result was wrong.” Sole Blade in his carriage on the train down, but with a palpable sense of collective nerves and anticipation. Then, on the way back, sat with a shopkeeper and his lad from Chesterfield, fellow season ticket holders at the Lane, with seats, it turned out, just a few rows behind Percy’s. A friendly face, a wave, a few words at matches, and seeing the lad still coming years later, now a young man.
I’ve asked Percy which players he has most enjoyed watching. I got a decisive, threefold answer. Joe Shaw for consistency, Jimmy Hagan for ball control and Tony Currie for pure, strong and tricky football (and sitting on the ball during United’s 5-0 thrashing of Arsenal in 1973, revenge for Alan Ball doing the same a few years earlier). To Percy’s great pleasure Tony himself hosted our table when me and Percy attended a pre-match meal in November 2009, held in honour of the over 90s Senior Blades. Being there was for me, a young whippersnapper, like sitting with the upper echelons of an already exclusive club. We were given Directors box seats to watch the match, a 1-0 thrashing of Peterborough (we got a penalty); but it was a victory, which was all we required to top off the day.
Stanley Royle saw a scene he wanted to paint: Percy and his mother stood outside their home in Bents Green, the house in which Percy was born. Thereafter, Percy, a veteran of the Second World War, 30 years of committed service at Escafeld Wholesale Grocers, a weekly swim at Heeley Baths even in his early nineties (trunks and towel hanging on the washing line in our shared backyard), Sunday morning phone calls from Steve in Australia, Sunday lunchtime pints at The Sportsman on Redmires Road with a group of fellow oldies. And throughout, across all of 77 years, husband to Betsy who, in their later years together, he cared for at home until she passed away in 2016. Following Sheffield United, for Percy, has been one part of a fulfilling and enduring life lived in the city. My friendship with him is a rare privilege, a unique opportunity, a simple one off, worth more than every SUFC victory I’ll ever see.
Here’s to the boy in the painting. Happy 100th birthday.
Percy Royles
1919 - 2022
1919 - 2022