The Diary

21 February 2004: Life, The Blades, And Everything

?Sheffield? A (expletive deleted!) dirty city in a golden frame.? That was one Baggie?s considered verdict on the place when I travelled there for a game over thirty years ago, this charming description being based upon the predominance of heavy industry for which the place was justly famous at the time. Think ?steel?, and you immediately thought ?Sheffield?; a simple word-association game, a bit like coupling ?salt? with ?vinegar?, or ?Astle? with ?goals?.

Tonight, though, my thoughts tend to drift along the lines of what, in more belligerent times, would be regarded as a life-saving checklist prior to venturing ?over the top?. Steel-helmet? Check. Flak jacket? Check. Trainers with ?go-faster? stripes? Check. Turbo-charged walking-stick? Check. Aw, perhaps I am gilding the lily somewhat, but memories are still red-raw fresh regarding the last time the two sides met. Fortunately for all concerned, most of the main protagonists aren?t with their respective clubs any more. Certainly, Keith Curle, Suffo, Kelly and Santos have long since departed from Bramall Lane. Of our lot, only AJ, Clem, and Big Dave had the dubious pleasure of witnessing the whole unfortunate affair for themselves.

Our leader will no doubt will be hoping both AJ and Scouse Jase are available for ?active service?. With the Blades pushing hard for our automatic promotion spot (they?re eight behind, with a game in hand), we?ll need all the help we can get. We will be forced to make at least one change to the side that started against Cardiff, though. Left-back Paul Robinson will be serving a one-game ban after clocking up five yellow cards. Clem is the natural replacement, but he?s been a midfielder in recent weeks and scored our first versus The Bluebirds. If we do keep Clem in midfield he could use N'Dour, who played a full 90 minutes for the reserves against Everton on Tuesday and scored the only goal. Also in the team that night was James O'Connor, who could be the name in the frame for at least a place on the bench should Johnson or Koumas be ruled out. Greegs, one of the subs versus Cardiff, could get back into the starting line-up if either of the pair fail to regain full fitness.

Our strikeforce? Sure, we will have Rob Hulse available after a three-game ban, but I really can?t see any mileage in breaking up the current Horse-Hughes combo, who seem to have a real understanding going between the pair of them right now. Certainly, versus Cardiff, Lee looked miles sharper than I?ve seen him for a long, long time ? and, what?s more, had the perfect answer to the Neanderthals who constantly barracked him from the away-end. Let?s hope he can emulate the feat tomorrow. As of Thursday lunchtime, we?d flogged around 3,500 tickets, and United will be making around 1,000 available on the day. Should the whole batch be sold, that means we?ll have near-on 4,600 Baggie-lovers roaring their lungs to buggery in that Bramall Lane away end. Let?s hope we can get something from it worth our while, but as I see it, the only way we can achieve that is by sticking with the 4-4-2 formula our leader has so recently adopted. It can?t be coincidence that the three we?ve won recently were as per that formation, and the one we dipped (Preston) was as per the normal routine. If we simply sit back and let United come at us, it?s fatal; that?s precisely what we did during the home fixture earlier in the season, and look what happened then. No, what we need is a soupcon of speed down the flanks; supply that, and Hughsie will do the rest, I?m sure.

So ? the football apart, what other ?delights? do we have to look forward to tomorrow? Let George Orwell of ?1984? fame fill you in with a description of the city in the Thirties, as per his famous work, ?The Road To Wigan Pier?. ?Sheffield, I suppose, could justly claim to be called the ugliest town in the Old World: its inhabitants, who want it to be pre-eminent in everything, very likely to make that claim for it. It has a population of half a million and it contains fewer decent buildings than the average East Anglican village of five hundred. And the stench! If at rare moments you stop smelling sulphur it is because you have begun smelling gas. Even the shallow river that runs through the town is usually bright yellow with some chemical or other.

?Once I halted in the street and counted the factory chimneys I could see; there were thirty-three of them, but there would have been far more in the air had not been obscured by smoke. One scene especially lingers in my mind. A frightful patch of waste ground trampled bare of grass and littered with newspapers and old saucepans. To the right an isolated row of gaunt four-roomed houses, dark red, blackened by smoke. To the left an interminable visa of factory chimneys, chimney beyond chimney, fading away into a dim blackish haze. Behind me a railway embankment made of slag from furnaces. In front, across the patch of waste ground, a cubical building of red and yellow brick, with the sign 'Thomas Grocock, Haulage Contractor'. ?Some cynical types might say, ?Not much change there, then!? but being the diplomatic soul I am, I won?t.

Situated on the River Don, it?s surrounded by seven hills that contain iron ore and by the 16th century had obtained a reputation for its production of knives, scissors, scythes and shears. These goods were mainly made in houses and small workshops. With the arrival of Flemish immigrants, in 1624 a Company of Cutlers was established. Nothing to do with former Baggies ?keeper Neil, by the way. By the 18th century Sheffield also became an important coal mining area. In 1796 the population of the town was 9,095. How did it get the name in the first place? It wasn't until near the end of the first millennium that a couple of the first Anglian kings decided to settle their differences in the vicinity of the River Sheaf. They fought on the fields near the river, thus, the name "SHEFFIELD". I suppose you could call it ?The Battle Of Bramall Lane Mark One?, but with swords and other lethal pointy things added!

Sheffield has been famous for the making of steel since at least the fourteenth century when one of Chaucer's pilgrims is described as carrying a ?Sheffield Thwitel? in his hose! No, my understanding is they can?t touch you for it ? not in private, anyway! In 1742 Thomas Boulsover, a Sheffield cutler, began to fuse a thin layer of silver to copper to produce what became known as Sheffield Plate. Other craftsmen in Sheffield began to use this method to produce tableware that looked like silver, at a fraction of its cost. The 1840s saw another important development that was to contribute to Sheffield's prosperity. Benjamin Huntsman, working at a foundry at Handsworth, (the one 4 miles east of Sheffield, not the place just up the road from The Shrine!) discovered how to make good quality hard steel with less expenditure of labour and fuel. This stimulated trade, and by 1787 there were eleven steel-makers using the Huntsman method.

During the second half of the 18th century, industrial development coupled with growth in population increased the demand for houses. Terraces were built on the colder, northern slopes, whereas the successful business community built their larger houses on the higher, south-facing slopes of the town. Come 1821, the population of Sheffield had reached 31,314. Over the next forty years the place grew rapidly and by 1861 the number of inhabitants had reached 185,000. Improvements to the steel industry continued in Victorian times, particularly with the development of the Bessemer process of making steel in the 1850s, invented by Henry Bessemer (1813-98), who set up a steelworks at Sheffield just to make a mint from his topping little wheeze.

The next major event in the history of Sheffield was the making of stainless steel, which was pioneered in 1903, although it was developed in Germany and the USA at around the same time. Just a few years later, the First World War hit the city especially hard; in the patriotic fervour that followed, The City Of Sheffield Battalion (The Sheffield Pals) was formed; the good news was, it didn?t fight a major battle until July 1916. The bad news? That was the Battle Of The Somme, on 1 July, which marked the army's greatest single loss in its history, with 60,000 casualties, of which 20,000 were dead. The Sheffield City Battalion lost around half of their men, and was completely finished as a fighting force; through conscription, other Pals Battalions were subsequently resurrected from the carnage of The Somme, but the Sheffield Pals were gone forever. ?Two years in the making; ten minutes in the destroying.? That?s how one traumatised veteran described it at the time.

The town hall was built in 1890 and extended in 1923. It incorporates two large figures representing electricity and steam, who hold a scroll of fame that includes the famous figures of Watt, Stephenson, Faraday, Davy and Swan. Most of those should be familiar; there used to be a statue of those gentlemen outside Birmingham Register Office, but where it is now, I haven?t a clue, because it just ain?t there any more! Other features of Sheffield include the 1932 City Hall, the University, chartered in 1905, and the famous out of town Meadowhall Shopping Centre, the building of which was quite ironic, in its own way. As you probably know, the industrial recession of the eighties hit the city hard, and much of the heavy industry that gave Sheffield its fame closed for good. In fact, I can remember travelling that way by train around that time, and despairing mightily at the wasteland there was where proud steel companies had once churned out vast quantities of cutlery, swords, steel plate, and all the other stuff on which an industrialised age is founded. Razed to the ground it was, so what replaced it, or to be more precise, part of it? Yep, a bloody great shopping mall, as per the specification above.

Famous Sheffield folkies? How does Sean Bean grab you? Ooer. He was, of course, the ?star? of ?When Saturday Comes?, which was based on Sheffield United, of course. And how we laughed at the ending; local lad scores vital goals for the club he?s supported all his life, thereby enabling his side to come from behind and win? ?Ho, ho, ho ? could never happen in real life!? we all said ? and then there was Hughsie, at Crewe, coming on as sub, then bagging a vital brace when we were a goal behind to win us the game! Life imitating art with bells on, and serve us right for laughing. His latest venture ? Sean Bean?s, not Hughsie?s! ? sounds a bit more dubious. Apparently, he?s playing a football hooligan; quite a change from his role in ?Lord Of The Rings! Moving on to the world of pop, there?s always Joe Cocker, a former gas fitter, whose gravely-voiced 1968 rendering of ?With A little Help From My Friends? did things to that Lennon and McCartney number even the Fab Four didn?t quite envisage when they penned it. And then there was ?The Human League? the 80?s group responsible for such delights as ?Don?t You Want Me Baby?? While we?re trolling around that era, don?t forget ABC, and their ?Look Of Love?, plus ?Poison Arrow?. And, just in case you wondered, Def Leppard get a mention also.

And now for something completely different! Yep, it?s?.Michael Palin, of Monty Python and ?Round The World? fame. Before leaving this bit of my piece, let?s not forget two of Sheffield?s real ?high flyers?, although for completely different reasons. First off, there?s Britain?s first female astronaut, Helen Sharman. She was in orbit for eight days, which greatly exceeded AJ?s attempt during our abortive fixture two years ago! The other Sheffield ?high-flyer?? David Blunkett, the current Home Secretary, of course.

And finally?. One. Some of you Baggie folkies out there might remember how, in a recent Dick, we documented supporters? songs that were seemingly silly, or just plain bizarre, with food or drink as the recurring theme. One of those ?Im Indoors mentioned was a Brummie Road ditty popular in the Seventies, which went, ?Here?s the Banks?s bitter, whop it down, whop it down.? Just sheer drunken daftness on someone?s part, I thought ? until last night. There I was, reading a compendium of World War One soldiers? songs, when what should I see?

Not quite the same thing, though; in this version, the ?lyrics? go, ?Here?s to the good old beer, mop it down, mop it down/It?s the good old beer, that never leaves you queer!? with variations as per the sort of tipple favoured by the singer, e.g. ?Here?s to the good old whisky, mop it down, mop it down/Here?s to the good old whisky, the stuff that makes you frisky!? There?s lots more ?variations?, but it didn?t stop me from being absolutely flabbergasted by the discovery, though.

According to the background supplied by the author, this was a traditional marching song belted out with much gusto by the troops in France at that time. The reason the song came about was because the foamy alcoholic stuff supplied to the squaddies there was scarce and weak compared to genuine British beer, so the whole thing was what might be termed a ?nostalgia-trip? today. If it ever catches on in The Brummie again, just remember that in all likelihood, you?re singing something your great granddad did some 90 years earlier, albeit under rather more trying circumstances!

Two. As per usual, the other night, I immersed myself in the mouth-watering contents of the Observer Food Magazine, which ran food awards in its latest issue. All well and good, until I came across the identities of the judging panel; one lady, the chief buyer for Waitrose Supermarkets, went by the name of ? wait for it ? Susan Megson! This had me really intrigued; football apart, I?ve never, ever come across anyone sharing that surname, and as most of my working experience has been in the ?people? business, had it been a common one, I would certainly have done by now.

The conclusion?s obvious; either by marriage, or by genetics, we could be looking at kith and kin there, although, possibly, several times removed. Should this lady be a Meggo by marriage, her volatility levels should be in line with the rest of the British population, i.e. normal, broadly speaking, but should our leader?s DNA have to cop all (or part) of the blame, then all I can say is ?God help her and all who sail in her!?

 - Glynis Wright

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