It could only happen to a Wednesdayite
Several games during the 1999/2000 season seemed to sum up the malaise that was engulfing Sheffield Wednesday Football Club and which were to make my job as editor of the fanzine even more difficult than it would ordinarily have been. The first away game I attended as editor was at Old Trafford. The Red Devils had, the previous season, claimed the title of Champions of Europe and boy did they ram this point home prior to their game with the Owls on 11 August 1999 – their first home game of the season. At the time the fanfare and fireworks simply seemed to justify the opinion most in football held as regards the money making machine that was (and still is) Manchester United.
My opinion of the Mancs had deteriorated further whilst outside the ground. I had only been in the fanzine game a short while but I had learned enough to know that there was camaraderie amongst those involved with fanzines; a shared understanding of the endeavour we had undertaken as fanzine editors, of the hard work and long hours we put into our publications, of the bond we shared as we stood in all weathers distributing the thoughts and feelings of the fans to the fans. I had already established many contacts with other fanzines and had swapped copies with the likes of The Gooner (Arsenal); My Eyes Have Seen the Glory (Tottenham); Red All Over the Land (Liverpool); A Kick Up the Rs (QPR). I either mailed them copies or swapped them outside the ground. Only the previous weekend I’d had a great chat with John Pearman of the Liverpool fanzine Red All Over the Land. He’d sought me out at Hillsborough to wish me luck, swap copies and chat about football in general and the opening game of the season in particular. It had been a really nice gesture and one that had made me feel very relaxed on such a hectic and at times stressful day.
What followed then at Old Trafford was both a shock (although I suppose it shouldn’t have been really) and the first of several disheartening experiences that awaited me during that first season as editor.
Wednesday August 11, 1999
Manchester United versus Sheffield Wednesday at Old Trafford
AKA Pathetic, half-hearted surrender in the Theatre of Cash
This was the day that Wednesday ventured across the Pennines to take on the newly crowned ‘Champions of Europe’ (and Christ did they make us all aware of that!) This was a game very few people expected us to win. Indeed, I think most probably expected to see our boys get a good hammering and the Mamchester United fans revelling in their title of best in the European game (record books state that at the time they were, but they weren’t really were they? They’d been outplayed for much of the Champions’ League Final by a far superior side in Bayern Munich and had got lucky in ‘Fergie-time’ with two very fortuitous goals. I accept now that any fan, even I, would have loved to have been in their position but the blinkered viewpoint around Old Trafford that night was infuriating. The PA system never tired of telling us they were the Champions of Europe but seemed very reluctant to add the fairly accurate title of ‘jammiest team in Europe’ as well.)
Much had been said about the arrogance and money-driven nature of Manchester United and their fans; their disdain for all things English when it comes to the national team; the fact that none of them come from Manchester (something I could vouch for after this game due to firsthand experience of being stuck behind them on the motorway going home!); the bias given them by referees (still, astonishingly, denied to this day. Why do football pundits think we are so stupid? We can all see the bias given towards Manchester United and to deny it just makes people look silly.); the moaning and whinging of players, manager and fans alike. However, upon arriving at Old Trafford for this game I could only marvel at the arrogant, self-obsessed, money-oriented, we’ll-look-after-ourselves-and-stuff-the-rest attitude that exuded from every pore of every being dressed in red, white and black.
As a new boy to all the fanzine editing/selling lark I had only limited experience to go on, but my experiences so far had highlighted the code already mentioned above, whereby sellers swapped copies with each other in a very comradely way. I assumed therefore that this was the ‘done thing’, not a written rule obviously but a good example of all fans working together and aiding each other. Not so at the Theatre of Cash. Both Red Issue: Voice of the Fans and Red News (I suspected that the need to use United’s colours in the titles of these publications was to aid many of their ‘once-a-season’ visitors who probably had no idea what colour Manchester United played in!) not only declined a copy of Spitting Feathers but also made it quite clear that they were not interested in reading rubbish about a team that was at best unimportant to them and the rest of the football world. In other words, no one mattered but Manchester United. Arrogant bastards.
To say that I was slightly thrown by Red Issue’s attitude is an understatement. I can quite categorically say that I have never, before or since, met such a smug, self-obsessed ignorant person as the guy whom I approached to have a chat with. Silly me you may say, for thinking that maybe their fanzine editors still liked to keep one ear to what was happening in the rest of football. Silly me for assuming that their fanzine editors felt some affinity to other supporters. Silly me for expecting these people to at least show some good-natured acceptance of their undoubted class (you know, good-natured banter, jovially taking the mickey perhaps, or showing genuine excitement at what they had achieved). I should have expected the f**k off, you don’t matter attitude from the most arrogant fans in the world.
Anyway, from here I moved onwards, round the back of the construction site (Old Traford, being as it was, extended yet again) towards the away entrance. It was here that I began to sell Spitting Feathers, wondering whether I would be told to move on by the stewards or police. Both groups saw me, saw what I was doing and allowed me to carry on. Indeed, only when the away crowd at the gate started to build slightly was I asked to move by a crowd-control officer. However, he simply asked, very politely, if I minded moving twenty feet up the concourse so as to clear a little space. This I did and carried on with my selling. As kickoff drew nearer sales picked up considerably and money began to roll in. It was at this point that some overweight Hitler came and asked, no ORDERED me to “shift” as there were no sales allowed on the concourse. WHAT? Not twenty minutes previously I had seen a crowd-control officer who knew exactly what I was doing and had simply asked me to move slightly to allow easy access to the turnstile. Now here was someone telling me I was breaking Man United rules and must stop. Was it perhaps to do with the fact that I was making money from fans, money that should have been filling their cash registers? The looks I received from Man United’s ever so gracious fans further added to my feelings of hatred towards these arrogant b******s. Basically I was a piece of shit on the ground around their magnificent stadium.
Once inside the ground we were subjected to a delayed kickoff in order for the BBC honours to be dished out to the players (one for Ryan Giggs’s solo effort against Arsenal in the FA Cup semi-final the previous season – BEST GOAL EVER SCORED according to a Man United fanzine! – plus several other arse-licking awards from the BBC). Who else in the entire world would be allowed to delay kickoff simply to give their players some “richly deserved” honours? When Wednesday played Blackburn in the semi-final of the League Cup several years later the police refused to delay kickoff even though thousands of Wednesday fans were stuck in traffic on the way over the Pennines! The safety and well-being of Sheffield Wednesday fans was not reason enough to delay kickoff of a very important fixture and yet here were the authorities allowing Man United to delay kickoff for no other reason than self-aggrandisement. The man on the Old Trafford PA system swept through our team as though it would poison the air if he allowed any Wednesday name to be dwelt on by the crowd. Ego seeps from every pore of Old Trafford. And people wonder why they are so despised as an entity!
The match, as we all know, was a non-starter for the Owls. For the first five minutes of so I actually thought we were going to put up a bit of a display, but sadly normality was soon restored and we got off lightly, losing only by 4 goals to nil. Whatever Sir Alex may have said (that we put up a good showing and the performance showed a lot of promise for the rest of the season!) and whatever Danny Wilson thought he believed at the time (that we did very well against a powerful and skilful side!) Wednesday were crap. On any scale we were appalling. That night we lacked passion, commitment, skill, endeavour, ideas, fluency, technique and attitude. It seemed that the players didn’t even practise passing to each other in training; nor, apparently, did they practise fighting for the ball or tackling the opposition (all failings that now afflict the England national team it would seem, following our shambolic performances in recent tournaments!) The very basic skills required to play football were missing from a woeful Wednesday team (a fact made even more obvious three days later against an abysmal Bradford team who would still manage to take a point from the Owls and make them look average for much of the game). One had to wonder what exactly the coaching staff did with the players during the week because it clearly had nothing to do with playing football! Manchester United never stepped out of bottom gear and yet still managed to murder our hapless heroes. As Danny Wilson said in the interview I conducted with him for the fanzine, you had to admire the Manchester United players as the work ethic those lads have is fantastic…it’s your effort and desire to win that pulls you through. There we had it, we were crap because we had no skill or talent, nor did we have any work ethic, effort or desire. Our players just didn’t care. They got paid no matter what so why should they bother? The fault for this had to lie at Wilson’s door. He had assembled a useless squad and ripped any vestige of pride for them. And he still managed to hang around until March 21, 2000 before finally getting the chop.
To top off a great evening my car was gridlocked inside a poorly organised car park just behind the main stand at Old Trafford. It was another example of the residents of Manchester grabbing as much money as possible from a situation and not thinking about the consequences. Really I shouldn’t have been surprised as money is all that matters to the vast majority at Old Trafford. Having said this, the ineptitude with which the cars were packed into the available space suggested that maybe the Wednesday management team and players had had something to do with the organisation. I’m sure Sir Alex and Danny would have claimed it showed promise but it was, sadly, just like our team…a joke!
He's reight, tha knows! 