Читать книгу Steel City Rivals - One City. Two Football Clubs, One Mutually Shared Hatred - Steve Cowens - Страница 11

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.