30 years ago today, a rather significant game took place. It featured an event that had only happened twice before in United’s history – most recently in 1926 – and hasn’t happened since. Happily, the game was filmed, and our goals from that game – all six of them - can be seen on Youtube.
The game was more than that, however. It was also a sign of good things to come. One of the early signs that the club was going places after more than a decade outside the top flight. It’s worth remembering, and I thought I’d write about it on its 30th anniversary.
I am talking, of course, about Sheffield United 6 Chester City 1. Deane 3, Agana 3. The double hat-trick game.
I will try to set the scene. Dave Bassett had come to the club in January 1988 with United in a lot of trouble at the wrong end of the table. Billy McEwan had been fired after post-Christmas results of 1-3, 1-4 and 0-5, with the infamous drubbing at home to Oldham – still the worst performance I have seen from a Blades team – proving the final straw for Reg Brealey.
Bassett did a lot of wheeling and dealing, but ultimately failed to save the club from relegation, as we lost 2-1 on aggregate to Bristol City in the playoffs. He signed some decent young players but others were inadequate and there weren’t enough goals in the team – Richard Cadette was a major disappointment, Peter Beagrie was out of form, and Clive Mendonca was given up on too early. The defence was also poor, with Andy Leaning not good enough as first choice keeper, and we only managed one clean sheet away, against bottom placed Huddersfield on the last day of the season. We simply did not win enough when it counted, with a late season scoreless draw against WBA and narrow defeats at Birmingham and Reading being particularly costly.
In the close season, Bassett stabilised the defence with the permanent signing of keeper Graham Benstead, who had been on loan from Norwich at the end of the previous season, but the back 4 – Martin Pike at left back, Paul Stancliffe and Brian Smith at centre back, and Cliff Powell at right back – was largely the same as the defence that finished the previous season. Similarly, Simon Webster and Mark Todd, both veterans of the relegation season, started the season in the middle of the park.
It was up front and on the flanks that big changes were made. Cadette was sold to Division 3 rivals Brentford, top scorer Tony Philliskirk went to Oldham, old stagers Morris and Withe went to Scarborough and Huddersfield respectively, and Beagrie went to Stoke for just over 200 grand. That left us with Tong Agana, who’d scored a last minute winner on his debut against Barnsley the previous season but had been dogged by injury thereafter, and Peter Duffield, who had played a bit part but not really impressed.
In came Francis Joseph, a centre forward reuniting with his ex-Wimbledon boss after an unproductive year at Reading; Ian Bryson, a left winger with 200 games behind him in Scotland for Kilmarnock when he combined a part time contract with working on a farm; Alan Roberts, a right winger from Darlington; and John Francis, picked up cheaply from Emley, Completing the new look pool of forwards was Brian Deane, a gangly kid who’d got a dozen goals in a couple of seasons at Doncaster and who had impressed Bassett when he’d gone to check out Dave Cusack.
We started well. We won 3-1 at Reading on the opening day, with Big Stan scoring from a corner and Joseph putting us 2-0 up before limping off to be replaced by Agana – more significant than it seemed at the time. Michael Gilkes got one back for Reading but Deane made the points safe with a goal 10 minutes from time. We did even better in the first home game against Bristol Rovers, falling behind to an Ian Holloway goal but coming back to lead to 2-1 at half time and going on win 4-1, with Bryson scoring from 2 headers, Roberts dribbling into the box to score, and Agana scoring from a knock down by Deane. It was direct, but we were using the wings a lot and were essentially playing 4-2-4 when we had the ball. We also dispatched Hartlepool 4-2 on aggregate in the first round of the league cup, though we’d chucked away a 2 goal lead up there via a daft own goal by Powell and a penalty, and we’d needed extra time to see them off in the second leg.
Our third league game had seen our first setback - we dominated the game at Gillingham but Ron Hillyard played a blinder and we lost 2-1 with the Gills scoring from their only serious attacks. So with 3 games gone we were in fourth place, 2 places and one point behind second place Chester City, who visited us on 17 September 1988. I don’t know whether our first defeat had put people off this game, but despite the sunny warmish day our lowest league crowd of the season, 8,675, was in attendance.
The teams lined up as follows:
United: Benstead, Wilder, Pike, Webster, Stancliffe, Smith, Duffield, Todd, Agana, Deane, Bryson.
Chester City: Stewart, Glean, Woodthorpe, Hinnigan, Able, Lightfoot, Jakub, Barrow, Benjamin, Johnson, Newhouse.
8 of the Blades first 11 had started every game. The exceptions were right wing – where Duffield was playing his second game after Roberts had started the first 2; centre forward, where Joseph was still not fit to start and Agana had taken his place since coming on at Reading; and right back, where we’d used 3 different players in 3 league games. Cliff Powell had managed to get himself injured, so Chris Wilder had played at number 2 against Bristol Rovers, and Andy Barnsley took the shirt against Gillingham. Wilder was back today, though.
Chester featured former Blade Ian Benjamin at centre forward, with 16 year old Aidan Newhouse alongside him. Gary Bennett, notorious in Sheffield for his horrific leg breaking tackle on Ian Knight at Hillsborough in 1987, was on the bench.
United put Chester to the sword in the first half and, to my memory, dominated possession, and by half time Deano had helped himself to a hat-trick. His goals went in as follows:
7 minutes: Deane rose at the back post to head in Martin Pike’s corner. Simplicity itself.
27 minutes: Probably the best of the bunch: United passing through the middle, and Agana gets the ball in the D outside the area. He pushes the ball to the left corner of the area where Deane runs in, muscles past a defender, and sends a deft chip into the top right corner. There is a picture of this goal in a programme one or two games later, which shows the ball entering the net and my Dad and I, standing near the bottom right of the Kop, starting to raise our arms in celebration.
37 minutes: United played the ball down the wing and Wilder, on the overlap and drifting inside, cut into the area and swung in a perfect low cross that Deane finished with a diving header, the ball going to the keeper’s right.
Just before half time, Deane had a great chance for his fourth, but put the ball wide from about 8 yards out when it seemed easier for him to hit the target. Still, 3-0 at the break and we weren’t complaining.
Harry McNally must have yelled at Chester at half time, as they came at us in the first 15 minutes of the second half and got their reward on 55 minutes when Graham Lightfoot managed to hook a corner into the roof of the net. 3-1. I was (and still am) scarred by the Reading game in 1986-7, when we were 3-0 up after an hour and it was 3-3 5 minutes later, so I was worried all of a sudden. However, United took the pressure off, and more, with 3 more goals:
57 minutes: The big hoof: Deane flicked on a long Benstead clearance and Agana took the ball on. He looked to have been forced wide by a defender but he hit a great shot from the left edge of the 6 yard box across the keeper and the ball hit the net just inside the right post.
83 minutes: Deane had been withdrawn for John Francis by this point in the game, and Francis had a big hand in the fifth. He chased another long clearance coming down the right of the penalty area, beat the defender to the ball and played a short pass to Agana, who rolled the ball into the left hand corner of the net from the right edge of the 6 yard box.
89 minutes: Francis again the provider: he got the ball in the middle of the Chester half, turned and played a diagonal pass to the onrushing Agana who took the ball on into the area and despite the attentions of a defender once again hit the ball across the keeper into the bottom right corner.
6-1 – the biggest win I’d ever seen, and the first time I’d seen us score six since 1984. Plus 2 hat-tricks in the same game, one in each half. Very neat. We hadn’t done that since New Year’s Day 1926, when Harry Johnson and David Mercer both got 3 as we beat Cardiff 11-2 in the first season after they changed the offside law.
For the record, Deano got the matchball – he claimed it as he got his treble first! He posted a picture of all 4 of his hat-trick balls on Twitter in February: Brian Smith, Paul Stancliffe and Graham Benstead’s autographs can all be seen on the Chester ball.
8,675 proved to be the lowest crowd of the season. Not only that, but every single league crowd at the Lane in the 30 years since that day has exceeded it. There were nearly 12,000 there 3 days later to see us thrash Northampton 4-0 and go top, and we stayed there for the next 2 league games, winning 4-1 at Brentford the following Saturday and beating promotion rivals Wolves 2-0 at home on 1 October, with Deane and Agana scoring once each and Steve Bull hardly getting a kick. Throw in our 3-0 thumping of First Division Newcastle in the League Cup earlier that week, and that’s as good a 5 game run of performances as we’d had in years.
I was 15 when that game took place. I’m 45 now. Two thirds of my life, and over a thousand United games, have taken place since then. I still look back on that game with affection. Like the Gillingham game in September 2016, it hinted at good things to come. Agana’s strength pace and accurate shooting, Deane’s skill in the air and surprisingly deft touch at times, Bassett’s commitment to wing play and fast, attacking football…all of these things were on show, and would carry the team and us fans a long way, back to the top flight and, eventually, into a new league, where Deano carved his name in history with the first goal in that league. Good times, well worth remembering and celebrating.
