Been there on numerous occasions, mostly to a full or nearly full house.
My first memory of going to a football ground of any kind was going there was when I was at junior school in the early ‘fifties just after the Coronation when the Queen visited Sheffield. The place was full of schoolkids watching a display put on for HM and Phil the Greek. Our class were in the front row of the south stand and got a great view.
Was there again in 1957 to watch the semi-final between Man U (Busby’s babes) and Birmingham City. Can’t recall much about the match but do remember being v impressed with the physique, skill and sheer presence of Duncan Edwards. Less than a year later he was killed at Munich with much of the rest of the team.
In Jan 1960 Rotherham played a 3rd round second replay there against Arsenal there before the biggest crowd apart from Wembley games I have been to. 56,000 all paying at the turnstile. Rotherham won 2-0. Keith Kettleborough played a blinder and John Harris signed him shortly afterwards.
Like many others on here, I too visited the place in 1962 to see Santos. At the time this game was seen as a great public relations coup for Wednesday. However after the event it was revealed that the Santos team had flown into Manchester Airport and that the players including Pele thought they had come to play Manchester United – not such good PR for S6 !
After moving to the North East I returned to Sheffield in 1973 to see second division Sunderland beat Arsenal in the cup semifinal. Sunderland were a team of journeymen players up against starstudded first division Arsenal. Arsenal’s keeper was Bob Wilson who also had a nice sideline as a tv pundit who was frequently asked by Jimmy Hill to “talk us through that one, Bob”. He had a poor game and the Sunderland fans behind him enjoyed asking him to talk us through picking the ball out of the back of the net after the Mackems had gone 2 up.
Used to be not such a bad place when no blue and white stripes were on view.