Mark Duffy - One of our own

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I dedicated my username to him. I'm 31 but in my lifetime of watching the Blades which has been almost 20 years, this guy is probably my favourite player.

Some of our best performances in the Wilder years when Duffy was on it. Such a key player for us, everyone played their part in the League 1 / Championship promotions and you can't attribute any of that success to one man, not Wilder, not Sharp, not Duffy alone - it was a combined effort of great management, committed players and passionate, loyal supporters.

However, I genuinely believe this guy was the key to a lot of that success. And as for that famous goal at Hillsborough, this is rather corny of me to say, but that was a day not '2-4 get'.
 
I agree with most of the above and when people ask " what's your favourite goal?" I always say that it has to be the bouncekiller. Still watch it back now

As for the ending of his time at the club I think it all came down to CW being in control and being the only one with the power to instigate a contract 'upgrade' By Duffy requesting it would have been perceived by Wilder as a loss of his authority.
 
BettingBlade said:
I do wish Paul Walker would bother to actually do some research every now and again. He seems to mis-remember a lot of games, and quite big ones too. Was the same in the Michael Tonge one as well.
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When Duffy talks about the Northampton game, I assumed he meant the Oxford home game. And his reference to Coutts coming on at HT was, I assume, to the Southend game, not the Walsall cup game.

I suspect sometimes Walker may know the interviewee has made an error but does not want to disrupt the flow.

BTW for fans of tactics Duffy is really interesting on 3-5-2, Coutts' role, overlapping centre backs, his own use in the "Duffy role", and McGoldrick's role.
 
Revolution said:
When Duffy talks about the Northampton game, I assumed he meant the Oxford home game. And his reference to Coutts coming on at HT was, I assume, to the Southend game, not the Walsall cup game.

I suspect sometimes Walker may know the interviewee has made an error but does not want to disrupt the flow.

BTW for fans of tactics Duffy is really interesting on 3-5-2, Coutts' role, overlapping centre backs, his own use in the "Duffy role", and McGoldrick's role.
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I can understand the players not remembering certain things but he does the same. Talking about beating Wednesday in the promotion season and not being able to remember whether Northampton was the promotion game or the game we clinched the title.

And this was only a few years ago as well. Thought the Tonge one might have been a one off but apparently not.
 
Thought it was interesting how he said he stayed at the Copthorne on Friday nights.
He said all the new players and those travelling from further a field would also stay at the club hotel.

He said spending time with the players (outside work) significantly improved team spirit.

He commented that it's a shame that the Copthorne is now closed.
Hopefully it will re-open again...understand the Hilton group have signed contracts to manage it.
 
JPSharpy93 said:
Really heart warming and great to hear him talk about the journey being special to him like it was to us.

The running joke amongst the players about whose arriving next to try replace him in the team really made me chuckle.
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I wanted to know what was Wilders issue regards hardly ever playing him for a full match.

The interviewer should have asked Duffy directly.
Did he have fitness issues...ensuring he was unable to play a full 90 minutes at a high intensity and
did Wilder ever communicate his plans for him. Why was he always looking for replacements?

Always seemed to me that Wilder wasn't that keen on him.
Even when Duffy gave a man of the match performance Wilder was reluctant to publicly give him praise.

Wonder if it was a case of Duffy being great in possession but a liability (unable to tackle) when out of possession.
 
Sheffsteel said:
I wanted to know what was Wilders issue regards hardly ever playing him for a full match.

The interviewer should have asked Duffy directly.
Did he have fitness issues...ensuring he was unable to play a full 90 minutes at a high intensity and
did Wilder ever communicate his plans for him. Why was he always looking for replacements?

Always seemed to me that Wilder wasn't that keen on him.
Even when Duffy gave a man of the match performance Wilder was reluctant to publicly give him praise.

Wonder if it was a case of Duffy being great in possession but a liability (unable to tackle) when out of possession.
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Might be pertinent to look up who he shared an agent with, someone who tried it on with CW.
 
Such a great player for us and the best attacking midfielder I’ve seen in the red and white.

Such a shame how it ended for him at the club. We’ve been, rightly or wrongly, denied a few proper goodbyes these past couple of years.
 



HermitageBlade said:
It was a great listen but I found it quite damning of Wilder. Not so much from Duffy but reading between the lines it sounds like we lost a great player because Wilder was having a bad day and then was too stubborn to admit a mistake. A character flaw that we learned a lot more about later in his tenure.
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I love Chrissy wilder but he can't half be a sulking mardy arse at times.

If a few of our players now had half the composure, touch and skill on the ball as duff had then we would have qualified for the play offs weeks ago. See duffs goal v forest, could any of our current midfield do that except possibly MGW
 
HermitageBlade said:
It was a great listen but I found it quite damning of Wilder. Not so much from Duffy but reading between the lines it sounds like we lost a great player because Wilder was having a bad day and then was too stubborn to admit a mistake. A character flaw that we learned a lot more about later in his tenure.
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I always thought there was a bit more to it. I think Wilder had already decided he was going to play a 'flat 3' in the Premier League and I also think that Duffy might have realised this so I think part of the going to see about an extension of his contract was also to test how he fitted into the plans. The fact was that he was only ever going to be a bit part player that season.
 
BettingBlade said:
I do wish Paul Walker would bother to actually do some research every now and again. He seems to mis-remember a lot of games, and quite big ones too. Was the same in the Michael Tonge one as well.
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And how can an interviewer let the comment that he'd nearly signed for us twice before slip by without asking about who, what, why, when etc?
 
Sheffsteel said:
Wonder if it was a case of Duffy being great in possession but a liability (unable to tackle) when out of possession.
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Geordie Blade said:
I think it was exactly this - and his poor tracking back - that Wilder wouldn’t tolerate.
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I always thought the opposite. I thought Duffy was brilliant at tracking back and to give an example, when we played Derby at the Lane the first season back, Duffy was marking Huddlestone and Huddlestone was hardly in the game. In fact I thought that's one of the reasons Wilder struggled to replace him because the likes of Carruthers didn't work anywhere near as hard as Duffy.
 
wadblade said:
I also think Mark is right his bounce slayer goal shifted the balance of power between us and the oinkers
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Very much agree, that 2-4 result and even that goal of Duffeys was a sliding doors moment.

Reminds me of the Boxing Day 1979 4-0 defeat. During the 70’s United were the glamour team, at my school most supported United. Sheff Wed were at their lowest ebb and seen as an embarrassment with crowds down to 9K most weeks.

Come Boxing Day 79 United were top of the league and favourites to win. We’d been top dogs for years then after that result all of a sudden people who had zero interest in football declared they’d always been Wednesdayites.

Wednesday went on a great run after that match and gained promotion. Where as United hardly won another match that season and went on a slump going down to div 4.

Regards the bouncing day match, Wednesdayites we’re so confident telling us Bannan was the best player in the league etc. We not only won but deservedly won, my brother is a Wednesday fan and even he said we were one of the best teams to visit S6 that season.

When ever I’ve spoke to Wednesday fans even the banter wasn’t the same. There was a resignation even amongst Owls fans that Wilder was a special manager and we would go on to achieve great things.
 
diplomat said:
And how can an interviewer let the comment that he'd nearly signed for us twice before slip by without asking about who, what, why, when etc?
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I think they’re just a bit tight for time as well tbh but think it would be better if they were a bit longer so they could expand on stuff like that.

I know stuff like undr the cosh divides opinion but they do have scope for exploring stories a bit more (obviously a lot of those would be off limits for an official club pod).
 
Sheffsteel said:
Reminds me of the Boxing Day 1979 4-0 defeat. During the 70’s United were the glamour team, at my school most supported United. Sheff Wed were at their lowest ebb and seen as an embarrassment with crowds down to 9K most weeks.

Come Boxing Day 79 United were top of the league and favourites to win. We’d been top dogs for years then after that result all of a sudden people who had zero interest in football declared they’d always been Wednesdayites.

Wednesday went on a great run after that match and gained promotion. Where as United hardly won another match that season and went on a slump going down to div 4.
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That's a great point.

The actual "sliding doors" moment came just before half time when, trailing 1-0, McPhail missed an absolute sitter.
Going in 1-1 after being dominated might, and obviously it's only a might, have changed the course of the game, the season and life itself!
 
Leon Clarke to the bounce killer " but I scored two goals that day " 🤣

Don't worry Leon we will always remember your part in our up rising , I just wish we had you now !

LEEEEEEEOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNN !!!
 
HermitageBlade said:
It was a great listen but I found it quite damning of Wilder. Not so much from Duffy but reading between the lines it sounds like we lost a great player because Wilder was having a bad day and then was too stubborn to admit a mistake. A character flaw that we learned a lot more about later in his tenure.
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I always thought Wilder was jealous of Duffs status since scoring that goal , Wilder fucked up big style with the handling of Duffy , not professional at all !!
Mind you it wasn't his biggest fuck up he also brought McBurnie to the club 🤷‍♂️
 
wavy-blade said:
Leon Clarke to the bounce killer " but I scored two goals that day " 🤣

Don't worry Leon we will always remember your part in our up rising , I just wish we had you now !

LEEEEEEEOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNN !!!
Click to expand...

It was the timing of the goal that was priceless.

We were brilliant in that 1st half and deserved to be leading by 2 or 3 goals.
Looked like we were going in leading 2-0 at half time then they scored just before half time.

2-1 was an unjust half time score and I was thinking maybe we'd blown our chance of giving them a beating.
Wednesday were quite poor but had a good 10 minutes at the beginning of the 2nd half and scored to make it 2-2.

I watched the game with a Wednesday fan and he was laughing admitting that he doesn't know how Wednesday had pulled it back to 2-2.
He admitted Wednesday had generally been outplayed but said now it's 2-2 he's confident Wednesday will go on to win.
I agreed with him....thought it would be so typical for Wednesday to get out of jail but playing poorly for most of a match but still beating us.

I was so flat because we'd played so well but were only drawing 2-2.
On tv it showed you all their fans gloating and bouncing up and down. Then the ball went to Duffy, they stopped bouncing
and what a brilliant finish.... I was so pumped with adrenalin I went outside to run up and down the street.....honest.

When Clarke scored to make it 4-2 (another class goal) I had real satisfaction because scoring 4 was a more accurate reflection of our dominance.

In the 1992 we won 3-1 by playing the classic away performance, defend really well in numbers then look dangerous on the break (thank you Bobby Davison). The 2-4 bouncing day match was different because we played like we were the home team and gave them a footballing lesson.

After the match many Wednesday fans were walking around in a daze for weeks....there was nothing they could say.
I really think that defeat sent a cloud over their whole club and they've still not recovered.
 
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diplomat said:
And how can an interviewer let the comment that he'd nearly signed for us twice before slip by without asking about who, what, why, when etc?
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I don't rate Paul doing these podcasts. It's basic stuff that he should know asking follow up questions to these things is what makes a podcast good.

Walker is very radio orientated as if they have some newsbreak to cut to (even the ad for Nord VPN was fucked up with overlapping audio), very much sticking to a time limit for the podcast and then being amateurish with his research. Standard from Radio Sheffield presenters, this podcast needs a proper host.
 
Sheffsteel said:
It was the timing of the goal that was priceless.

I watched the game with a Wednesday fan and he was laughing admitting that he doesn't know how Wednesday had pulled it back to 2-2.
He admitted Wednesday had generally been outplayed but said now it's 2-2 he's confident Wednesday will go on to win.
I agreed with him....thought it would be so typical for Wednesday to get out of jail but playing poorly for most of a match but still beating us.

I was so flat because we'd played so well but were only drawing 2-2.
On tv it showed you all their fans gloating and bouncing up and down. Then the ball went to Duffy, they stopped bouncing
and what a brilliant finish.... I was so pumped with adrenalin I went outside to run up and down the street.....honest.
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The really unique thing about it is that most United fans will take great delight in watching João's equaliser, knowing what will happen next - not just the next two minutes, but the next two and a half years. In fact, whenever I want to watch Duffy's goal, I consider João's goal to be an essential part of the viewing and have to start the video at that point. I can sit chuckling away as that stupid cameraman is screaming in the snortbeast players' faces as they celebrate. It's even great to slow it down to quarter speed, just to focus on the smugness of the fans' faces as they bounce up and down with misplaced confidence.
 
I still think getting rid of Duffy when we did is the rare case of perfect timing. Look at his career since. He wouldn't have worked in the successful flat 3 in the first season and was pretty much retired by the 2nd premier league season
 



Berkshire Blade said:
I still think getting rid of Duffy when we did is the rare case of perfect timing. Look at his career since. He wouldn't have worked in the successful flat 3 in the first season and was pretty much retired by the 2nd premier league season
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Bit harsh.

Look at his career before us, then after us. Maybe we were just a perfect fit for him.
 
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