what it is to be a Blade

[1danewhitehouse]

get behind the team and encourage them

propaganda

REALLY

I MEAN
REALLY

Getting behind the team is not propaganda. But your constant attempt to silence valid criticism and just make up stats depending on what you want them to say most certainly are.

 

[blade too long]

Getting behind the team is not propaganda. But your constant attempt to silence valid criticism and just make up stats depending on what you want them to say most certainly are.

Im on about next season
get behind us next season , but no you want the right to complain before the event
how can there be valid criticism before weve kicked a ball
in other words lets drag up all the old crap before we get going is what you mean
have a day off pretending you get behind us when your looking for every opportunity available to kick us

how on earth can there be valid reasons to knock chris wilder already

 

[Barney]

It's Gary Sinclair blaring out over this as you get your programme out.

And this:

 

[CarlMcBlade]

I love self-harming. . . . I also love the Blades.

 

[1danewhitehouse]

Im on about next season
get behind us next season , but no you want the right to complain before the event
how can there be valid criticism before weve kicked a ball
in other words lets drag up all the old crap before we get going is what you mean
have a day off pretending you get behind us when your looking for every opportunity available to kick us

how on earth can there be valid reasons to knock chris wilder already

Pretending to get behind us says the man who goes to about 3 games a season.

I was at Derby last night. Again I witnessed what we were missing in Nick Blackman.

I don't attempt to kick the club at every opportunity. I give credit where I think it's due (signings of Fleck, O Connell, Clarke and Duffy) and express my concern when I think it's due (Wilson, Wright, player sales year on year etc.). It's called balanced discussion. You might want to try it some time.

 

[Treeton Blade]

Pretending to get behind us says the man who goes to about 3 games a season.

I was at Derby last night. Again I witnessed what we were missing in Nick Blackman.

I don't attempt to kick the club at every opportunity. I give credit where I think it's due (signings of Fleck, O Connell, Clarke and Duffy) and express my concern when I think it's due (Wilson, Wright, player sales year on year etc.). It's called balanced discussion. You might want to try it some time.

Got to pull you up on the mention of James Wilson there,

He hasn`t made a mistake in his first 3 90 minutes appearances for us, and was very comfortable last night.

I had reservations on signing him, and we will find out about him as the season develops, but so far I have been very encouraged.

 

[S5Blade]

Pretending to get behind us says the man who goes to about 3 games a season.

I was at Derby last night. Again I witnessed what we were missing in Nick Blackman.

I don't attempt to kick the club at every opportunity. I give credit where I think it's due (signings of Fleck, O Connell, Clarke and Duffy) and express my concern when I think it's due (Wilson, Wright, player sales year on year etc.). It's called balanced discussion. You might want to try it some time.

Someone who can score penalities?

 

[Lawrence]

It means going to Bramall Lane.
I love Bramall Lane, always have, always will. When it was three sided I'd be down there every summer day that Yorkshire played and come autumn and winter every game that the red and white wizards played. On the kop, sometimes the Lane end, even in front of the pavilion on a couple of occasions when my dad had made us late and it was full.
Remember the first night match my dad took me to, getting off the bus and walking up Shoreham street hand in hand, and the sheer joy of seeing the floodlights in their full glory. Going up the kop steps and staring down on the brightly lit pitch, pure heaven. Still prefer a night match to this day.
I sat in the new Bramall Lane stand on my 9th birthday when we beat Leeds 1-0 and Woody played in goal for most of the game because I had Chicken Pox and my mother insisted I had to sit, loved it, never went back though as my dad preferred to stand.

The ground has evolved and it's only a decent kop stand away from being top class, but it still retains it's character and feel.
No place like it for me. Players, managers, even my dad, have come and gone, but Bramall Lane is an absolute constant and I feel as at home there as any house I've ever lived in.

Poetry!! "the sheer joy of seeing the floodlights in their full glory. Going up the kop steps and staring down on the brightly lit pitch, pure heaven"

 

[1danewhitehouse]

Someone who can score penalities?

That and someone who runs at his full back time and time again winning free kicks, corners and making a good all round contribution to the attacking play of the team.

 

[1danewhitehouse]

Got to pull you up on the mention of James Wilson there,

He hasn`t made a mistake in his first 3 90 minutes appearances for us, and was very comfortable last night.

I had reservations on signing him, and we will find out about him as the season develops, but so far I have been very encouraged.

I suppose we all see it differently.

I saw O Connell attacking everything and winning loads of headers. I saw Wilson backing off and letting the forwards bring down every high ball. No glaring errors but far too stand-offish for me on that showing. I hope he does well but didn't see much to convince me last night. If he ends up being back up fine but I'll be concerned if he plays the majority of the season.

 

[S5Blade]

That and someone who runs at his full back time and time again winning free kicks, corners and making a good all round contribution to the attacking play of the team.

I want my strikers to score goals.....

It was Blackman’s first strike since joining the Rams from Reading in the January transfer window.

 

[Treeton Blade]

I suppose we all see it differently.

I saw O Connell attacking everything and winning loads of headers. I saw Wilson backing off and letting the forwards bring down every high ball. No glaring errors but far too stand-offish for me on that showing. I hope he does well but didn't see much to convince me last night. If he ends up being back up fine but I'll be concerned if he plays the majority of the season.

O Connell is more aggressive and has done well also, but I feel there`s a mistake in him, where as I haven`t felt that with Wilson..yet.

 

[wizadry]

I suppose we all see it differently.

I saw O Connell attacking everything and winning loads of headers. I saw Wilson backing off and letting the forwards bring down every high ball. No glaring errors but far too stand-offish for me on that showing. I hope he does well but didn't see much to convince me last night. If he ends up being back up fine but I'll be concerned if he plays the majority of the season.

All good defensive partnerships have one who attacks the ball and another who stands off and tries to read the game and cover for the other one if it passes him by. After being a bit dubious about the partnership, this has the hallmarks of a great one in this league. Just need the creative side of our game sorting now.

 

[1danewhitehouse]

All good defensive partnerships have one who attacks the ball and another who stands off and tries to read the game and cover for the other one if it passes him by. After being a bit dubious about the partnership, this has the hallmarks of a great one in this league. Just need the creative side of our game sorting now.

I agree but usually, the sweeper of the 2 can still challenge and win headers if there is a high ball coming over on his side. I didn't see any of that from Wilson. Early days and I'm not writing him off yet but I'm not convinced either.

 

[1danewhitehouse]

I want my strikers to score goals.....

It was Blackman’s first strike since joining the Rams from Reading in the January transfer window.

Think that's a bit unfair given that he mainly plays out wide and has appeared mainly from the bench since signing for Derby.

 

[BushBlade]

Think that's a bit unfair given that he mainly plays out wide and has appeared mainly from the bench since signing for Derby.

Derby were a mess last season anyway. Blackman would smash L1 now. He was good in it before with us and he's learnt since then. Did well enough at Reading to get a move to a club desperate to get promotion.

 

[1danewhitehouse]

Derby were a mess last season anyway. Blackman would smash L1 now. He was good in it before with us and he's learnt since then. Did well enough at Reading to get a move to a club desperate to get promotion.

Precisely. Quality player. One of the better players on display last night.

 

[wizadry]

I agree but usually, the sweeper of the 2 can still challenge and win headers if there is a high ball coming over on his side. I didn't see any of that from Wilson. Early days and I'm not writing him off yet but I'm not convinced either.

Fair enough 1dw, only time will tell mate.

 

[Finn Keane o' Balmaqueen]

 

[diode_blade]

This is mine,

This is one of my late Mum's many stories which I helped record for her on my pc and is why I am a blade, she always used to tell me this one, unfortunately when I moved to where I now live in 1970, I had to go to Swine cottage on a Saturday for a classmate's birthday party (hated that and him!!),
but it was the blades from my earliest memories of being sat in the car as my Mum visited her mum in a elderly care home in the seventies, listening to the score flashes on RS or R2 at that time for any goal news, then one fine Tuesday my sister and her then boyfriend took me down to BDTBL to see the mighty blades play Liverpool and I walked away happy as larry after seeing (well sort of I was only a short arse then and could hardly see the flipping pitch!) the blades win 1-0, don't ask me the exact year prob mid-late 70's, as others have said you just are a blade it's in yer blood and sometimes is your whole soul and being, take losing with a pinch of salt and overjoyed at winning (not too many of those last season!), being pragmatic and always optimistic.


"As a small girl in Sheffield before the Second World War, I really looked forward to Saturdays as the highlight of my week. School was over and I could do all my favourite things. The first was dancing class first thing in the morning, when I would run and skip through our Churchyard to a local hall over the shops opposite the church. I had to cross two main roads to do this but in those days we didn’t have to worry about buses and cars. We only had tramcars and not very many motor cars. We didn’t have to worry about being accosted by unsavoury characters either, something which is always a worry these days when we grandmothers think about our grandchildren.

I loved dancing class, where we were taught ballet, tap and what was known as character dancing. Our two sister teachers were very good and made us work very hard. I have only to hear certain ballet or classical music and I am practising the ballet steps over and over again. Sadly it all ended when the war broke out and our teachers moved out into the country with their widowed mother to avoid the risk of being bombed.

After the class I would call in at the very conveniently placed sweet shop just below the dance hall and spend my sixpence pocket money on either a bag of lime fruit drops or a bar of Fry’s chocolate creams, depending on how hungry or hot I was after all that exertion and would eat some on my way home as I studied the gravestones in the churchyard. Some of the older ones were very grand, with marble angels watching over them. Reading the epitaphs, I probably wondered at how very good the people buried there must have been. Hadn’t they ever been naughty? I wondered, like myself and my school friends.

When I arrived home I would flop down into Dad’s bid armchair and fall into a deep sleep as I would be pretty tired. After a while Mum would wake me and we would all get ready to go down to town on the tramcar. If there was a football match at Bramall Lane, my Dad and big brother would go there sometimes Dad would take me as well as Alan otherwise Mum and I would go shopping then meet them after the match at Atkinsons Shop on the Moor . First, though, we would go to a wonderful butcher’s shop on Hereford Street off the bottom right end of the Moor, where we would all have a hot roast pork sandwich with crackling. The butcher always dipped the inside of the breadcakes into the gravy before slapping the pork in between them. Scrumptious!

If there wasn’t a match on, Dad and Alan would go shopping with us and sometimes we would go down to the Open Market at the bottom of Dixon Lane, where I loved looking at the animals and birds in cages. I wouldn’t now, though. Poor little things. It never occurred to anybody then how cruel it was, I suppose.

We would then go to the pictures either at the Hippodrome on Cambridge Street or the Central Picture House on the Moor.

We would finally end up in Atkinsons on the top floor where there was a mock-Tudor café. This was a great place to be because there was a central space in the shop right down to the lower ground floor and each of the four floors had balconies running right round so that you could sit at your tea table and look at all the shoppers down below as they wandered around. I always had a drink of milk and soda. A strange combination, but for some reason I loved it and would sit there happily eating my sandwiches and sipping my drink as I watched the activity all around me.

I loved Atkinsons particularly because at Easter they had an area at the end of the ground floor which was covered with artificial grass and had a miniature switchback to ride on. There were also little live yellow chicks and baby bunnies scampering around. Of course there were always Easter eggs of all shapes and sizes too. The other lovely thing for a small child was Father Christmas in his special Grotto, when you could sit on his knee and tell him what kind of present you would like. I was never able to forgive our Church School headmaster for telling us that there was no such thing as Father Christmas. Marks and Spencers was just above Atkinson’s off the Moor, across a small alley, and Mum used to buy my Whitsuntide best frocks from there.

After all this lovely day we would catch the tramcar home. Tired but happy. It was a great way to spend Saturdays and will always be a vivid memory for me."


Magic moments for me

Promotion under sir Harry and last home game of season at BDTBL with that well endowed lass planting Harry's face in between em
Coventry cup quarter final at Lane
Blackburn game in cup as well
Notts Forest 2nd leg SF
Kevin Arnots last gasp winner at southend and me smacking my head on exhaust pipe (ouch, thanks Kev!) as I fixed it
Even though we lost, the SF against the Arse at Old Trafford

many more but too many to list now...

 

[Ecco1889]

It's about integrity and loyalty. No glory hunters, plastics or tourists support our team.

We are a family. A snarling, dysfunctional cynical family, but a family none the less.

Above all its about hope. As long as any of us, from young to old have followed this club, we have had our nads slammed repeatedly in a car door.

But at the start of every season, we can't help but say 'This time it will be different'.

You're all fucking idiots. But you're my fucking idiots.

Wow,it's a classic post my friend
Have a thousand gold-plated likes

 

[ForgeBlade]

I don't post here very much (though I read a lot) but some of the stories in this thread have given me goosebumps.

I suspect I'm quite a bit younger than a lot on here. When I was a kid all my mates were snort beasts, and I very nearly went to the South Barnsley Sty on a couple of occasions, but circumstances conspired against such a thing, and thank fuck for that. My dad was never into football, so it fell to my (then) uncle to introduce me to BDTBL and all that it entails. September 10th 1994, 8-year-old me sees United beat Bolton 3-1, and becomes irredeemably, irrevocably hooked. United are in my blood, they are a part of me for better or (more likely) worse, and I can no more abandon them than I could abandon oxygen and keep living.

Being a Blade is heartbreak, it's eternal hope eternally dashed. It's playoff final defeats, it's coming oh-so-close to a cup final appearance. It's relegation on the last day of the season, it's missing out on automatic promotion by a hair's breadth. But it's also beating Arsenal under the lights just after Christmas. It's Browny's stunning volley in front of 5k devastated pigs at the lane. It's Peschisolido and "OH MY GOD." It's Nuddy somehow scrambling the ball over the line to beat Weeds in that stunning league cup match 14 years ago. It's incredible cup runs against all the odds. It's applauding your team at Wembley when the opposition have just scored the goal that kills the game because you are just SO FUCKING PROUD of them. I've followed TRAWW from Newcastle to Plymouth, and God knows however much it's cost me I would do it all again in a heartbeat.

Many football fans in this country have friends that they have made through football. I feel I have something more. I feel I have a second family. A dysfunctional, fucked up, backbiting, batshit-mental family, but a family nonetheless. Thousands of people who I may never know personally, but who I know I could always have a chat with over a beer, about our common love/habit/mental disorder (delete as you see fit).

THAT is what it is to be a Blade. I may curse them for what they have put me through, but god knows I love them more than I have the words to express. Long may it continue.

U T fucking B

 

[Tyler Durden]

I don't post here very much (though I read a lot) but some of the stories in this thread have given me goosebumps.

I suspect I'm quite a bit younger than a lot on here. When I was a kid all my mates were snort beasts, and I very nearly went to the South Barnsley Sty on a couple of occasions, but circumstances conspired against such a thing, and thank fuck for that. My dad was never into football, so it fell to my (then) uncle to introduce me to BDTBL and all that it entails. September 10th 1994, 8-year-old me sees United beat Bolton 3-1, and becomes irredeemably, irrevocably hooked. United are in my blood, they are a part of me for better or (more likely) worse, and I can no more abandon them than I could abandon oxygen and keep living.

Being a Blade is heartbreak, it's eternal hope eternally dashed. It's playoff final defeats, it's coming oh-so-close to a cup final appearance. It's relegation on the last day of the season, it's missing out on automatic promotion by a hair's breadth. But it's also beating Arsenal under the lights just after Christmas. It's Browny's stunning volley in front of 5k devastated pigs at the lane. It's Peschisolido and "OH MY GOD." It's Nuddy somehow scrambling the ball over the line to beat Weeds in that stunning league cup match 14 years ago. It's incredible cup runs against all the odds. It's applauding your team at Wembley when the opposition have just scored the goal that kills the game because you are just SO FUCKING PROUD of them. I've followed TRAWW from Newcastle to Plymouth, and God knows however much it's cost me I would do it all again in a heartbeat.

Many football fans in this country have friends that they have made through football. I feel I have something more. I feel I have a second family. A dysfunctional, fucked up, backbiting, batshit-mental family, but a family nonetheless. Thousands of people who I may never know personally, but who I know I could always have a chat with over a beer, about our common love/habit/mental disorder (delete as you see fit).

THAT is what it is to be a Blade. I may curse them for what they have put me through, but god knows I love them more than I have the words to express. Long may it continue.

U T fucking B

Now THAT was a bloody good read. You should post more often!

 

[spongebobblade]

I can relate to Coaxingstar and Tyler. Sheffield 6 born and bred in the 70s/ early 80s into a family full of armchair non attending pigs I never had any interest in watching the unclean. At the age of 9 in 1977 I had my first visit to the lane and was instantly hooked. I would go with whoever would take me. Mates with there grandads/dads being squeezed in the turnstile. Remember the stick I got at the family get together Boxing Day 79 despite being the only family member who went. Little did I know it was just a taste of things to come.
I'm now a father of a 20 year old daughter (Biggeyblades other half) who is Blades daft. My other half (her stepmum) is a season ticket holder as well and we travel all over watching our beloved blades. They put up with my reminiscing of the past but the 4 of us wouldn't have things any other way. Being a blade is a way of life, not just an interest. It's in ya blood and stays there. In good times and bad it's addictive. Every club has its ups and downs but ours is a roller coaster to the extreme. It's the blades way and it's for life

 

[Silent Blade]

one fine Tuesday my sister and her then boyfriend took me down to BDTBL to see the mighty blades play Liverpool and I walked away happy as larry after seeing (well sort of I was only a short arse then and could hardly see the flipping pitch!) the blades win 1-0, don't ask me the exact year prob mid-late 70's,

http://www.lfchistory.net/SeasonArchive/Game/797

 

[Grappler]

What it is to be a Blade, or in fact any football fan, nicely summed up below.......