Veteran Journalist Steve Tongue delves into the history of Sheffield United in new book ‘Yorkshire Turf Wars’ | OneFootball

Sheffield United Football Club has a very proud history. Much like South Yorkshire, and the rest of Yorkshire at that. And in “God’s Country”, as many like to refer to Yorkshire as, it is difficult to escape sports. Especially football. Whether you’re from North, East, South or West.

Since the 19th century, Yorkshire football grounds have been the hosts of thousands of matches, at several levels of the English football pyramid. A veteran journalist and broadcaster, Steve Tongue, has recently published a book about the rich history of football in Yorkshire from the 19th century to present day.

Tongue’s book, Yorkshire Turf Wars: A Football History, is the fourth book in the acclaimed Turf Wars series.

Veteran Journalist & Broadcaster Steve Tongue Talks All Things Sheffield United

Hal, from the Sheff United Way podcast, sat down with Steve Tongue as they discussed his latest book and the memories he has of Sheffield United.

Tongue, who has supported Leyton Orient since the 1950’s, detailed the first time he ever saw the Blades play.

He said: “That was quite early on, because Orient, as I said, when I first went, they were an established second division club. The Blades, this is what we’re talking about now, late 1950’s, were in that period identically with Liverpool, funnily enough, as always being near the top of the second division and not quite making it to promotion. So they were playing Orient most seasons towards the end of the 50s, and right at the end of 1957 to 58 they came to Brisbane Road and won 1-0, a man called Billy Russell got the goal.

“But there were names that United historians will certainly remember, people like Graham Shaw, Joe Shaw and Alan Hodgkinson in goal. The famous defence, which seemed to play every game, every year. They were all established there. Derek pace at centre forward. So that was my first sight of the Blades, and eventually I got round to seeing Bramall Lane as well.”

Bramall Lane is the oldest professional football stadium in the world. Of course, nowadays it has been modernised, but the character remains. And you just can’t beat that feeling of a matchday at Beautiful Downtown Bramall Lane.

Speaking to Hal, Steve remembers the first time he visited S2: “I was impressed. It was a big game. It was the first game of the 90/ 91 season, when United just got promoted back to the top division with Leeds, and Blades supporters must have been delighted when the fixture list came out, and the first game was at home to the champions Liverpool. I was working for one of the national papers at the time, and went up there, unsurprisingly perhaps, a Liverpool win, as it mostly was in those days against everybody, it finished 3-1 I think, and Brian Dean got the goal that day.

“The one I remember more that season was seeing them away to Manchester City and Dave Bassett was the manager, and he’d signed several ex Wimbledon players, including Vinnie Jones. It was Vinnie’s first season, his one season there. Although they had a bit of a reputation, United actually won a Fair Play Award from one of the football magazines. I think it was Match Weekly. And so it got presented on the pitch before the kickoff with the Fair Play of the month team award. And the game started. And if you think I’m exaggerating, you can watch this on YouTube, City kicked off and did the usual thing, passed the ball back to someone on the edge of the centre circle, who happened to be Peter Reed, and suddenly, a yellow clad figure who was Vinnie Jones, came charging in, knocked Peter Reed a long way up in the air and conceded what I think at the time was the quickest ever yellow card in English football, I believe, actually, he may subsequently have broken that record himself.

“So the episode of that was, I mean, as I was writing for a paper which quite likes a sort of odd, quirky line occasionally, rather than the straight facts and figures. And it was too good an opportunity to miss that this team had been presented with their Fair Play Award before kickoff, and then had somebody book within five seconds. So I went on a bit about Vinnie Jones and the old crazy game mentality coming to Sheff United and so on.

“And, on the Monday, I got a phone call from the observer, who I was working for, saying, Dave Bassett’s been on the phone. He’d like a word. And I thought, this might be quite tricky getting the gist of what he might say. So I got through to Dave Bassett. I still always called him Dave rather than Harry. I wasn’t one of those. Who was it? Harry? No, I said. He said, I read your report. Didn’t think much of it, and while I struggled to get a word in, he went into the sort of rant, which I’m sure many of his players were became familiar with over the years, and while I was struggling to get a word in at the end and say, well, it was just a bit of fun, you know, and it was a funny thing to be getting a Fair Play Award and then a yellow card in five seconds. And blah, blah, blah, he finished his rant, and said, anyway, how are you doing son, what’s happening down there? Which was very much like Dave, and I was probably fortunate that he was somebody I knew, because my first real job down there was in local radio, and we covered Wimbledon when they had their great FA Cup runs, which, of course, included going up to Leeds and getting a famous draw there, when Dave was actually captain of the team. So we had a bit of history. But that was Dave, bless him.”

Steve Tongue has been publishing books in the series Turf Wars since 2016. Now onto his fourth book, the well–respected journalist explains what the series is about, and what you can expect from the Yorkshire Turf Wars.

“The books are about rivalries. Really, that’s a reasonable part of it. The structure of the book, by the way, is not just a chapter about Sheffield United nited and then a chapter about Wednesday and a chapter about Leeds, a chapter about Huddersfield and the history of them all. It’s supposed to be all interlinked, so that there’s a chapter essentially about each decade and how they link up chronologically. So what you’ll find, I think, in almost every chapter, there’s then a little section about each club. The United and the Wednesday sections in particular tend to be very closely linked. So they are all tied up. Of course, there’s the other thing, as with a lot of local clubs, you get a lot of players moving between them, and we talked about Vinnie Jones, just the number of players who’ve moved from from United to Leeds and vice versa. Not many, as you often find with the real local derbies, the Tottenham Arsenal or the United Wednesday. Not that many players as you well know who moved between the actual clubs, but it’s interesting in terms of the region and how successful the region has been from the very earliest days.

“I mean, one of the interesting things about United’s formation, of course, is that what they share with Chelsea is the fact that it was basically a club that was formed because there was a ground there that needed filling. Bramall Lane was a very important venue in the whole of Sheffield sport because of the cricket as well as the football from very early days. Wednesday, of course, actually played a few games there, but decided they wouldn’t have taken it on as their permanent home, which would have made history, very different if they had done and it was when the very the first FA Cup semi final that was played there in 1889, which was a very big game, because it was between West Brom, the holders, and Preston crowd of over 22,000 which was the record for a semi-final at the time. And it was such a success that people thought, we need to make something of this.

“And so the Sheffield United group of cricket clubs decided that they would do what Wednesday had done some years earlier and as a cricket club, start a football section. As we know, a lot of clubs in this country began in exactly that way. Some took up rugby, but a lot took up football. So those were the earliest days. And exactly in the same way that Stamford Bridge was a good Stadium in London, which didn’t actually have a football team, and they tried to persuade Fulham to move in there who weren’t interested. And so a new Chelsea team started. So one of the effects from that, that affects United, is that United right from the start. And again, this is quite unusual, but the same as Chelsea were a pretty much fully fledged professional club almost from day one, they weren’t one of these clubs who start up on the local park and work their way up and eventually decide they might become a Football League club. United put their first advert in the local papers, and very shrewdly, in the Scottish papers, because a lot of professionals were coming down in the early days from Scotland to attract players and make it clear they were going to be a serious professional club. And of course, within about three years, had actually got into the second division of the Football League. United then, of course, got promoted and from the early to mid 1890s we had the derby matches going on and, in some cases, going off.”

Steve also discussed some of the best players to ever play for the Blades. And, to be fair there are a few names to pick from such as Tony Curry, Alan Woodward, Brian Deane, to name some.

“When we do these books, the normal design for the front cover, as well as some sort of map featuring all the biggest clubs, is to have five or six players, one each from the biggest clubs. And it’s always a slightly difficult job to pick out one player, at risk of upsetting supporters who have their own favourites, and also to try and get them slightly different; you don’t want them all to come from the same generation. So, for instance, the Leeds player on the front is actually John Charles, who happens to be in a rather nice or white strip. But the two in Sheffield are Chris Waddle from the other lot, and Tony Curry. I think Tony Curry would be the one who, again, it’s a slightly generational thing. I’m sure there are people who will say: what about Brian Deane? Or going further back, they might have their favourites from the 50s, 60s or whatever. But I think Tony, who came at a difficult time in the late 60s, it was the time when they just had to build a new stand, and reluctantly, I’m sure, had to sell Mick Jones to Leeds and Alan Burchell to Chelsea for big money in those times, £100,000 a piece, to pay for the stand, and that effectively led to relegation. But it was around that time that Tony Curry came on the scene and became one of the very best just for quality, one of many players around that period in the 70s who were regarded as sort of slightly Maverick players, and therefore, for whatever reason, not trusted by all managers.

“Fortunately, at United he had managers who quite rightly believed in him, but for England, for instance, managers like Don Revie, there weren’t people who believed in him so much and were very mistrustful of those sorts of players. So yeah, he’s the one. He’s the one who would jump out at me. But I would fully understand if there were plenty of Blades fans who had their own favourites.”