Very Proud

Wow. What an intense 90 minutes of football yesterday. How good was that match compared with the dull sterility of Saturday’s semi-final? It must have been brilliant for the neutrals. Sadly, I’m not a neutral in this particular case and it was a sad end to our amazing FA Cup run, but what a way to go out. As the Nike adverts surrounding the field repeatedly proclaimed:

If you go down in flames, at least you were on fire.

And yes, we were. Aside from fifteen crazy minutes just after half time, including that one Ricky Villaesque run from Tom Huddlestone [“Tackle him! TACKLE HIM!!!”], we matched Premiership Hull City blow for blow and the team made us all very proud. Gone was the Wembley “stage fright” from previous visits, as we went all out for it from the first minute. From the Yorkshire Post:

Yesterday, dreams of becoming the first team from the third tier of English football to reach the FA Cup final died amid Hull’s superior football. But in a first half where United assumed control and then a late rally that briefly brought hope of forcing extra time, Clough’s men did their superb travelling army of fans justice.
No wonder that the hordes from Sheffield afforded their players a standing ovation at the final whistle. It was thoroughly deserved, and not just for yesterday’s efforts with the manner in which Clough has transformed the Blades being nothing short of remarkable.

The future is looking bright.

I went through every kind of emotion over the 90 minutes and together with the heat (and possibly a couple of rather strong homebrewed wheat beers), it left me completely exhausted. I’m not quite sure what state the Blades players were in, but if the Sheffield Star is to be believed, they had some… er… “male issues” at the final whistle.

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Hmm. “Prostate on the turf”? Some problems with their R’s there.

Thankfully, all I had to do was wander upstairs to my (stupidly hot) bedroom. Many of the United fans had a long trip back up from London, arriving back in Sheffield well after midnight.

All in all, an amazing effort and a magical cup run, which started away against Colchester United early last November.

We’ll just have to win it next year instead…

Wembley again

Big day today, as my beloved Red and White Wizards head down to Wembley Stadium for the FA Cup semi-final against Hull City. My Dad and brother will be there and I’ll try (as before) to guide them safely in. I’ve seen United in 3 FA Cup semi-finals, all of them with us in a far better situation than our current League One position. In fact, if we win today, we’ll the first club in over a century to get to the final while playing in the “third tier”.
However, our record in those semi finals is “less than great”, sitting at 0-3.

Not for want of trying though. Who could forget this amazing moment from our 0-1 defeat to Arsenal at Old Trafford in 2003?

That’s how close we were. I was sitting (obviously, I wasn’t actually “sitting” at this point, but the point still stands (pun intended)) looking right along the goalline and I still cannot explain how Seaman kept that out.

But that was then and this is now. Sadly, our recent record in Wembley games is equally poor. The omens, they are not good, but I do like this sentiment from our manager:

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Because given our circumstances and the teams we have had to play (and beat) to get to this point, we should already be proud of what we’ve achieved, but what’s the point of resting on our laurels now? It’s been the way for a while in this cup run that any step further would be something amazing. So why not go for one more?

33,000 Blades fans will be there to cheer them on:

Retail Sales Manager Lisa Crossland said:
“As quick as new merchandise is coming in, it is selling. This morning alone (Tuesday) we have sold more than 800 T-shirts, 600 flags, 300 car flags, 250 foam Wembley hands.”

I’ve long since given up on trying to predict the outcomes of Sheffield United games, save to predict them as being generally unpredictable. In getting this far, the team has already proven that we have the ability, we have the belief. Now we just have to go out and put it all into practice this afternoon.

Hold thumbs.

“Streets in the Sky”

That was the dream of the designers of Park Hill Estate in Sheffield. And apparently it worked for a while. But during my childhood in the Steel City, Park Hill was virtually a no-go area. Things are looking up now, as it’s been taken on by a urban regeneration company with a trendy name a a penchant for bright colours.
Richard Sillitoe and his camera got there before they started to make good:

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The Guardian piece is quite interesting, spelling out the ideas of the utopian estate thought up around the time of the Second World War:

Young Sheffield city council architects Ivor Smith and Jack Lynn began work in 1945, designing a radical scheme to rehouse the local community. Park Hill was the first successful post-second world war slum clearance scheme of an entire community in Britain.

And though they had plenty to do, paradoxically the bar was set pretty low, because the area was pretty awful to begin with, with no sewerage system, and regular typhus and cholera outbreaks.

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Their ideas were lofty, much like the streets they panned, but doomed to eventual failure.

Inspired partly by Le Corbusier, the ‘deck access scheme’ was seen as revolutionary. Its style was known as brutalism, and the concept described as ‘streets in the sky’, where milk floats would trundle along broad decks, stopping at front doors, as if they were in a normal street.
Families were re-homed next to their neighbours to maintain a strong sense of community, and old street names were re-used.

It all fell apart in the 1980s though:

Unemployment was rising as the local steel industry collapsed, Park Hill had descended into dilapidation and was no longer a place people wanted to live in. Boarded up pubs, burned out cars, rubbish, graffiti, it became a ‘no go’ area. The maze of alleys and walkways made it a perfect place for muggings; there were also problems with drugs, poor noise insulation, and even tales of air rifle snipers shooting at kids in the school playground. The spirit and traditions of the pre-war communities faded away, as the original residents aged and eventually died.

And that’s the Park Hill I will always remember: the eyesore on the gateway to Sheffield from the M1.

They’re trying again now, with more of a mix of commercial and residential units: inner city living is the new cool.
I hope it works.

Photos: David Sillitoe at Flickr

On form

This makes me happy:

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Look at that. Just look at it!

Six wins out of six and not a single goal conceded. In fact, last night’s home win against the MIGHTY Peterborough United took the winning run to eight, if you include the FA Cup wins against Fulham and Nottingham Forest.
I’m really not sure what has changed, but something has and suddenly, we’re feeling as invincible as an unlit cyclist on Ou Kaapse Weg at dusk.

Sadly (much like an unlit cyclist on Ou Kaapse Weg at dusk), this is merely a feeling – there is no actual invincibility: because of our poor start to the season, we’re still worryingly vulnerable and things could still go horribly wrong.

But the feeling is good. It reminds me of the feeling back in 2003, when we did really well in the league and both cup competitions and then won absolutely nothing.