My Favourite Blade (Number 3) - Tony Currie

In the third of this close season series it is great to welcome Craig Salt (@saltyinsheff) to the pages of A United View with his memories of a Blades legend who, as the song said, could do magic. Why not share your memories of TC in the Comments section below.

I don’t remember my first game at Bramall Lane, what I do know is that I was little more than 18 months old, the ground had only 3 sides to it & a cricket pitch covered what is now the South Stand & car park.  I don’t remember the tour around the inner workings of the old John Street Stand and the player changing rooms or receiving the leather ball (complete with lace) signed by all the players, including the player that would become & to certain extent still is My Blades Hero. 

What I do remember is badgering my dad to buy me the full kit. What I do remember is asking if I could have the number put on the back of the shirt & on the shorts (yes, shorts had numbers on them too). What I do remember is wanting to be out in the garden, in the kit, kicking the ball & pretending to be … Anthony William Currie or TC to you and me. 

I remember the shock of long blonde hair & would take umbrage at claims that he was a lazy player, because at the time he was my footballing hero. I remember talk of his pinpoint passing ability & crucial goals that he scored. I remember insisting that I wear the whole kit every time we went to a home game.  I remember slowly moving away from my Mum to spare my embarrassment from being with  the one woman megaphone that she was.  I remember being truly heartbroken when he was transferred to Leeds. LEEDS of all teams!

The only thing worse to a child would have been to travel across the city to the "Dark Side" at S6. I remember that at about the same time I stopped going to games, partly because TC wasn’t there & also because my Dad started to work more Saturdays. My interest wasn’t rekindled until my teens, when I started to go to the games with mates & on the odd occasions with my Dad & his workmates.

I’ve watched countless reruns of programmes from the telly, I’ve seen bits & pieces over the internet. Still to this day I don’t understand how he didn’t gain more than the paltry 17 caps for England.  What I do admire when I watch those clips & old shows is the way he covered the ground so laconically. I enjoy the way the commentators from the early 70’s obviously thought (like I did) he was a class apart. I remember the classic Motty line from when United beat West Ham “A quality goal from a quality player” & the one goal that really sticks in my mind is his goal for England against Hungary that he hit from outside the box, even though he wasn’t playing for United at the time. The same laconic run up & effortless execution of strike to the keeper’s right & into the net, it still makes me smile when I think about it.

I like the way, that despite his travels & career around the world he chose United as his home to come back to & give something back to the kids of Sheffield in his role as Football in the Community co-ordinator. He is still my Blades Hero!

My Favourite Blade (Number 2) - James Beattie

For the second in the series we welcome Michael Crow (@mcblade1991) to A United View to tell us about his Favourite Blade. Given recent events this might be viewed as a controversial selection and to be fair to Michael, he wrote this prior to Beattie's red card at Exeter which saw him suspended for the Play-Offs. As ever, if you want to share your memories of the player, add them in the Comments section below.

Bryan Robson didn’t do many great things in his relatively short time as Sheffield United manager, but one could argue that his best move was bringing in the £4m hitman from Everton.

The reason James Beattie is my Blades Hero is that I wasn’t fortunate enough to remember the likes of Brian Deane in their prime, and in my time as a Blade, Beattie was the first man to hit 20+ goals in a season. Add into that his relationship with the supporters, who would frequently chant “na na na na Beattie” to the tune of Hey Jude, along with 22 strikes in his first season at the club and for me, the Blades had a talisman and a hero to back. He was a goal scorer, a constant threat in the box, and on his day an intelligent player.

One of these 22 strikes will live long in the memory for me and I’m sure most other supporters. The particular strike in question came against our bitter rivals from S6, 2-1 down with five minutes to play and the Blades were piling on the pressure but to no avail. Five minutes to go, United had a free kick 30 yards from goal. A brave man needed to take it. It was the moment most footballers probably dream of, the type of moment you would see in a Football Hollywood blockbuster and up stepped James Beattie to smash it in. From the moment he hit the ball, from my seat just behind the goal on the Kop, you knew the ball was in.

I thought Michael Brown’s volley against that lot in 2003 would take some real beating but Beattie managed to surpass that for me. To this day, it remains my favourite goal that the Blades have scored against them. He also scored a very similar goal to this in a 2-0 home victory over Plymouth Argyle in the following season.

The next season, after being out for the first month with an injury, Beats returned to the side and continued his form in the same vein, scoring his first goal of the 2008/2009 season in a 2-1 victory over Watford. 11 more strikes would follow this before a controversial £3.5m January transfer move to newly-promoted Premiership side Stoke City, who were aiming to retain their status in the top flight. I remember the day that I heard the news. I was in college in an English lesson sat next to my friend who was also a Blade, and I had my iPod on the radio. The sports news bulletin announced that Beattie was set to move to the Britannia Stadium.

I will always remember the disappointment I felt when I heard that news, I said to my friend something along the lines of - “I can’t believe it, we’re selling our top scorer when we’re aiming for promotion”. Some girl sat next to me got sick of my ranting that much she told me to “shut up moaning, it’s only football”. I only wish that were the case! Kevin McCabe would receive much criticism, as the then manager Kevin Blackwell also seemed very reluctant to lose him, whilst Beattie himself suggested that the Bramall Lane hierarchy had wanted to sell him, possibly due to his high wages. Needless to say, most Blades fans (admittedly me included) were up in arms about the sale and thought the season was over in January.

Either way, Beattie went on to fire Stoke to safety and against all the odds after losing him, the Blades would have a strong second half of the season, finishing 3rd. In fact, in a televised game on a Monday night at Burnley, Beattie was spotted in the crowd cheering on his old team-mates. Once a Blade, always a Blade. Furthermore, a lacklustre performance in the play-off final a few weeks later against the same opponents showed how much Sheffield United could have done with his presence, in a game where his on-loan replacement and namesake Craig Beattie failed to make his mark.

Beatts then fell out of favour at Stoke, whilst moving north to Rangers, spending time on loan at Blackpool before arriving back at Bramall Lane to boost the Blades firepower as they sought to get out of League One at the first attempt. Personally, I was delighted to see Beattie return to the club in November last year, but I always sensed that he was never going to be the Beattie of four years previous. However, despite the old adage of ‘never go back’, and the fact he hasn’t made the impact he made in his first spell at the Lane, he will always be one of my Blades heroes.