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Owls win, young fans thrilled and Tony delivers goal promise: MATCH REPORT AND SLIDESHOW
SHEFFIELD WEDNESDAY 3 v NORWICH CITY 2: WEDNESDAY gave the kids a treat on Saturday and maybe made them hungry for more.
Five goals and an ultimately enjoyable match can only have helped the club's quest to hook the fans of the future.
Youngsters taken along on 1 special-offer tickets may well want to come again.
In a time of declining attendances, not just at Hillsborough but at many other Championship clubs, those who gave Christmas shopping a miss and braved the cold to watch their team were rewarded with rich entertainment, mums and dads included.
That is the overall verdict, for the Owls did not get it right in the first half, but the fluctuating nature of the match and the part played in it by a positive Norwich team if anything made the contest more enthralling.
It was the sort of game that irritates the professionals. Boss Brian Laws was annoyed by his team's first-half performance, was glad to come through some tense moments, and when asked afterwards if he wanted some of the press-room food joked: "I want some heart tablets!"
Glenn Roeder called his team's first-half show "brilliant" and could not understand why they failed to absorb a half- time-warning from him.
"One of the last things I said to my players before they went back out was that Brian Laws would have given them (Wednesday) a hell of a telling-off; they were that poor in the first half.
"I said that in the first 10 or 15 minutes of the second half, whatever tempo they started at we would have to match. We didn't."
The Norwich boss was spot-on with his warning.
The Owls surged towards the Kop end with a raised tempo and it was just the start of a thrilling second half.
Laws boldly took some of the responsibility for the first-half inconsistency. He knew that the Canaries would field a 4-4-1-1 system, with Wes Hoolahan playing behind the frontman, Leroy Lita.
"Maybe I emphasised too much to our players to watch out for Hoolahan," said the Owls manager. "We sat too deep , and their midfield players had too much room to get on the ball and spray it around. In the second half, we left him alone."
In coming back from 1-0, and recovering their poise after being pegged back to 2-2, Wednesday showed the same tenacity that made them the Championship's comeback kings last season.
There was some exciting football from them as well.
They found too little penetration in an end-to-end first half, in which their only half-chances were a long-range header by Francis Jeffers and a mis-hit shot by Etienne Esajas.
Lee Grant kept them level with a typical save, from a 25-yard shot by Matty Pattison, but, in the incident that led to Norwich's penalty, perhaps the keeper could have pushed Lita's shot wide rather than out to Hoolahan, who was brought down by Marcus Tudgay. It was a 43rd-minute jolt.
Laws, who last week signed his new contract, joked: "At half-time, I though 'what have I done?' The second half showed me it was worthwhile."
He replaced the usually influential Steve Watson with sub Sean McAllister, who had been left out of the league 11 for the first time this season, and said he could have made a few more half-time changes.
"I felt we needed more energy in midfield; we stepped up 10 yards because of that energy that Sean gave us," said Laws.
He said that Esajas gave "probably the worst performance I've seen from an individual in the first half, and a positive reaction in the second half".
Wednesday's resurgence brought two goals in the space of four minutes and transformed the game.
Esajas, who had got his start because Jermaine Johnson is out for possibly two or three weeks with a knee injury, forced a great save by David Marshall and made the equaliser with a corner of the same precision that had created Deon Burton's goal at Blackpool.
Tony McMahon will never score an easier one that this, his first in the league.
Laws had not taken it seriously when the loan full-back had told him in training on Friday that he would score on his farewell appearance before going back to Middlesbrough.
McMahon confirmed: "I said I fancied a goal. With my last kick on the training ground a hit a free-kick into the top corner. The goal wasn't the one I'd dreamed about, it was a header from two yards, but I'll take it!"
The second goal was all about Leon Clarke. The striker, who was involved in Wednesday's best move of the first half, which ended with that Jeffers header, received the ball from a forward header by James O'Connor and played a one-two with Tudgay, then knocked the ball forward with his shoulder before firing sweetly into the bottom corner - his fourth goal in nine games,
Norwich's well-taken equaliser from Lita did not shake the Owls and they kept up their poise and drive to make it 3-2 with Tudgay diving to head home a cross from Lewis Buxton.
Clarke was a handful for the Norwich defence at times and would have been clean through the middle had he not been the subject of a professional foul by John Kennedy for which the centre-half was rightly sent off, leaving Wednesday to increase their dominance for the last nine minutes or so.
Clarke, who had earlier set up a Buxton drive that was well saved, created a half-chance for Esajas and near the end brought a splendid save from Marshall after sub Bartosz Slusarski showed vision and precision in picking him out.
The fans went home happy.
CLICK ON GREEN PLAY BUTTON ABOVE FOR MATCH PICTURES
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Weather for Sheffield
Saturday 26 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: East
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Temperature: 11 C to 21 C
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