Chris Basham, the humble hero who should go down as one of Sheffield United's modern greats
Danny Hall’s tribute to Sheffield United stalwart Chris Basham after retirement decision confirmed, at 36
Earlier this year, in a summer of real change for Sheffield United, The Star carried a series of tributes to some of their departing modern-day legends. King of ping Ollie Norwood, whose signing from Brighton arguably took United to another gear. Long-serving George Baldock, whose levels of energy - and anger - never really seemed to subside.
The third, which was left unwritten for months, was for Christopher Paul Basham, a man whose 10-year association with Bramall Lane came to an end in the cruellest of circumstances. He deserved a chance to earn another deal, or at least say his goodbyes on the field - instead, the last image in a United shirt came at Fulham, where he was stretchered off with his badly-injured leg in a brace and his world suddenly turned upside down.
It was, in honesty, difficult to find the words. Both Norwood and Baldock were superb servants to Bramall Lane, brilliant players and great blokes too. But there was something about Basham - his longevity, his fightback from adversity, his complete sense of normality as a person - that set him apart. So it was left on the back burner.
Until today, and following Basham’s admission on Sky Sports over the weekend that his hopes of playing elite football had been ended by the injury. Privately, a fire had been lit inside him earlier this summer to get out there again, but his body may have overruled that. He has time to spend with his wife and kids, precious family time that has been in short supply while he has been up and down the country, and up and down the right wing, in recent years for United.
Instead he has diverged into other areas and it was great to bump into the big man away at Preston earlier this season, where he was on duty with BBC Radio Sheffield. He attacked that role with all the gusto and determination he has attacked everything else in his life, from working in McDonalds as a younger man to shining in the Premier League. If there was ever to be a man who would beat the odds stacked against him by his injury, it would have been Basham.
The decision to retire being taken out of his hands is cruel, and there have been some tough moments of soul-searching in recent months as he faces up to his new normal. But he now looks at it a completely different way; what happened to him at 35 years of age - he’s now 36 - could easily have happened to him at 19 or 20. It has happened to many. He has lived the dream; and it’s better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.
And how he is loved. You would struggle to find a teammate who has a bad word to say about him, anyone who has crossed his path and remembers anything other than the good. A former colleague of mine remembers chatting to him on pre-season in Portugal, where a couple of workers at the resort took the chance of a free pitch to have a kickabout.
He was the jack-of-all-trades who became a master of a position so unique that it was named after him; the Basham role, marauding forwards and causing defences in League One, the Championship and eventually the Premier League all kinds of problems.
United’s players, taking a break from the boiling sun, were watching them and having a laugh at the number of touches it took to get the ball under control. One of them took three or four. Basham, never one to take himself too seriously, turned and said: “Aye, that’s not bad you know.”
He was the jack-of-all-trades who became a master of a position so unique that it was named after him; the Basham role, marauding forwards and causing defences in League One, the Championship and eventually the Premier League all kinds of problems. You suspect that some of the time even he didn’t know what was coming next with the ball at his feet, so what chance did the opposition have?
I always remember joking with him about his most iconic moment, that goal away at Leeds, which came after a truly horrendous display in the first half. He admits that himself. It was, head of media Kevin Cookson joked when handing him the award, the first slide tackle to ever win the Blades’ goal of the season. The man nicknamed ‘The Geordie Dancer’ had saved his best move for one of the most important stages of all.
Basham was, to me, a man who walked with kings but never lost the common touch; an ordinary bloke with an extraordinary gift which he maximised to the full, and then some. He would never profess to be the most skilful player in the world, even in the United squad, but his technical ability was probably still underrated by some. Remember the 360-degree pirouette on the wing against Southampton, or the Cryuff turn at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium that manager Chris Wilder still talks about now, many years on?
To his immense credit he never ducked an interview and was often the player wheeled out by the club’s media staff when, to be kind, things weren’t exactly going as planned. He fronted up after United were relegated from the top-flight in 2021, a nightmare season which saw most of the games played behind closed doors. “Aye, mate,” he agreed, when most would have politely - or not so politely - declined. “It might be my last one in the Premier League.”
It wasn’t, and that was the measure of the man. One who kept bouncing back, until the one hurdle he couldn’t overcome. Good luck in the next chapter, Bash. A legend at the Lane? He’d be far too humble to admit it, but it’s surely beyond doubt. “Aye, mate.”