'The supporters made it' - Sheffield United's four goal hero remembers thumping FA Cup win over Wrexham

“We were doing a radio interview up in the stands afterwards and I told him ‘This is the closest you’ve got to me all day’ before it got going,” Edwards tells The Star. “I thought I’d get that in then because he was one hell of a big lad and if he hadn’t hit me already then I reckoned he wasn’t going to do it now. To be fair to him, he took it really well. He took it the right way. It was just football banter.”

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Forty years after Ian Porterfield’s side thrashed their opponents from north Wales in the first round of the competition, the two clubs are preparing to meet again; this time at the fourth round stage. The last and indeed only clash between them saw the visitors record an emphatic victory over their hosts at the Racecourse Stadium. Time has faded Edwards’ memory of that contest, in November 1983. “Do you know what, I can’t actually remember any of my touches.” But one aspect of the game, other than Kevin Arnott’s “absolutely superb” effort after Phil Coleman had replied to the first of his amazing quartet, is still uppermost in Edwards’ mind.

“If you ask me to talk about that match, the one thing that really stands out is the fans. They’d come in their thousands and made such a racket. It seemed like they’d taken over the place and that was special to walk out into. Trust me, things like that made such a difference for us. They’ll do the same for players now. When you’ve got backing like that, okay so it can be a pressure when things aren’t going well, it makes you feel ten feet tall. I know it did for us that day. What a difference they made.”

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Edwards forged a special relationship with United’s supporters during his two spells at Bramall Lane, scoring 143 times in total with the majority of those finishes coming following his return to South Yorkshire, 36 months before Bobby Roberts’ men were dismantled 5-1.

“When you look back,” says Edwards, who also represented teams including Leeds, Hull City and Aberdeen, “The great thing about our lot back then was the chemistry. I genuinely think it helped us more than we realised at the time, especially in tough matches. And there were a few difficult moments in that game against Wrexham, because they came back into it.”

Edwards credits Porterfield, who passed away in 2007, with understanding how a group of seemingly disparate individuals, boasting a multitude of different interests, could be fused together to make a brutally efficient squad. It is a quality he recognises in United’s latest manager Paul Heckingbottom too, whose team will cross the border on Sunday second in the Championship table and 13 points clear of third after winning all but one of its last nine outings. The other, against Queens Park Rangers, ended in a draw.

“Ian was probably ahead of his time on that kind of thing,” Edwards insists. “Everyone looks at personality now, they study it before bringing people in. Back then, probably less so. But Ian clearly knew how stuff like that worked.”

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“We had Ray McHale, what a lovely guy, who was always the one who wanted to keep things going and ready to do everyone a good turn,” he continues. “I was more of a moaner, I don’t mind admitting that. Then there was Steve Charles, who later went to Wrexham I remember, and he was just really intelligent. I used to joke that I never knew what to say to him. I wanted to chat about horse racing and he was a university graduate with degrees. It was difficult enough to begin with, because when we went on runs, he was always 200 yards in front of me. But everyone got on. To be in that dressing room, you had to have something about you. Not be the same as everyone else. But have a personality.”

Despite their difference in status - Wrexham currently top the National League - Edwards suspects United will have to show character again in order to progress beyond opponents managed by former Bradford City chief Phil Parkinson and owned by Hollywood actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney.

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“The challenge is that Wrexham, and we used to find this in similar situations, will play 25 percent better than usual,” Edwards says, noting they beat United’s Championship rivals Coventry City in the previous round. “I think our lads will go through but it might be harder than people think, because Wrexham have nothing to lose. Both teams are used to winning but Wrexham, you can imagine, will be playing above themselves.”

Reynolds and McElhenney, whose presence has helped attract the television cameras to Wrexham’s ground, were probably hoping to be paired against the likes of Arsenal, Chelsea or Liverpool when the draw was made. But, returning to the subject of United’s following, Edwards believes the duo will quickly realise they were handed a plum tie.

“I never realised how powerful a fan base can be until I came to United,” he admits. “They’ll be going over there in their thousands and, although the two guys in charge there might not know English football yet like the rest of us do, they’ll be sat there looking at our fans, listening to the noise they make, and understand they couldn’t have got any better. I genuinely mean that.”

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