Hotels, Jack Charlton and Hark Now Hear: Ian Mellor on Sheffield Wednesday's Boxing Day Massacre of Sheffield United

It’s a chant that bounces from the Kop to the North Stand at Hillsborough twice or three times a game, depending on the mood of the place. On away days, there’s rarely a song aired more often.

Mellor, now 71, scored the first goal of the Boxing Day Massacre – a 4-0 win over Sheffield United that sparked their first promotion in over 20 years – an event that four decades on the Wednesday faithful so passionately regale.

“It’s strange to me, considering it’s 40 plus years ago, but it remains such a strong feeling among Wednesday supporters,” Mellor told The Star this week in his soft Mancunian accent. “It’s flattering but crazy!

“It had been such a long time since it had been a derby, it was Boxing Day with a full house and that sort of thing hadn’t happened for a long time. It was such a big day for Wednesdayites and it’s nice they’ve clung onto it. At that time there had been very few happy times since the 60s I suppose.

“The atmosphere was electric. It’s something that was quite special.”

Mellor’s bending 25-yard effort got the Owls underway before Terry Curran bounced into action, scoring a neat diving header before setting up Jeff King and winning the penalty Mark Smith netted late on to send Wednesdayites into pandemonium.

“I get a nice feeling whenever I hear them sing that song,” Mellor said. “And I tell you what, it has to be better than that bloody Terry Curran song!

“It’s a great feeling. You’re only remembered so many years on if you’re a good player and luckily for me I scored a good goal in such an important game.

“That’s not that I was a great player. Terry was the best player I ever saw at that level, by the way. At that level there was no one to touch him.”

With his son Simon in the crowd at five years old – younger lad Neil, later a Wednesday top scorer, was yet to be born – the Boxing Day match remains a fondly-held memory for the man they call Spider.

But it was the call of their enigmatic manager Jack Charlton to take players away from their families on Christmas Day that Mellor remembers as the start of a military operation heading into the match itself.

While there were no frills to Big Jack’s pre-match team talk, he said, there was always a sense that this – the first Steel City Derby for over eight years – was a big one.

“We were in a hotel the day before, on Christmas Day,” he said. “We had family time at home during the day and then had to report to a hotel for the evening.

“I don’t really remember us being taken to a hotel the night before a home match before.

“Jack was an eccentric. All the stories you hear are true. He was a strange character at times, but that was the right thing to do. It was about staying with the family and having a drink, but not too much if anything. Then down to business.

“We were a good footballing side. They were top of the league, we were third or fourth and they plummeted in the end, with Sabella in the team and everything. It was crazy.”

After a fine save from goalkeeper Bob Bolder kept the match goalless, both sides trading chances on a cut-up Hillsborough pitch before Mellor’s 35th-minute intervention in front of a roofless Kop.

As goals to break the deadlock in tight derbies go, it wasn’t a bad one.

“I was only halfway in my own half when I started running with the ball,” he remembered with a faint quiver of pride in his voice.

“I only found out later that their manager in the teamtalk had told them to push me inside because I had no right foot. I was galloping into their half and all I could hear was their players shouting to send me inside.

“So I came inside.”

The rest, as they say, is history.

“While it was a bit of a wild swing, I always connected pretty well with my right foot,” he said. “It was one of those days. I hit it and it could have gone anywhere, but it happened to go in the tightest of spaces to go in. It was a fabulous feeling.

“Another time it could have sailed over the bar, gone wide, the keeper could have saved it and we probably wouldn’t be talking now. It’s just one of those things.”

As it happened, Wednesday went on to finish third that season to achieve promotion to the second tier and lay the foundations for some of the greatest generations of football ever enjoyed at Sheffield Wednesday.

United, on the other hand, collapsed a touch and finished 12th. They were relegated to the Fourth Division the season after.

“I’ve been back to Hillsborough a number of times and talking to fans it’s the first thing they want to talk about,” he said.

“A couple of times I’ve been there with Neil and they don’t want to talk to Neil, they want to talk to me! And Neil is more their era!

“There’ll be fans singing that song in 20 years time that might not even know what it’s about. But everyone does, of course.”