Loneliness, empty seats and a popular chippy: A year in lockdown with Sheffield Wednesday

Ask any Sheffield Wednesday supporter missing the clicking of turnstiles at Hillsborough and they’ll tell you as much. The ground-out wins, the last-minute winners – of which there have admittedly been few since the last audience at S6 384 days ago – are a mere centrepiece for everything around it.

It’s the beers, the laughs, the rituals. It’s the coach trips, the faces of those that sit in the seats around you, the bite of the South Yorkshire breeze through the terraces.

And for many, it’s the fish and chip supper they wolf down as the minutes tick towards kick-off.

“We’ve seen it all in here,” said Jimmy Flynn, who runs Four Lanes chippy, just a stone’s throw from the Leppings Lane end at Hillsborough, with his partner Joanne Dennell.

“We’ve seen good times, the playoffs and what have you and we’ve had bad times. We’ve had disputes in the shop around who should be manager, about players.

"We have fans come in from all over. There’s fans from Gibraltar that come in once a month and call in for their meal, we have older people, younger people. A lot of them send us Christmas cards.

“Away supporters make a point of coming in, we’ve had Charlton Athletic fans come in every time their here because they don’t get gravy down south!

“It’s a really good little community we have. We so look forward to matchdays and it’s been so sad when there has been a match on, all the lights on at Hillsborough and nobody around.”

A study carried out in the lead-up to this first anniversary of lockdown has put the cost to the UK economy at an eye-watering £251 billion.

Indeed, the club itself has faced huge difficulties, its widely-reported cashflow issues in recent months caused by the disappearance of matchday revenue nobody could have forecast.

But in many cases it has been smaller public-facing businesses such as Jimmy’s that has taken the biggest body blow.

Sadly, several businesses close to Hillsborough have taken the difficult decision to call it a day altogether amid the shock withdrawal of football footfall. Gladly, so many more hve kept battling on.

In August The Star spoke to Kev and Steph Woods, landlords at the iconic New Barrack Tavern pub, a favourite of Wednesday fans just a 10-minute walk from the ground. Back then they were hopeful of the staged return of fans in October, a pilot that came and went to the heartache of thousands.

Seven months and two national lockdowns later, their wait goes on.

The Woods described a similar struggle, of a business set up to survive on the blue and white pound. Without these businesses, the experience of football for many is reduced to the fortunes of those on the field. In good times and bad, football is a social beast that relies on everything set up around it.

“It’s tougher for the pubs, they’ve had to close completely and while we’ve taken a hit on the matchday stuff,” Jimmy said. “We’ve still got a degree of normality with our everyday customers.

“But it’s around 50 per cent of our takings, matchdays. That was one of the major attractions in terms of why we took the shop in the first place.

“We’ve got a really good bunch of supporters, really loyal. We only do three days a week, because with matchdays to fall back on, it was enough. We’ve got two kids and we try to strike that balance. But it’s been a struggle.

“Over the years we’ve got to know all the staff, all the security staff come in. Then bang, out of nowhere, it’s all gone.”

Though mental health studies on the wide-reaching effects of the pandemic are an ongoing mission, there is no doubt that the removal of football from people’s lives has had an impact on thousands.

A report by the Samaritans this week suggested that over one in four of the UK’s adult population have had feelings of loneliness during the pandemic, rising to 26 per cent last month from 10 per cent at the outset of the pandemic in March 2020.

A day out at Sheffield Wednesday is for many the only source of social interaction they get.

“This missus has had days where she’s been crying,” said Jimmy, describing a common tale. “You have days where it just hits you, you can’t escape it because of the news and what have you, but the fact is we miss the customers. You have those relationships.

“Of course you worry when you lose such a big chunk of your takings. You sit back and think about the finance on your car, the kids and stuff. You’re ticking over nicely and the net minute, from nowhere, your life is turned upside down. It’s been really tough.

“We’ve had to take a bounceback loan out and it’s just a case of getting on with it, that’s all you can do.

“The fact is that aside from the money, we all miss the banter and the fun we have with customers."

It’s a similar story for those close to Bramall Lane and football stadiums across the country.

As it stands, those turnstiles will click open once more in August and time is ticking down once more for Sheffield Wednesday, the Four Lanes chippy and the other matchday-reliant businesses in S6.

God willing, Kev and Steph, Jimmy and Joanne and dozens of others will be there to take your order. They’ve missed you in every conceivable way. Whatever happens to Sheffield Wednesday over the next couple of months, roll on August.

We’ll have been through worse.

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