The honourable, painstaking pride in Sheffield Wednesday's Charge of the Blue and White Brigade
Third bottom. One win in their eight league matches. Concessions of late goals to drop points. All a sideshow. This Sheffield Wednesday side is one its supporters can be proud of, writes Alex Miller.
It was when the ageing skipper threw himself into a third tackle inside a minute or so. It was when the teenage upstart launched his fists towards the crowd in salute of yet another block. It was when the bone-weary vice-captain grimaced and dragged his body to put pressure on the goalkeeper in the final minutes. It was the desperate last-ditch tackle, the euphoric goal celebrations and the way they fell to their knees at full-time with the exhaustion of a year-old battery.
There’s a feeling of military movie title solidarity to the whole thing, all back slaps and the dragging of comrades through draining conditions, one player shaking another awake just as the eyes begin to draw heavy. Arriving at Birmingham City on Tuesday evening; wallets unrefreshed, minds and bodies tired after a classically rapid Championship turnaround, the fact is that Wednesday did not necessarily expect that every man would do his duty. The fact is that in the coldest and muddiest of trenches they continued to do so.
It’s a communal effort and one of struggle. To single any individual out in a squadron such as Wednesday’s seems unfair but a word on Barry Bannan, who is playing some of his best-ever football in the early weeks of a campaign that could have seen him swan off to spend the final years of his career living in a cosy cottage in Yarm, top of the table on significantly more cash. He chose instead to pick up any weapon he could find and fight.
Alfred Lord Tennyson’s 19th-century poem The Charge of the Light Brigade immortalises the efforts of 600 soldiers who charged towards gunfire at the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War. They rode into desperate and unconquerable circumstances, surrounded by cannon fire, ‘volleyed and thundered, stormed at with shot and shell.’ They did so with great heart and belief in their cause - but had been set on that path due to blunderous incompetence by those entrusted to oversee proceedings from on high. Theirs was a great and tragic loss.
For commander-in-chief Lord Raglan, read Dejphon Chansiri. Through these early stages of this season, skipper Bannan and manager Henrik Pedersen are leading their Charge of the Blue and White Brigade, leading their troops into the gunfire of the Championship season outgunned and outmanned but with an honour unquestioned. The suspicion continues that the current situation will not prove sustainable in terms of extending the battle through to the end of the campaign, but with every passing match these Owls continue to buck the odds and show a fighting spirit few would have though possible.
Pedersen spoke after the game at St Andrews to express mixed feelings, on a disappointment around their late concession but ultimately an enormous pride in how his side has constantly refused to take the easy road on the club’s current malaise. It’s something he didn’t really have to commit to a press conference having spent time racing from player to player on-field in the moments after the final whistle. He spoke with a look of exhaustion. It mirrored the effort of his players.
The post-match scene at pitch level reflected a scene from Saving Private Ryan; bodies strewn everywhere, faces ashen and weary from the blitz of battle. This is a battalion in-tune with its supporters, fighting tooth and nail for any advantage possible. For all the disappointment and all the frustration and all the bitterness of late payments and anguish for the men and women placed in dire off-field situations, at the heart of the struggle is a football team leading its community with honour.
“When can their glory fade? O the wild charge they made! All the world wondered,” reads Tennyson’s poem. Wherever this sorry Chansiri mess ends up, whatever the depths of the season ahead, there’s something not to be forgotten about how these opening weeks of the campaign have been carried out. It’s a beautiful and somehow tragic display of human spirit.