Remembering Sheffield Wednesday’s last European adventure… in Rotherham

David Pleat had just come in as the new manager at Hillsborough, and the South Stand was in the process of being renovated ahead of the 1996 European Championships so it was Rotherham United’s Millmoor that holds the honour of having hosted Wednesday’s last UEFA game of any kind up until now.

Hillsborough went on to host three games at Euro 96 (all involving Denmark, funnily enough), and while the 1995/96 wasn’t exactly a great campaign for the Owls, at least they went into it on a high as they walked away from Millmoor with a 3-1 win in a game that had debuts, goals, a red card and apparently plenty of photographs with Chris Waddle.

Mark Bright, who’d finished the previous season as top scorer, continued his form with a strong season going into the Intertoto Cup – which was basically a massive summer tournament with 60 teams in it, two of whom would go on to clinch a place in that year’s UEFA Cup.

Pleat’s side didn’t make it that far – they last played in the UEFA Cup in 1992 – but they manage to pick up a 3-1 win over Górnik Zabrze of Poland in-between a defeat to Switzerland’s Basel and a draw against German side, Karlsruhe, before ending with victory over AGF.

Bright scored four of the Owls’ seven goals, and he says that in the last game he knew they’d won when he saw the opponents itching for snaps with star player, Waddle.

Speaking to The Star, ‘Brighty’ said, “I think they were the team who all wanted to take photos with Chris Waddle before the match… When I saw that, I knew we'd win.

“It was the first time my new girlfriend, Michelle Gayle, had come to watch me play, and I think I was trying too hard to score a hat-trick and got involved in some nonsense with a couple of their players!

“I remember driving back to London thinking I've got a European ban, not sure the next time I'd be involved in a European cup tie would be.”

The striker also remembered the away game in Germany where ‘we got battered but drew 1-1’ as he cancelled out an opener from Bilić prior to Karlsruhe winning the group and going all the way to the semifinals.

Another player who remembers that game in Rotherham was new signing, Mark Pembridge, who had been snapped up for just under £1,000,000 from Derby County, and ended up making his debut in the famous blue and white shirt in a midfield in front of the likes of Dan Petrescu (who also scored), Des Walker and Peter Atherton.

“It was my first game,” the Welshman recalls to The Star. “I remember it being nice and warm, and I remember Rotherham’s pitch being on a bit of a slope, it was the first time I’d played there! It’s not like Rotherham now, their playing surface is fantastic!

“David Pleat had just taken over, and I signed halfway through the Intertoto Cup, so I didn’t play much. It was a good competition, it was a more competitive preseason. We felt that it had a bit more to it because of being able to qualify for the UEFA Cup.

“They were halfway through their season and we were only just getting our match fitness together. You get there (to Wednesday) and you see all the players who had established themselves and helped Wednesday get to those two cup finals a couple of years before. They were established Premier League players. That was amazing.”

Pembridge – who is now a youth coach at Fulham – came into his own the following season though, going on to score seven goals in all competitions as the Owls narrowly missed out on a place in the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup and another continental adventure, but what was his favourite Wednesday memory?

“It was probably the season afterwards,” he says. “When we won four games in a row at the start of it and were top of the league. They were tough games too, we did Aston Villa who finished fourth, then we did midweek away at Leeds United in a local derby and then played Newcastle United away.”

Wednesday went on to finish 15th in Pleat and Pembridge’s first season at Hillsborough, two points clear of relegation into the then First Division, and then a 1-1 draw at Liverpool on the final day of the campaign that followed meant that nearly reaching that Cup Winners Cup that year was the closest the club has gotten to European football since Bright and Petrescu led them to three points on that afternoon in S60.

The Intertoto Cup was eventually disbanded in 2009 as UEFA decided to streamline their tournaments into the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League, with Fulham being the last English team to reach the finals as they qualified for the 2002/03 UEFA Cup.

Bright never did serve his European ban given the fact that Wednesday, nor Millwall or Charlton Athletic, reached a UEFA tournament throughout the remainder of his career, so if he fancies coming out of retirement for a Champions League or Europa League debut, then he’d better be prepared to sit the first one out.

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