How Sheffield Wednesday and Stoke City ended Euro trips in slow chaos with Owls plan unmoved
Sheffield Wednesday are back in the UK after a fruitful European training camp - but their trip didn’t end as smoothly as they’d have liked.
The pre-season training camps of Sheffield Wednesday and Stoke City ended in a long and tiresome wait at Vienna airport after a technical fault saw their journeys home delayed by a whopping 15 hours.
The two clubs had faced-off in a behind-closed-doors friendly run-out at the OFB Campus on the outskirts of the city on Saturday afternoon. The Potters won-out the 140-minute exercise, with the Owls’ inexperienced second string side well overcome by the Championship outfit after some encouraging signs in the first 70 minutes from what looked a lot like Wednesday’s first-choice line-up.
Both squads and club staff were scheduled to fly home at 10:35 on Sunday morning. With flyers checked-in through boarding and taxi’d to the aircraft for a timely departure, crew spotted a dent in the left wing of the Ryanair plane and on closer inspection found there to have been a bird strike on its earlier journey, prompting concerns over engine safety.
The two travelling clubs and other passengers, including The Star, were then returned to the airport terminal to be told after a wait that their new departure time would be 3pm. With adequate communication to passengers limited throughout, this was later delayed to 5pm, 20:50 and then finally 00:50. To further raise the confusion, some online flight tracking services had suggested the flight would be cancelled and moved to the next morning.
The airline were eventually able to deliver a different plane and crew from Faro and the journey eventually took off sometime around 1:37am, landing at 2:57am UK time and bringing the total delay to a touch under 15 frustrating hours.
Both clubs combated the wait by checking their cohorts into a plush airport lounge, with thanks going to Wednesday for including The Star in their booking. Amid limited and sometimes confused communication from the airline and authorities, conversations were had over alternative plans to get back to the UK, with some level of collaboration having taken place between Wednesday and Stoke. Ultimately both parties travelled on the heavily delayed flight and spirits were kept relatively high throughout given the circumstances.
The Potters will no doubt see their preparation for a friendly with Everton on Tuesday evening thrown into some level of disruption by the delay. The Owls were not scheduled to train on Monday regardless and will not see their pre-season programme disrupted. A ‘Wednesday XI’ friendly at Buxton FC tomorrow is understood to have been cancelled but the reasoning is not believed to be linked to the Owls’ delay in getting back from Europe.
Henrik Pedersen’s Owls enjoyed a successful training camp at the Hungarian national football facility on the outskirts of Budapest before making the trip up to Vienna on Friday. Speaking to The Star after the Stoke run-out, the Dane expressed his satisfaction with what had been achieved in the week’s meticulously planned effort, which follows further work at St George’s Park and at Middlewood Road in recent weeks.
Wednesday will continue their pre-season programme with a week’s training at Middlewood before a double-header of friendlies over the Pennines this weekend. A split squad will take on Accrington Stanley on Saturday before a kick-off at Oldham Athletic later that afternoon.