Back when Forge was known as Steel Press, Journalism Studies student Dan Walker contributed to the sport section of the newspaper. In the 25 years that have passed, he has become a nationally recognised journalist and television presenter, featuring on Football Focus, BBC Breakfast and 5 News. We uncovered one of his features about the university’s football team in our archives:
Sheffield University Men’s Football Club is one of the largest and most successful sports clubs in the university with well over 100 members.
It also boasts some of the best training facilities and pitches in the north east, maybe even the country. The club was established way back in the mists of time (1970) when corduroy flares and industrial sideburns were all the rage. Dave Westwood, second team legend, is the club’s personal testimony to that bygone era. In our inaugural year both the first and second team leagues were claimed and since then the leagues have been won by ten Sheffield teams, the most recent success coming in 1995/96 for the third team.
Ever since those select men sat down, pulled the biro from the stone and filled out the sports club application form, the relationship with the union has been rosy. El Presidente and former Minister for Sport, Adam Matthews, is a big fan and two football club members, Matt Field and Simon Fletcher, hold positions on Sarah Cameron’s Sports Committee. For the last few years the football club has been dedicated to not only success on the field but also a maintenance of that relationship with the university and other sports clubs.
This year’s committee, headed by club captain Ciaran Murray, and supported by the likes of Matt Field, Jamie Thompson, Andy Campbell, Christian King and the Safety Officer Dave Harker, are hoping to foster the club’s growing reputation for good football and fill the trophy cabinet.
If you were to ask anyone at the club what really makes the difference then they would tell you it was the coaches. Sheffield University is aided in its quest for stardom by the finest England has to offer, and is the only university in the country which employs four coaches. First team gurus Peter Cooper and Julie Callaghan between them coach Nottingham Forest under-14s, Nortion Ladies, Sheffield City Council, and teach children at a leisure centre in Rotherham. The man the second team call ‘senses’, Neil Pearson, teaches at Mylnhurst Primary School while Nick Marshall of third team fame is the head of the School of Excellence at Nottingham Forest. The fourth team Field Marshall, Andy Lewis, is football crazy and works as a sales representative for a reputable electrical wholesaler.
Neil Pearson has been at the club for six years now and is still impressed by the ‘style and quality of play on match days’. The club’s emphasis on ‘pure’ football rather than the ‘get stuck in’ or ‘kick and chase’ methodology would appear to be paying off with the vast majority of opposing forces being swept aside.
If Danny Blanchflower is right and the game is about ‘doing things in style’, then Sheffield University Football Club is on the right track. The combination of facilities, characters, committees and coaches is sure to guarantee the club’s present and future success.
