Snapped back to reality by a bucket of hot gravy
Tuesday's greasy chip butty was the final bite of a marvellous FA Cup menu - now it's time for our National League marathon.
Wheelie bins, giant salmon and tantrums
Plonked on the concrete just a stone’s throw away from Sheffield train station is a peculiar sculpture: A 7ft-long salmon leaping high from a slab of stone up into the South Yorkshire sky.
You’d have thought a more obvious candidate for a statue on the City of Steel’s doorstep would be a figure of Sean Bean made out of recycled Yorkshire Tea bags, but local planners have opted for a colossal aquatic creature to welcome tourists into Sheffield instead.
The logic behind the fishy art, apparently, is to celebrate the return of salmon to nearby rivers. But perhaps it has a deeper meaning? Maybe this statue is telling visitors that Sheffield is so much more than just burl-eh blokes, missing vowels, and strong brews. Perhaps it’s the city’s way of saying: This place has the ability to surprise you.
Only a handful of the 4,700 Reds visiting Sheffield for our FA Cup fourth round sequel on Tuesday night had had the pleasure of popping across the Peak District for a game of footy starring Wrexham before (the last time we played at Bramall Lane was 1997), and even fewer had copies of the Sheff Utd 1990 BBC documentary series United gathering dust in the garage. So, in terms of expectations, all we had to go on was a vivid set of memories from the previous week.
What had we learned about Sheffield from the first instalment of our FA Cup franchise?
Well, we knew that the city’s third biggest team - with FC being the oldest and Wednesday the most successful - had a side that was still good enough to snatch late goals even when they looked dead and buried. We also knew they had some feisty folk following them, with a handful of Blades spotted tumbling out of a van on Mold Road after the game demanding a ding-dong. And we were certain that United’s players were itching to muller us on the pitch after playing second fiddle to the Hollywood Reds in BBC’s pre-match coverage with Ryan Reynolds at pitch-side.
We knew it was going to be tough. But still, the ray-finned creature swimming at the mouth of Sheffield’s ticket gates was a timely reminder that everything we already knew about our FA Cup opponents - or thought we knew - was just the tip of the iceberg.
This wasn’t just the home of pies and peas and Championship football. This was a city of surprises. Anything could happen here. Even a Wrexham upset.
Strictly speaking, of course, having to schlep across to Yorkshire in the first instance wasn’t exactly ideal. A frightening number of football matches are already taking place in February without an extra adrenaline-fuelled trophy tie being crammed into the schedule, and given how Notts County insist on pinching our seats at the head of the league table whenever we step out for a Cup break, this big game had potential to be something of a dangerous distraction.
Plus, we were knackered. As recently as Saturday tea time, we’d been up in Trafford watching the Reds non-league their way to a scrappy 2-1 win over Altrincham, where we also got to witness the World Wheelie Bin-Throwing Championships. But as fulfilling as it was to see a late win and a waste box being flung over the advertising boards for no discernible reason in classic National League fashion - it was impossible not to get giddy about the greasy chip butty of a fixture that had been plated up for us the following week.
So, off we went. Cameras in tow. And the thousands of Reds marching through the Yorkshire streets up to Bramall Lane kept reminding one another to enjoy the evening and worry about the league later. The odds of a Wrexham win were about as likely as the salmon statue coming to life and go soaring over Rotherham, but logic has no place in a world where Ryan Reynolds has been known to pop into Wrexham Butcher’s Market and browse the shelves at Mad4Movies.
Even when the lineups rolled out across social media - which featured a cast of supporting players who hadn’t featured in any of our Hollywood credits for months - we took off our sensible hats and willingly indulged in a double-dose of FA Cup fairy dust.
By the time kick-off arrived, we were all fantasising about another limb-wriggling win that would lead to Antonio Conte prowling the touchline at Y Cae Ras in the next round, gesturing wildly at Harry Kane to find a way past Ben Throwzer whilst Son Heung-min excitedly snapped photos of the dressing room he saw on Welcome to Wrexham so he could share them on Instagram.
And for a few minutes, this delusional fever dream was actually possible. A Pele Mullin penalty levelled the scores in front of an enraptured away end, and he was placing the ball on the very same spot for the second time with just twenty minutes left on the clock to make it 2-1.
But it was around this point the hallucinogens began to wear off. The penalty was saved. Max let one slip through his legs. United won it in stoppage time. And Wrexham were out.
If the sight of the scoreboard reading SHEFFIELD UNITED 3-1 WREXHAM didn’t jolt us back to waking life like being soaked with a bucket of hot gravy, then the high-pitched squeals of the Bramall Lane faithful and the tantrum of their star striker Billy Sharp - who emerged from the fixture less like a match-winner and more like a Yorkshire toddler sent to bed without his favourite ‘picky tea’ of smiley faces that he thinks look a bit like Phil Jagielka - definitely did.
Ultimately, our big trip to Sheffield didn’t serve up any surprises, in all honesty. United scored late again. Brew-supping locals garbled some incomprehensible ridicule at us on the way home again. And South Yorkshire’s red-and-whites finally became the centre of attention of this fixture after all - revelling in the fact that Ryan Reynolds was having his toughest night since the first set of reviews for Green Lantern flooded the internet.
What we feared when we were sober - before we saw that bloody fish statue and got all goofy on cup magic - is exactly what we got.
Maybe Sheffield’s Big Salmon doesn’t have any hidden meaning after all. Sometimes, a fish is just a fish.
Back to reality.