From Bramall Lane to Brooklyn

A big Blade moves to the Big Apple and finds joy in a small – but growing – United community

Alex Fowler

What makes Sheffield United Sheffield United?

Bramall Lane?
Sheffield?
A certain type of manager?
A style of play?
Continued excellence in dealing out heartbreak?

We are entering a new era of Sheffield United, uncharted waters where, for the first time, we don’t have iconic managers or talismanic players as easy avatars for the club’s identity. We are a club that is sometimes wary of change or new directions. In a global game where talent and innovation come increasingly from all corners of the world we have had, until the recent appointment of Rubén Sellés, three times as many managers called ‘Nigel’ as foreign managers in our history. Now we are at a crossroads, with questions of the club’s identity and what that means for us as fans troubling red and white brows.

To me, the Sheffield United identity was tied up with place as much as what was on the pitch. Like many others, I’ve three generations of family etched on bricks in obscure crevices of the ground, fandom passed down like an inherited heart condition. So when I left the UK for New York, swirling around my head alongside arguably more important questions such as ‘how do I find a place to live?’ and ‘how the hell does American health insurance work?’ was ‘what does being a United fan mean now I’ve never been further from Bramall Lane?’

Promotion joy was experienced alone. As was the subsequent agony of the Premier League. There was a certain irony in being able to watch more games in the US than back home due to the lack of a 3pm blackout, just for the pleasure of watching the sixth, seventh and eighth Newcastle goals fly in. The time difference means you then had the whole day to rewind and replay Wes picking the ball out of his net again and again – Groundhog Day’s Bill Murray in a pair of Sondicos. When my American partner asked the reason for my sour mood, I was informed an acceptable answer wasn’t ‘Bénie Traoré’.

In New York, there is a thriving football fan community – just not for us. The five boroughs are dotted with plentiful Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester United bars; an Everton bar; even a QPR bar. I watched us lose in all of them, settling for the afterglow of second-hand glory, tagging to other bar patrons the successes of Maguire, Calvert-Lewin and Ndiaye with paper-thin reminders of their Blades heritage.

Then something strange happened. On a hot summer Sunday between seasons, the time of summer when every other team on every other continent had begun their transfer business and we were still months away, I walked out of the house in an old United shirt. As I crossed the road a man shouted in my direction, continuing as he hurried up to me in the middle of a not un-busy road. Being accosted by strangers in New York is not rare and is not a sign you are in for a good time. However, this time in preparing myself to deflect, ignore, and hurry away something caught my attention – “Wow, this nutter has a broad Yorkshire accent” I thought to myself.

Unbeknownst to me, I had not been the only one in red and white in the land of red, white and blue; as it turned out, not even the only one on my street. Finding another United fan yards from my door felt miraculous, an apology from the footballing universe for all the last-minute defeats over the years. What’s more, there weren’t only two of us. Through my new pal’s spreading of his fandom to his daughter’s friends and their parents, there is now a burgeoning Brooklyn Blades community – over 10 strong. Sure, it is entirely contained to New York Public School 107, but a community is a community.

Since then, groups of us have crammed into an apartment for 7am kick offs every week, and you’ll be surprised how similar a ray-of-sunshine American nine-year-old and a weather-beaten woodbine-singed veteran of the Kop can be, as Robinson whiffs a clearance to leave an opponent bearing down on goal.

This community ushered in a new era of my United fandom. Brooklyn is about 4,000 miles from Bramall Lane, but suddenly it feels an awful lot closer, bagels becoming butties for 90 minutes. You could argue, quite fairly, that it is mad to say having someone to reminisce with about Wayne Allison’s unerring ability to score via his arse is as important to my settling into a new country as housing and employment, but football is mad – so here we are.

What we once thought as constants and truths about United and how we support them might change, but there will always be a fundamental essence that remains, accumulated from our unique recipe of highs and lows and then carried by the fans, the ground, the stripes. What used to be a squad of ageing Irish players might now be a squad of pre-pubescent Bulgarian players, and my panic-sipping of beers mid-game has become chaining coffees at a rate worse for my heart than the play-offs, but throughout these unexpected evolutions, United remains. The players will always play, the Kop will always sing, and we’ll always lose at Wembley.

In you find yourself in NYC during the season and want to join some Brooklyn Blades for a game, contact Alex at bladesinbrooklyn@gmail.com