ON THE GRASS: training ground history

From The Ball Inn to Shirecliffe, DeadBat runs through the sprawling history of Sheffield United's training grounds.

The Pinch is one year old today. Thanks to every reader and writer for making this such a fun project to be a part of. 🙏

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Words: David Beeden

Walking the dog over Easter, I visited three sites where I had watched Sheffield United teams play football matches. It left me pondering United’s sprawling existence throughout Sheffield, occupying places and spaces where the first team would train and the youth team would play games.

In recent times, there have been discussions about the suitability of where the Blades currently train, from rumours of leaking roofs to players bathing in sinks. An upgrade on our Shirecliffe base appears inevitable. Improvements to the existing site were on the agenda after United last won promotion to the Premier League, but the new building that was planned never materialised due to relegation, Covid and financial troubles. United have new pitches with undersoil heating (when it is switched on) but remain in a state of limbo. To secure much-needed Category One academy status and better overall facilities for the first team, it seems certain that the club will have to move on from the site they have occupied since 2001 when Neil Warnock was first team manager. 

United at least do own the site they currently use, despite its limitations. That has not always been the case, which seems incredible for a major professional football club. 

Working from home - Bramall Lane, S2 4SU

Post-Second World War (and before), United trained on various surfaces around Bramall Lane. They used the old Sheaf House pitches for a period and also land near the old Arnold Laver Timber yard that was adjacent to Cherry Street. Of course, they trained on the pitch at the Lane too, although the use of this surface was restricted, especially with both a football team and cricket team using it. Historically, many football clubs would do this, which seems astonishing now. As well as the actual playing surface, United used the patch of land/grass that was at the back of the Kop. Having been a member of the Junior Blades in the late ’80s, I also played on this pitch. We used to get changed in the old changing rooms in the bowels of the John Street stand and walk around and up the Kop steps before going down to this ‘grassy’ area. As a Blades fan growing up, this was hugely exciting but the waterlogged or bobbly (depending on the time of year) area we toiled upon sapped the enthusiasm out of me! I think United still used this in the ’70s/’80s but more sparingly as they had long been established at another site not far from the Lane. They also used the now-demolished indoor gym/pitch at the top of the Cherry Street Car Park. Again, I was fortunate enough to play and train here as a young player. I recall it being very narrow but with a viewing area at the top near large netting which saw lots of balls get stuck. 

• Current Use: The back of the Kop is now a car park and used to house various media companies when we have games televised. 

Station Road, Woodhouse, S13 7QP

Outside of the Lane, United used a number of parks around Sheffield to train and did not have a permanent training ground post-War. They did use a field on Station Road in Woodhouse, opposite the old Brunswick pub, where the reserves also played. 

• Current Use: It seems to be used as the playing field for Brunswick Community Primary School

Ball Inn Ground (approx. 1957 – 1987), S2 3HR

It is over twenty years since the Blades moved to Firshill Crescent but that venue is not the one that United have spent the most time occupying. The Ball Inn Ground, high up on Heeley hill, was a recreation ground at the back of the old Ball Inn Public House. Affording superb views of Sheffield and the Lane below as you walked down Myrtle Road, this site is perhaps the most famous of all United’s old training grounds. As well as playing at Bramall Lane and Olive Grove, Wednesday actually played here between 1870 and 1877. 

It was also used by Sheffield United Cricket Club as well as the Sheffield Department for Education who held many cricket and football finals here. United settled here in the late 1950s, taking it from Tennent’s brewery on a thirty-year lease, which surprised me as I always thought it was council owned. We stayed here in some form right until the late ’80s. Many pictures of first team squads from the ’60s and ’70s are taken from the same vantage point at The Ball Inn ground; the city skyline clearly visible in the background from the windswept tundra. There is also a fantastic picture of Freddie Starr training with United at the Ball Inn Ground in a week he was booked to appear around Sheffield’s nightclubs. It certainly attracted the best and worst of the Sheffield weather due to its location. It had floodlights constructed around the late ’60s meaning night matches could be played up here too. 

I recall watching Northern Intermediate games at the ground in the late ’80s where a prolific young striker called Clive Mendonca was banging in the goals. In the same side were Chris Marsden and Peter Duffield. I remember watching a youth team game on a Saturday morning around 1988 with my Dad and then strolling down the hill to the Lane for a first team game that afternoon in Dave Bassett’s first season as manager. This is something I still occasionally do at Shirecliffe on a Saturday morning but now we have to traverse the city to see a ‘double header’ which is less convenient. Towards the end of our use here the likes of Dane Whitehouse, Mitch Ward and Richard Lucas were playing in the youth side. I think United might have stopped training there around the mid 1980s and recall stories of vandalism and theft in the changing rooms.

An excellent video from Matthew Bell – which shows a clip on Football Focus with players such as Peter Withe, Phil Thompson and John Burridge (aka the Dad’s Army side) training at the Ball Inn Ground.

Entrance to the old Ball Inn Ground

View of Bramall Lane from near the site of the old Ball Inn Ground – top of Myrtle Road

Heeley Common – the new houses occupy where most of the pitches would have been

Back of the now-derelict Ball Inn Pub

• Current Use: The site fell into a state of disrepair after United moved out but was still ‘pitches’ until the land was bought by a housing company. Today, with houses on it, you would struggle to know it was ever used as a sporting venue.

• The Ball Inn pub closed in 2012. It was set to be turned into apartments. However, it remains an empty shell and stands in a sorry state after an arson attack in February this year. It’s hard to comprehend that 50 years ago, the likes of Currie and Woodward honed their ball skills just a few yards away from here.

Warminster Road (approx. 1987 – 1996), S8 8PS

United moved around a fair bit towards the end of the 1980s, using a number of local schools and also Graves Park for a period. I believe they also spent a period training near Rowlinson School in Meadowhead, as I recall a friend saying they used to watch them train near their house. Another ground relatively high up and open to the elements, Warminster Road was United’s next ‘semi-permanent’ training area. Based in Norton Lees, it is again not too far from the Lane.

My first recollections of this site come from seeing it on BBC2 on a Friday night as we were treated to the first-team players carting goalposts onto the pitches. This was, of course, from the fantastic United! Series, which was shot around the time of our ’89/’90 promotion season. 

This was another venue United never owned, with the club once again renting. Warminster Road was the site we used most during Dave Bassett’s tenure at the Lane. The site had a rather dilapidated building which housed the first team changing area but did boast three fairly flat pitches at the top. Derek French and a few of the first team players, such as Paul Beesley, Brian Gayle and Chris Wilder, used to live nearby, which was handy! 

Since United moved out, it has been used for Saturday/Sunday football and was the home ground for Wilder’s Bradway around the turn of the millennium. Chesterfield’s first team trained there until fairly recently. I remember seeing Jack Lester pull into the car park when he was manager there as I jogged past one rainy winter day. The Youdan Trophy (a competition competed for by junior sides of famous international clubs) has been held there recently whilst links with United remain: our academy moved back to Warminster Road when work on the first team pitches at Shirecliffe was being carried out, and the first team were training on the academy pitches.

Current Use: The pitches and surrounding area are now in a much better state than they ever were when United used them! Now owned by the University of Sheffield, the pitches are mostly immaculate and there is a cricket and hockey pitch and other sporting facilities down at the bottom area of the ground. The changing rooms/clubhouse have been significantly upgraded in recent years. As well as being used by the University, it is also still used by Saturday/Sunday morning sides and is the host venue for the Sheffield Schools Cup finals, which is when I most recently visited to watch my own School play (and lose!)

Abbeydale (approx. 1996-2001), S7 2GA

Not long after United were relegated from the top flight in 1994, we moved to the Abbeydale training ground. Located on Springfield Avenue in the leafy Carterknowle area, the ground was approximately halfway between Abbeydale Road and Ecclesall Road. I assume the location was great for most of the playing squad, with many youth team players being housed between here and the Lane and a number of first-teamers residing in Dore. Once again, this was rented from Sheffield Council. I believe it was used by Saturday and Sunday league teams for a while, including Crookes FC (yes, I know it’s nowhere near there). 

Image by Matthew Bell

This area was never really suitable for a professional football club operating out of the second tier of English football. It had too few pitches and only a small grassed area to the left with a tiny (and I mean tiny) pavilion housing a changing room. It was barely bigger than a decent-sized shed. The car park was also lacking in space, and I recall, much like Warminster, the team had to be taken up here in a minibus from the Lane and would have to change/shower at the Lane. 

Howard Kendall, Nigel Spackman, Steve Thompson, Steve Bruce, Adrian Heath and then Neil Warnock were the managers over the period we were here. I remember going to watch United train here around the time of Heath and saw the likes of Ian Hamilton and Bobby Ford running about. It all looked a bit amateur (the training and the set-up). I also regularly watched the youth team play here on Saturday mornings when the likes of Tonge, Montgomery and Jagielka were 16-17 years of age and first coming through. All three seemed tidy players, but none looked set to go on and have the careers they had. 

The superb 2010 book Fit and Proper (written by Gary Armstrong and Matthew Bell) details the protracted negotiations and issues the Blades had with Sheffield Council over the site. The land was part of Abbeydale Grange School, and United’s new owner at the time, Mike McDonald, wanted to develop it further, but protesting residents and council tardiness meant delays. United had negotiated a 135-year lease and submitted a £3.25 million bid for National Lottery assistance in developing this ‘Community Sports Centre’ that United, the local school and local clubs could use. 

The Lottery funding was turned down but later in 1998, the Blades pressed ahead. The project was beset with issues – not least as the council threatened to evict United from the site as they claimed the club had not fulfilled its obligations to develop the site as a Regional Football Academy. United were furious and stated they would occupy the site on a 24-hour basis to prevent their removal if necessary! A back and forth ensued, but a council spokesman said:

“We accept that the club is saying that their interpretation of talks which led up to this is different to ours. We will have to agree to differ. Officers will now talk to the club about bringing the tenancy to a conclusion and we will try to do it amicably.”

Some local residents were pleased about the threat to evict the club and thwart any development, including an amusing complaint about some of the players’ bad habits when training up at Abbeydale.  Albert Needham said:

“I work on a few houses in Springfield Road. What upsets the old ladies round here is the language. You can hear them swearing from the garden. This is supposed to be a residential area!”

Director John Thurman’s response was maybe tongue in cheek as he replied to the concerns:

“I’m sure Neil Warnock would have had something to say about it. He’s very strong on discipline.”

The upgrade and the eviction never happened amidst protests and counterclaims both ways. Regardless, with academy football’s growth, the Blades needed a bigger, multi-purpose site anyway, with proper changing facilities and an indoor pitch. This site was used as a stop-gap, but we ended up here for over five years. It is remarkable to think international players like Brian Deane, Dean Saunders, Paul McGrath, Don Hutchison and Ian Rush would play up here

The pitch where the likes of Jagielka, Tonge and Montgomery used to play as juniors

The old changing rooms (now demolished) were located on this mound of grass at the top of the pitches

• Current Use: You can now walk through this area freely as it is a public park and still has two football pitches that are used by junior sides. Sadly, they haven’t been maintained particularly well. The small clubhouse/changing rooms have been demolished and the nearby tennis court is also in a state of disrepair. The area is now part of the newly-named ‘Carterknowle Park’, a grassed area which adjoins a modern housing development. Nearby is a newly-opened secondary School, Mercia, that has been operating for a few years. I believe they use part of this area for PE and sporting fixtures. It is still owned by the council.

Shirecliffe (2001 to present day), S7 4DR

After delays with the Abbeydale site, United paid £2 million to acquire the former Sheffield Forgemasters sports ground with the Timber Top pub adjacent to it. A director on the board called Alan Bamford of the Henry Boot construction company helped broker the deal, and we got a large area of land relatively cheaply. 

There was a great deal of fanfare when United acquired this site, along with some exclaiming profanities that the Blades were going to be based in a Wednesday stronghold in the North of the city. However, when it was finished, I saw pictures of the building and the indoor facility and it was like nothing we had ever had before. It was almost state-of-the-art, at least for United! John Warnock, brother of Neil, was a big part of the embryonic academy days as a director at the Academy and was involved heavily with the early set-up at what was then called the Hallam FM Academy. Final planning permission was sanctioned in August 2001 and work to construct the indoor arena/building and upgrade the existing pitches began in February 2002.

Opened officially on 6^th December 2002, it was used by the first team for training, but the youth team also played games here. Neil Warnock said:

“It would have been easy to have pumped all that money into just buying players. But then if we had gone down that route we could have ended up with financial problems. Instead, we were brave, looked to the long term and decided to put our money into that. We decided a long time ago that this was the best way forward.”

The likes of Billy Sharp, Jonathan Forte and Kevan Hurst were the first young players that came out of Shirecliffe, and all went on to make it professionally. It features a large indoor training facility, classrooms and meeting rooms in the main building. It has a sizeable car park, but the site is split between the old and new buildings. It has smaller synthetic pitches and a goalkeeping area near the main academy building. The main pitches are the four large pitches on either side of the old clubhouse building, two at the top and two at the bottom, although the bottom one seems to have been converted now into one full-size pitch since the work. 

The back of the old building – the Academy pitches are in the foreground

We have seen an incredible amount of professional players produced here, with many going on to become established top-level players and internationals. Sharp, Kyle Walker, Kyle Naughton, Harry Maguire, David Brooks, Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Aaron Ramsdale (albeit via Stoke) have all come through. Even in the current day, the likes of Daniel Jebbison, William Osula, Oliver Arblaster and Andre Brooks are in and around the first-team squad. There is an argument that this is as much down to the ethos, coaching and opportunities given as the facilities, but the point stands that Shirecliffe has made United a lot of money since it opened and solidified United’s reputation as one of the best clubs in the country for developing players.

It's an enjoyable Saturday morning up at Shirecliffe if you ever want to watch the next batch of youngsters coming through. You simply turn up and can stand on the site or behind the goal near the old building. I recall years ago, the first team peering through the window after a training session to see the game on the pitches at the front. There is a definite slope, and old goalkeeping coach Bob Widdowson is often entrusted with retrieving balls from the bushes at the back of the top goals! There is a small gantry where cameras are usually positioned for video analysts to get the footage they need. It all seems quite professional and a long way from the days of the Abbeydale and Ball Inn Grounds.

On a recent visit to see the Academy Sheffield Derby (see pictures below) both teams had cameras hoisted on large poles – the pitch often used by the under-16s had been dug up and was the next undergoing maintenance work.

Sheffield United U18s v Sheffield Wednesday U18s at Shirecliffe – April 5^th, 2023

The proposed new building for the first team announced in September 2020. As of April 2022, work has not started on any construction

The new first-team training pitch, April 5^th 2023

• Current Use: All academy age groups and the first team train here. The Women’s side has used it but seems to train more at Handsworth. The pitches at the top with the more pronounced slopes have been used for the under-16 and under-18 academy sides to train and play whilst the flatter, better-conditioned pitches to the rear of the old building have been used by the first team. These have recently been improved to Desso standard with undersoil heating. There is a gym inside the old building and a mobile cryotherapy chamber outside in a portacabin which looks a bit amateurish. 

• I always wondered why the first team never had facilities such as a canteen, gym and changing rooms put in the main building. It seems they have remained mostly at the old facility which has seen improvements but remains ramshackle and not fit for purpose for athletes worth millions of pounds. We had plans for the new facilities to be built – which seemed a temporary fix again – until a new training base was found, but this has never happened and remains to be seen if it ever will.

The future?

There have been rumours of a move for some time now. United have outgrown the site at Shirecliffe, and to develop the academy and attract a better calibre of player at all age groups, including the senior squad, a move is a necessity. Sadly, with financial issues and the recent relegation, any move seems to be a long way off. There have been discussions over the temporary building (which has not materialised) and of splitting the first team from the academy. As CEO Stephen Bettis has said, “There are not many big, flat sites in Sheffield.”

Bettis said last summer:

We've been trying for so long to find another site to move. There is still one on the cards that we are in talks with the council about.

We have been in discussions with them for about nine months and continue to do so. In an ideal world, we would move everyone to a new site close to Bramall Lane, but the reality is it isn't going to happen because a site like that that we can take does not exist.

The second-best option is we move the first team somewhere else and we let the academy take Shirecliffe. The academy goes category one at that point because we have enough space for them to do it.

The best situation is we get the first team on another piece of land and we have factored that in at the moment. But we know that even if we get a bit of land today it's still two years before they are on it because you have to design it all, you have to get planning for it and then you have to build it. The fact that we are spending £1.8m on the pitches at the moment, we are not thinking 'don't do that' because it will be great for the under 23s and under 18s in a few years' time if this does come to fruition.

There were pictures a few years ago of Prince Abdullah and his entourage at the old RAF site at the Norton Aerodrome, and for a period, this seemed a likely location but all went quiet, with wrangles over the land too much for United to overcome. Ideally, United would move to the South side of the city and find a site that can house everything, but that seems to be extremely difficult both logistically and financially. Of course, a sustained spell back in the Premier League would bring with it finances that would make a move more likely. 

You would hope that wherever United find next can be a permanent home, allowing the excellent work the club has done in its youth scouting and academy coaching to be taken to the next level. 

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David ‘Deadbat’ Beeden is best 'known' for his matchday reports and for being the co-host of The Tufty Club podcast, available on all good streaming services. He’s an occasional tweeter @Deadbat_DB with sporadic ramblings also at tuftyclubsufc.wordpress.com.