ROAD 92: BRAMALL LANE REVIEW

After the match I decided to grab a Wendy's for my dinner because I haven't had one since I last visited the USA. I loved it then and I was excited to have it again.

I sat down with my food and as I tucked in to my burger and nuggets. The nuggets were quite good but they were not the main thing I had come for. The burger was sloppy, disappointing and I might as well have gone elsewhere. It summed up the day I just had perfectly.

I was very excited to go to Sheffield United's stadium and I had heard many good things about it. I was hoping that it would show a different side to the Iron city to what I had already seen at Sheffield Wednesday.

I arrived in Sheffield at around 1:30pm as the sun had started to break through the clouds. It was a much shorter walk to Bramall lane than it was to Hillsborough so it only took around 25-30 minutes to arrive at the stadium.

I didn't realise that I had actually arrived at the stadium until I reached queues of people on the road and stewards guiding them in. I thought it was a block of flats at first in all honesty.

Anyway, I went in it was a nice change from The Hawthorns as the concourse was big and spacious and I was starting to get my hopes very high. I had an amazing view of the pitch and was secretly hoping that I would get pelted by a missed chance.

I grabbed myself some food and it was the first time I had actually grabbed food inside of the stadium on one of these trips. I purchased a Henderson's sausage roll and it took me by surprise about the size of it but I was willing to trust those in the north about things like this.

That was what I thought before I took my first bite. The sausage itself was bleak to say the least and what I assume to be seasoning left a bad feel and taste in my mouth. After about two bites, it was swiftly deposited into the nearest bin and I was confident that it was the end of my bad food experiences that day.

Bad food aside, I was still awaiting the raucous Sheffield atmosphere that I had heard so much about. As the teams came out, the away fans were in good voice but the home fans were silent. It was like the game had just finished and they had just lost 4-0 at home.

The first half was no different with both sets of fans making absolutely no noise. The highlight of the first half is someone near me saying "Master has given Dobbin a sock" whenever the Norwich winger Lewis Dobbin received the ball which had me and my mate cracking up for the rest of the first half.

The second half was just as bleak and just as quiet from a fanbase that was meant to be very good from what I had heard previously. You would not know that a win here would put them at the top of the table, instead you would probably think that this fixture was a friendly.

It was a poor game and I was quick to leave and get some dinner at Wendy's which ended up being just as bleak as the match I had just seen. I would catch my train shortly after and headed back home

after what had felt like a very long day.

How was the overall experience then?

It was the worst football match that I have ever seen and not just because of the events that were happening on the pitch. The game itself was dreadful but the atmosphere at the ground was dreadful.

I was told from some others that this was the worst atmosphere from both sets of fans that they had seen in years as well. However, for a team in a title fight and a team that are only 5 points away from the playoffs, it was incredibly poor.

Bramall Lane is the oldest football stadium in the world. Even though it does boast that title however, it felt like any other modern stadium with no soul inside of it. I do realise that factor probably also boils down to the lack of atmosphere around the ground but it took me by surprise about how it felt like we were trying to watch a secret game of football in a place that we were not meant to be in..

The only positive I have to say was that of the concourse being nice and big which is a dismal thing to have as the only positive. Similar to the chicken nuggets I had after the match, it was good but it was not the main item.

The main item that I saw was the stadium and it was sloppy, disappointing and I might as well have gone to watch Sheffield Wednesday again. It was a complete disaster of a day that I wished I could just put in the bin and forget about

RATING: 2/10