The Fosse Way

Turning off Burnmoor Street on Sunday, the first visual clue that this wouldn’t be a typical Leicester City matchday presented itself: hundreds of people gathered outside the away end staring up at the sky. Necks were tilted upwards to take in the sight of a plane circling the stadium trailing a banner that read: “Dejphon Chansiri Out”.

The football authorities don’t usually like supporter-led protests. They will aim to squash anything threatening to impact the mass market audiovisual product that football has become.

This was different, because things have gone too far at Sheffield Wednesday. A line has been crossed – the existential threat posed to one of England’s most historic football clubs meaning even some of the reluctant, risk-averse authorities are taking the side of Wednesday fans as they battle their intransigent owner.

That list seemingly includes Leicester City, after our own club helped to facilitate protests at the game, and even Sky Sports, which covered the protests in more depth than would usually be expected.

Having made our way past the thousands of Wednesday supporters milling around outside the away end, we joined the hundreds of other Leicester fans queueing to use digital tickets for the first time. The solidarity began there. At least the opposition fans had chosen not to enter the stands yet.

If digital tickets are the tip of the iceberg for Leicester fans, Wednesday’s supporters have an ocean of complaints about the way their club is being run. We were fortunate enough not to have anything to protest about for several years, but that all changed during a cataclysmic season of suffering in the harsh spotlight of the Premier League. Still very little in comparison to Wednesday’s current plight, but that didn’t give our complaints any less merit. The benchmark for protest is not the threat of your club ceasing to exist.

Of course, not every Leicester fan has resorted to protest. While our decline from the upper echelons of English football offers a glimpse of a possible future where we don’t bounce back and things get even tougher, there are eternal optimists who can’t envisage those kind of problems.

Our own attempts at organising a coherent voice of dissent last season showed how difficult it can be to do, no matter how obvious the problems. That’s what made the Wednesday protest all the more impressive.

Those fans are being brought together by their predicament, a break from the norm of supporting a football club where fans disagree on everything from the relatively trivial to the deeply political.

There are very few situations when thousands of people from different backgrounds and ways of life are thrown together in one big melting pot once a fortnight and expected to get along. Sign up for a season ticket and you could find yourself standing next to anybody 23 times over the next 9 months.

It reminds me a little of arriving at university – as if leaving home for the first time isn’t enough, also turning up on day one to discover who you’d be living with. For me, moving to Leicester basically so I could get a season ticket for the first time, that meant learning an awful lot about a different city entirely.

One of my new flatmates began to talk in awed tones about the place of his birth, this magical city that had seven hills like Rome, a food of the gods called Henderson’s Relish and an up-and-coming band that had a song about someone not being from New York City but from Rotherham.

This was my introduction to the quite incredible level of pride someone from Sheffield could possess. It was like he’d built the city himself: sculpted the hills, bottled the relish, played lead guitar. Coming from Northampton, the concept of civic pride on this scale was bemusing.

I had been to Sheffield a couple of years earlier and hated every minute of it as an already-relegated Sheffield Wednesday put four goals without reply past my beloved Leicester on the final day of the season and the final game of Martin O’Neill’s reign. Nonetheless, as someone who values grand old football grounds over shiny new ones, it’s fair to say Hillsborough left an impression.

We’ve lost Goodison this summer and there are very few old gems remaining. I envy these unique places even if they’re falling down. No club has an identical replica of Hillsborough but with different coloured seats.

And that name… There are many Uniteds but there’s only one Wednesday. I once read about a Derby fan who cheered every time someone said the word ‘derby’ in any context: rivalry; the horse race; anything. I can’t be the only Leicester fan from outside Leicestershire whose ears prick up whenever I hear the city’s name. Imagine having to cope with a day of the week named after your football club. You’d be in a constant state of alert.

If all this sounds like it kickstarted a long love for Sheffield and Sheffield Wednesday – it didn’t. But it’s the background to the feeling I had on Sunday when the visiting supporters started filing in from the concourse and were greeted by a standing ovation from all four corners of the ground.

Like many others in the home sections, I was genuinely emotional – perhaps it would have been the same if another club had found themselves in Wednesday’s position, but maybe not. You wouldn’t want Leeds to go bust, but equally you can’t ever imagine clapping their fans.

Let’s not forget: we won a major trophy at Hillsborough. This is a club that inspired a love of football in a little boy who would go on to become Leicester City’s greatest ever footballer. And I can’t say Sheffield Wednesday have ever annoyed me as much as the vast majority of football clubs – maybe aside from that day in 2006 when they held their own goal of the season competition on our pitch.

It probably helps that our paths haven’t crossed that much recently. It’s much easier to respect a football club when they can’t give you any reason to despise them. We’ve been on a different journey to Sheffield Wednesday in the recent past, our few meetings meaning we haven’t lost to them for 12 years.

When Anthony Knockaert’s free kick arced slowly over Chris Kirkland in 2014, it moved us to the cusp of promotion to the Premier League. Sunday was only the third time we’ve faced them since that night.

Regardless of any historical meaning, the applause given by Leicester fans felt like a necessary reminder that football supporters – and people – are fundamentally decent. Even when we’ve been thrown together and you’re getting wound up by the bizarre opinions of those around you, there are also these glorious moments of unity.

It’s rare in life for the spontaneous actions of thousands of people to give you a warm glow. It seemed to be a pleasant surprise for most Wednesday fans. Later that evening, reading their reactions online brought back a little ripple of that same feeling.

More importantly, it appears that our actions actually helped boost the profile of what they had organised – not just performative but consequential. It helped the moment go viral and raise the profile.

But then, like when a former hero returns in the shirt of another club, eventually the pleasantries must be set aside. A few minutes in, we were back to what football should feel like – wanting your team to do whatever it takes to beat the other team, regardless of their situation.

Leicester laboured against what was a surprisingly committed bunch of players, given everything they’ve gone through recently, and the accompanying sinking feeling in the stands brought back bad memories of last season just when we were all fired up for a fresh start.

Whatever it takes. Win the game. And thankfully we did, but even the most one-eyed Leicester fan surely couldn’t begrudge Wednesday fans getting the chance to celebrate a goal with their players when for much of the summer, it didn’t seem like they’d have any players to celebrate with. At least we could safely feel that way in retrospect once we’d won.

So we got the best of both worlds, lauded for our response while our players emerged victorious. We can move on to play teams whose existence is not under immediate threat. And we take with us not just three points but also a memorable moment that hopefully we can reminisce about next time we welcome Sheffield Wednesday fans to Filbert Way. Whenever that might be.

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