WARNOCK: ONLY A GAME? IT'S LIFE OR DEATH IN SHEFFIELD!

JUST another game? Don’t pull that one on Neil Warnock, a Sheffield native, boyhood Blade and managerial veteran of nine Steel City derbies.

- Chris Dunlavy

“Get away,” says the 75-year-old, now combining semi-retirement with an unpaid role as a consultant for National League South side Torquay United.

“Only a game? People used to tell me that all the time and I’d say to them ‘What a load of rubbish. It’s life or death in Sheffield’.

“Whole families are split in that city. Some of them have Wednesday and Unitedites under the same roof, like I did when I was a kid.

“If you go down the park on a Sunday morning, dressing rooms will be split down the middle. It’s like nothing else in the Championship in my opinion. Those people don’t treat it like any other game and I didn’t, either.

“I made the lads realise how important it was. I used to tell them what it would be like for our supporters, walking to the ground, talking to mates, knowing that in the same office building or building site or wherever they worked, there’d be all these Owls fans there waiting to rub it in if they lost.

“Whatever was happening in the season, I wanted them to know how important it was to give our fans the bragging rights for the next few weeks.”

And under no circumstances would he ever demand calm heads in the tense moments before kickoff.

“Not in a million years,” laughs Warnock. “Not in that game. It was get out there, get after them and get stuck in. I used to make bloody sure they came out of the traps like a pack of dogs!”

War nock was beaten just twice in the derby and never at Bramall Lane, though his fondest memory of the fixture was a 2-1 victory at Hillsborough in the Championship promotion-winning campaign of 2005-06.

“It were a brilliant day, that,” he recalls. “Michael Tonge scored a free-kick in front of the Kop, right in the top corner, then Ade Akinbiyi smashed in a volley. Great goals, both of them.