The 2002 clash between Sheffield United and West Bromwich Albion will go down in history as one of the most chaotic games of football ever seen.
So many players were either sent off or injured that the referee was forced to abandon the game in the 83rd minute. This is why the match is known as ‘The Battle of Bramall Lane’, because there were so many casualties.
To set the scene, Sheffield United were firmly ensconced in the middle of the Division 1 table – before Division 1 became the Championship – and West Brom were fighting for promotion at the top.
With two months to go until the end of the season, there was nothing additional at stake for Sheffield United. They weren’t at risk of relegation, they weren’t in with a real chance of a playoff place, it wasn’t a derby and the teams were not rivals – it was just another game.
This is why what happened is so strange.
Things started off quite normally, but quickly descended into some of the nastiest scenes ever witnessed in English football.
Here’s how things played out.
9′ – Goalkeeper Sent Off
As bad starts go, having your goalkeeper sent off in the 9th minutes is up there with the worst of them.
The Sheffield United defence misjudged a long ball that bounced clear of Keith Curle, leaving West Brom’s Scott Dobie through on goal close to the edge of the box.
United’s long time keeper, Simon Tracey, rushed at the ball and tried to close down the space, but when he jumped at it he accidentally handled outside the area.
It was a blatant hand ball and the referee, Eddie Wolstenholme, made the obvious call to send him off.
So Sheffield United were down to 10 men.
Manager, Neil Warnock, took off winger, Peter Ndlovu, and sent on the replacement keeper Wilko de Vogt.
18′ – Goal by Scott Dobie
Just 9 minutes later, and West Brom were ahead after heading home a cross from Scott Johnson.
Just before this, West Brom defender, Larus Sigurdsson, had received a yellow card, but otherwise, things remained calm for the rest of the first half. There was no foreshadowing of what was to come.
Phil Jagielka had a great chance to equalise for United in the first half, which might have changed what happened later, but he put it wide.
62′ – Goal by Derek McInnes
West Brom’s captain, Derek McInnes, put the Baggies 2-0 up in the 62nd minute.
Sheffield United conceded a corner which was played quite short, and hit first time by McInnes who was charging towards the edge of the box. United’s defence were focussing on West Brom’s players inside the box, so McInnes was unmarked and struck a fantastic shot into the top corner.
This prompted Neil Warnock to make two further substitutions to try and get back into the game.
This is where things went downhill. Fast.
In the 63rd minute, Georges Santos and Patrick Suffo were subbed on for Michael Tongue and Gus Uhlenbeek respectively, but they wouldn’t be on the pitch for long.
64′ – Two Substitutes Sent Off
A year earlier, Georges Santos had been on the receiving end of a nasty aerial challenge involving West Brom’s Scott Johnson, who was playing for Nottingham Forest at the time.
Santos ended up with a broken nose and a double fracture to his eye socket. He threatened to take legal action against Johnson, who always said he did nothing wrong and that Santos was late on him when challenging for the ball. He didn’t even receive a yellow card at the time.
Anyway, that explains what happened next.
This was the first time the two had met since the incident, and less than a minute after entering the pitch, Santos and Johnson were challenging for the same ball again.
Johnson went for the ball, but Santos went for Johnson. It was a horrendous challenge, an obvious act of pure revenge, and Santos was rightly red carded for it. The commentator was actually talking about the potential tension between the pair as it happened.
Johnson might have ended up red carded too if his entire team hadn’t basically sat on him to keep him from throttling Santos.
The thuggish challenge incensed the West Brom players, and Santos’ red card caused anger amongst some Sheffield United players, and chaos ensued.
Pushing and shoving was going on all over the place, and right in the middle of it, was Suffo. He saw West Brom players encircle his friend (Santos) and stepped in – albeit with a headbutt to Derek McInnes’ face – to help. It didn’t help, though, because it was literally right in front of Eddie Wolstenholme, who promptly sent him off too.
Now, Sheffield United had just 8 players on the field.
77′ – Goal by Scott Dobie
It’s amazing it took West Brom this long to score a third given it was now 11 vs 8, but nevertheless, in the 77th minute Dobie scored a second.
The goal came from a corner that overshot and was met with a weak header towards goal from Darren Moore. It wasn’t enough to go in, but it placed the ball at the feet of Scott Dobie who only had to scuff it over the line.
Just prior to this, McInnes had been thrown to the floor twice, once by Michael Brown, who was already on a yellow card, and again by Keith Curle, who received a yellow card for his actions. Brown’s challenge looked to be more of a tangle, but Curle’s ‘challenge’ was blatantly against the rules. It almost led to another brawl.
So the third goal was something of a middle finger to the United team, most of whom should have been ashamed of themselves quite frankly.
79′ and 82′ – Injuries?
3-0 down and 3 men down, Sheffield United had clearly lost the game and had a terrible day at the office. If they could have scrapped the game and started again, they would have.
Which is why, when Michael Brown went down in the 79th minute with a groin injury, just moments after that third goal, suspicions were aroused.
It was felt by the West Brom bench that Neil Warnock might have been instructing his players to find injuries in order to get the match abandoned, thus rendering the result void.
Sure enough, 3 minutes later in the 82nd minute, Robert Ullathorne also had to leave the field due to an injury. He had felt his hamstring go. Neither injured player had been involved with the ball at the time their injuries occurred, so you can understand why the West Brom bench suspected foul play.
Regardless, with two extra players going off and no substitutes remaining to replace them, Eddie Wolstenholme was forced to abandon the match in the 83rd minute due to a lack of players.
Aftermath
As you can imagine, the post match interviews were interesting.
Warnock obviously denied encouraging his players to go down injured on purpose, and West Brom manager, Gary Megson, threatened that if the result was not allowed to stand he would pull the same stunt next time he was losing.
In the end, it was decided that the result would stand despite the abandonment, and West Brom rightly got their 3 points. Sheffield United got a £10,00o fine.
It’s only fair to point out that Neil Warnock was proven right too. Robert Ullathorne was out for a month and Michael Brown didn’t play again for the rest of the season. There was no attempt to force the game to be abandoned, and the injuries were genuine.
Nevertheless, bad blood remained between the two managers, with Warnock claiming in his autobiography that he “wouldn’t piss on Megson if he was on fire”.
Classy.
As for Georges Santos and Patrick Suffo, neither of them ever played for Sheffield United again. Both received a six match ban for their behaviour, plus fines, before Santos was moved on to Grimsby Town, and Suffo was immediately loaned out to Spanish side, Numancia, before securing a permanent transfer to Al-Hilal in Saudi Arabia.
In interviews years later, Santos revealed that he saw Andy Johnson before the game, and Johnson attempted to shake his hand. Santos, by his own admission, refused. No one would believe he didn’t go into that game with a score to settle.
Eddie Wolstenholme said that, in many ways, it was one of the easiest games he ever officiated because all of the decisions were so clear cut. That said, he has admitted that Brown and Curle should have been red carded too, but he let them get away with it on order to see the game out. He was trying to avoid it being called off.
Hilariously, the next match he was in charge of was a Sheffield Wednesday game, and the Wednesday fans gave him a standing ovation during the warm up!
Sheffield United finished 13th that season, but West Brom came 2nd, gaining automatic promotion to the Premier League.