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Pitch perfect
Jan. 7th, 2026 10:21 amI was in the St John Ambulance Brigade in Sheffield for quite a few years, as I think I have mentioned before; so I used to cover all the home matches, which meant I was usually out at the weekend, and fairly often also midweek. We were primarily there for the crowd, not the players, although some of us did occasionally get pressed into service to help stretcher someone off. And, to be honest, there weren't that many incidents; they averaged maybe two or three per match, but we were put in small teams of two or three to take charge of different sections of the crowd, so it was quite likely that you'd get no incident in your section and you would just get to watch the match free.
When I talk about this, everyone automatically assumes that the most common things we had to deal with were either a) the results of fights, or b) people falling on the steps. As a matter of fact, both of these were pretty rare. I don't recall ever having to patch anyone up after a fight; in fact, I don't recall any fight taking place in or near the stadium. Most fans, with a very few exceptions, were well-behaved and not looking for trouble. You would get occasional street fighting later sometimes, especially after a derby match, when people had had a few drinks and weren't thinking straight; and I do vividly remember Cardiff City coming to Bramall Lane for a cup tie, and that was the scariest bunch of fans I'd seen bar none. I'd seen Millwall, I'd seen Wimbledon, I'd seen them all, and they'd all treated me and my colleagues with great politeness and respect... well, you do, if you think you might need us at some point. Cardiff City, though? They'd been drinking all the way up the motorway and they respected nobody. But at least they didn't bash anyone in the stadium.
Falling on the steps did happen, but it wasn't common. If someone was already a bit unsteady on their feet, or it was very wet, then you might get a fall. I don't remember anyone getting much more than a few bruises from that. Much more common was someone having an epileptic fit, especially at Bramall Lane, where we had one bloke in particular who was a passionate United fan and came to every match... but his epilepsy wasn't very well controlled, and excitement tended to bring it on. So we fairly regularly got him, or just occasionally someone else, down to the first aid room in great haste and laid him on the couch, where we had to hold him so he didn't fall off. Normally you should not restrain someone who is having an epileptic fit; however, in this case, the couch was the safest place for him, so we needed to keep him there. Everyone would just grab the nearest limb and hang on tight.
Nobody ever guesses what the most common incident was. It was, believe it or not, toothache.
Well, you see, it was like this. Someone with a dodgy tooth would come to a match. They'd sit there in the freezing cold for an hour or so, and then at half time they'd go and get a cup of hot Bovril to warm up; and the temperature change would hit that dodgy tooth like a mallet. Sadly, there wasn't a lot we could do about that. What you did was you took the sufferer down to the first aid room to see Dr John (that was what we always called him; I forget his surname), and Dr John would give them an aspirin and tell them to go and see a dentist. The aspirin, at any rate, would get them through the second half.
Having said all that, one of my most vivid memories wasn't a real incident at all. It was the daft Manchester City fan who thought he could wind me up (and possibly impress his friends) by claiming to have sprained a part of his anatomy that a) probably isn't sprainable, and b) if it is sprainable, then if you manage to sprain it at a football match there are going to be quite a lot of eyebrows raised. I just laughed and told him not to be so bloomin' daft, and went my merry way.
It was only later that I realised that I had missed a golden opportunity. What I should have done was shaken my head, sucked in my breath, and replied, "Oh dear. Nasty. That sounds like an amputation job to me!"
I like to think the next St John member he tried that on had the presence of mind to do that. :-D
When I talk about this, everyone automatically assumes that the most common things we had to deal with were either a) the results of fights, or b) people falling on the steps. As a matter of fact, both of these were pretty rare. I don't recall ever having to patch anyone up after a fight; in fact, I don't recall any fight taking place in or near the stadium. Most fans, with a very few exceptions, were well-behaved and not looking for trouble. You would get occasional street fighting later sometimes, especially after a derby match, when people had had a few drinks and weren't thinking straight; and I do vividly remember Cardiff City coming to Bramall Lane for a cup tie, and that was the scariest bunch of fans I'd seen bar none. I'd seen Millwall, I'd seen Wimbledon, I'd seen them all, and they'd all treated me and my colleagues with great politeness and respect... well, you do, if you think you might need us at some point. Cardiff City, though? They'd been drinking all the way up the motorway and they respected nobody. But at least they didn't bash anyone in the stadium.
Falling on the steps did happen, but it wasn't common. If someone was already a bit unsteady on their feet, or it was very wet, then you might get a fall. I don't remember anyone getting much more than a few bruises from that. Much more common was someone having an epileptic fit, especially at Bramall Lane, where we had one bloke in particular who was a passionate United fan and came to every match... but his epilepsy wasn't very well controlled, and excitement tended to bring it on. So we fairly regularly got him, or just occasionally someone else, down to the first aid room in great haste and laid him on the couch, where we had to hold him so he didn't fall off. Normally you should not restrain someone who is having an epileptic fit; however, in this case, the couch was the safest place for him, so we needed to keep him there. Everyone would just grab the nearest limb and hang on tight.
Nobody ever guesses what the most common incident was. It was, believe it or not, toothache.
Well, you see, it was like this. Someone with a dodgy tooth would come to a match. They'd sit there in the freezing cold for an hour or so, and then at half time they'd go and get a cup of hot Bovril to warm up; and the temperature change would hit that dodgy tooth like a mallet. Sadly, there wasn't a lot we could do about that. What you did was you took the sufferer down to the first aid room to see Dr John (that was what we always called him; I forget his surname), and Dr John would give them an aspirin and tell them to go and see a dentist. The aspirin, at any rate, would get them through the second half.
Having said all that, one of my most vivid memories wasn't a real incident at all. It was the daft Manchester City fan who thought he could wind me up (and possibly impress his friends) by claiming to have sprained a part of his anatomy that a) probably isn't sprainable, and b) if it is sprainable, then if you manage to sprain it at a football match there are going to be quite a lot of eyebrows raised. I just laughed and told him not to be so bloomin' daft, and went my merry way.
It was only later that I realised that I had missed a golden opportunity. What I should have done was shaken my head, sucked in my breath, and replied, "Oh dear. Nasty. That sounds like an amputation job to me!"
I like to think the next St John member he tried that on had the presence of mind to do that. :-D
