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Carlton Palmer says Sheffield Wednesday players once had a bizarre way of solving arguments, ‘it all kicked off’

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There may be problems at Sheffield Wednesday right now, but if we were back in the ’90s they’d have been settled the old-fashioned way.

Under the current regime, the Owls are struggling financially, with Dejphon Chansiri’s mismanagement at the top leading to a transfer ban that’ll last three windows.

Meanwhile, Danny Rohl has spent the summer trying to find a new job, which has left the Sheffield Wednesday players unhappy with their manager.

The past few months have been a disaster for Wednesday fans, and had them wishing for much simpler times; like when players used to don boxing gloves and fight each other in the dressing room!

1991 Football League Cup Final
Photo by Mark Leech/Mark Leech Sports Photography/Getty Images

Sheffield Wednesday’s fight club revealed

In an appearance on the Under the Cosh podcast five years ago, Owls legend Carlton Palmer discussed how Ron Atkinson had a very particular method for resolving any issues within the squad; a method star striker David Hirst took advantage of more than once.

He said: “I remember… I can only say Hirsty, I won’t say the other player, but at Sheffield Wednesday it all kicked off in the dressing room. So Big Ron used to have a thing… at training, boot room, boxing gloves on, three minutes.

“After three minutes he’d open the boot room and ask if they were ready to shake hands. If they said no, he shut the door and they went for another three minutes. He’d let it go until they were ready to shake hands, and then it’s done.”

By the sounds of it, David Hirst was not the kind of guy you’d want to step into the boot room with, either.

Palmer added: “Hirsty was a different breed. He’s a Barnsley lad, through and through, hard as nails. He took no s— and it is what it is. So, if you want a row with Hirsty, it’s going to be a problem.

“But Hirsty and this kid were in for a while. This other kid had some b——- on him. And we had a few like that in the team.”

That said, Hirst did have one man who might have matched him, with Palmer recalling how Mark Bright joined the club and immediately made an impact on the training pitch.

“Mark Bright, he came in… first day he signed, he elbowed somebody, claret [blood] everywhere. And he said, ‘That’s so everyone knows who I am now’ and that was it. That’s how you have to leave your mark, if that’s how you are, on the first day at a football club, so no one takes the p— out of you.”

Sheffield Wednesday’s team in the 1990s was immense

That Sheffield Wednesday team in the ’90s may have had peculiar habits behind the scenes, but they were quite the outfit on the pitch.

With the likes of Hirst, Palmer, John Sheridan, Trevor Francis, and Chris Waddle in the first half of the decade, and new arrivals like Benito Carbone and Paolo Di Canio closer to the turn of the century, the Owls fans were never short of an idol.

We’ve already put together the best Sheffield Wednesday XI of the 21st century, but if we went back further in time to look at that era Palmer was describing, we’d be hard-pressed to pick just 11 players.

In the 1990s alone, the Owls won promotion from Division Two, were runners up in the FA Cup, and lifted the League Cup.

Sadly, it’s been a long time since Sheffield Wednesday were in the top flight, and they could really do with some more of that magic from the good old days now.

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