It’s May 28, 2016. Chris Waddle arrives in the ground-floor bar of a hotel beside Wembley Stadium and the packed room suddenly becomes a place of worship. Around 250 people take to their knees and begin to perform exaggerated bows in front of their hero, singing “There’s only one Chrissy Waddle” as they do so.
If you know Sheffield Wednesday fans and the place Waddle holds in their hearts, that moment ahead of their Championship play-off final defeat to Hull City will come as no surprise. The former England international remains an absolute legend to the Owls faithful.
You just didn’t move from Marseille to Sheffield Wednesday. The South Yorkshire club normally signed players from Leyton Orient, or Oldham Athletic, or Swindon Town. But in 1992 they snapped up Waddle in the biggest show of transfer might the club had displayed in their modern history.
That May they’d finished third in the top flight, missing out on the final First Division title by just seven points. The addition of Waddle was a sign that Wednesday wanted to be a contender again in 1992-93, but more than that it was the biggest commitment to entertainment any side had made ahead of the first season of the brand-new Premier League.
And boy did Chris Waddle love to entertain.
“I was always brought up thinking that it’s an entertainment business,” he told ‘The Big Interview with Graham Hunter’ in 2015. “I used to love it at Hillsborough when I was at Wednesday. I’d be standing on the right by the South Stand where the tunnel is and John Sheridan would ping the ball across to me. I’d bring the ball down and think ‘I’m coming for you.’
“Out of the corner of my eye I could see everyone in the stands [beginning to stand up] and you could hear the seats go ‘flap, flap, flap’. That’s what they came for!”
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Speak to any Wednesday fan who remembers that era and they will immediately identify the team of Waddle, Sheridan, David Hirst and Roland Nilsson as their favourite iteration. And the vast majority will pinpoint the former England winger as their idol even to this day.
He’d spent three years in France, winning the league title every time and playing in the European Cup final in 1991. He had become a world name in the truest sense, a player so adored by the Marseille public that he still gets regular invites to return as a guest.
That all came after he’d initially made his name with Newcastle United and Tottenham Hotspur in England. He’d been signed by the Magpies, his local club, for £1,000 from non-league Tow Law Town, for whom he played part-time alongside his day job working in a factory producing sausage seasoning. A humble, shy, skinny kid, his first boss at St James’ Park, Arthur Cox, thought Waddle had an ‘attitude problem’ due to his quiet, unassuming nature.
“If you did it right, it was ‘You don’t do it enough’ and if you didn’t do it right and lost the ball it would be ‘There you go again,’” Waddle later said of Cox’s attitude towards him. “I used to come in and sneak into the changing rooms because he’d pick on me for anything.”
But that early visit to the school of hard knocks helped to make Waddle the player he became, a winger addicted to delivering the flair, taking on opponents at every opportunity, stepping over the ball however many times it took to leave his adversary flat-footed before zipping off and leaving them in his wake.
“My hardest opponent would have to be Chrissy Waddle,” legendary former Liverpool and Scotland full-back Steve Nicol once said, “Because I knew what he was going to do, and he did it… and he still got past me.”
While he was a star at Spurs and a beloved part of a successful Marseille, it was at Wednesday that he really caught headlines at a time when the increasing exposure of the Premier League on Sky Sports gave the nation a more regular sight of the greatest players.
Waddle was named Footballer of the Year in 1993 after a debut season which saw Wednesday reach two domestic cup finals. He was a highlight-reel player worthy of switching on the TV regardless of whether he played for your side. To Owls fans he was the reason to get off your seat… producing the ‘flap, flap, flap’ that hasn’t been heard since his day.
These days under Darren Moore, Wednesday are a League One outfit challenging for promotion back to the Championship after two years in the third tier. On Saturday they get to measure themselves against top Premier League opposition in the form of Newcastle, the team that first gave Waddle a chance at professional level.
He’ll be there on Saturday, without a doubt. Despite his Wednesday spell having ended nearly 27 years ago in August 1996, Waddle still calls Sheffield home. Much of it is thanks to that affinity which grew between the player and the fans back in his four-year spell in S6.
Waddle took on defenders in a way Wednesday supporters hadn’t seen for decades before and haven’t witnessed for decades since. In return he received the level of worship his wonderful skills deserved.
A product of Newcastle, a hero of Sheffield, a must-watch megastar of the early Premier League days, Chris Waddle was the kind of entertainer football just doesn’t make anymore.
*18+ | BeGambleAware | Odds Subject to Change
