A familar face to many, Wednesdayite member and Coast 2 Coast cyclist, Nacho Libre...er, sorry, Julian Batty posts his first blog on Wednesdayite.com.

Julian talks about his lucky scarf, which hopefully he may be re-united with before the Palace game on Sunday. 

Hello All,

Nervous nervous about Sunday, as clearly the rest of you are.

However, I do have to sincerely apologise to you all, and have to admit that Wednesday's consistent demise since the early 90's is completely down to myself!!

I was gifted my first Half Season Ticket at Christmas 1990 from my dear folks and the first game I went to using that ticket was vs Wolves at Hillsborough on Boxing day.  I was seated in the South Stand with a friend of mine which some of you may know, he lived around the corner from me at the time, Steve Basford and his parents (BasfBooom from Owlstalk).

Im sure some of you will recall the match, a rain drenched afternoon and our American friend John Harkes was sent off for a wildy sliding challenge in the sodden grass.  I believe we drew that game 2-2 but as the Fight for Promotion Video stated, 'there was only one winner that day - the weather'.

Anyway, I digress, afore that match, and as I was a mere 13 years old, I hadn't found the prematch bar at that stage in my Football watching career.  Therefore and henceforth, I marched to the Owls Store, if I recall correctly, it was then located at the Penistone Road end of the South Stand Driveway.

I perused the merchandise available, and with some Christmas gift money which I had also received from other family members (as kids do), and I chose to purchase myself a Sheffield Wednesday scarf.  Blue and White, obviously, and had white knitted in diamonds towards the edges.

As a kid, I clutched and gripped at that scarf at every minute of every match from then on, wishing and urging every pass made by Wednesday to be successful, every loose ball to fall to one of our Blue and White Team mates and willing the ball into our oppositions goal.  For many years, my lucky scarf brought our Mighty Owls success and it never left my side on match days.

With that scarf clutched in my hands, initially we gained promotion, finishing 3rd in the old Division 2 to reattain our top flight league status.  From there, as we all know, we finished third in the top flight (if only we had signed Cantona when given the chance), and subsequently qualified for European Football for the following season.

My scarf and myself, witnessed our win against Spora Luxembourg and was delighted when Gordon Watson (one of my favourite players at the time scored (which I think was his first Wednesday goal)).  In my celebration I jumped up at the top of the Kop and smashed my head against one of the structurally supportive posts.  I subsequently saw us disappointingly leave the competition at the hands of Kaiserslautern, but at the time I was still of the opinion, and rightly so, that in my lifetime we were definitely on our way up and towards success.

On the 3rd of Arpil in the 1993 season we went to Wembley to face our arch enemies and city rivals, Sheffield United.  My Dad, two great friends, myself and my trusty old scarf made the visit to the capital for the match.  The result, will ever stand as a fantastic entry in our history book, one for which I do not need to remind yout little grey cells about.

Sadness however, was coming our way, our second visit to Wembley, the 18th of April to face Arsenal in the League Cup Final saw us lose what would unfortunately be the first of our two (or three if you like) Cup finals that season.  On a differing level, personal disappointment again, I had become unattached from my trusty lucky scarf.

Attempts were made unfortunately in vein to reunite myself and my scarf together via telephone to Wembley stadium lost property department.  I also scoured the area where we were sat for the League Cup Final and the attached concourse when my Dad and myself visited Wembley again for the FA Cup final, again, to no avail.

Since then, history states that our decline matched the same point as myself was separated from my scarf.

I can only sincerely apologise for what I have put you all through in the meantime, and hope that 1 day, by some miracle, I will be reunited with my scarf.

Julian


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