The club was formed in 1991, and subsequently after a management change or two, under the guidance of coaches Alex Dampier and Clyde Tuyl won every trophy in British Ice Hockey over a 3-4 year period from 1993-97 including a 'Grand Slam' of British Premier League, British Playoff Championships, and Benson & Hedges Cup, plus the double in the previous season. Three excursions into Europe as a result of these trophies have resulted in good showings, firstly to Holland (Tilburg 95/96) then becoming the first British team to play in the semi finals of the Europa Cup in Finland (Hameenlina 96-97) and then hosting the quarter final stage in Sheffield in 1997/98.
All this success came at a price.... The Steelers fans tended to come in rather large and very loud numbers. It has to be said that we were rather brash and knew bugger all about the sport to begin with. BUT WE DIDN'T CARE COS WE WON EVERYTHING IN SIGHT, taking over any rink the Steelers played in. However, the other teams organizations and supporters did care, and obstacles to the Steelers success were plonked in front of them at every possible juncture, sometimes it seemed even from the previous Leagues organizational bodies. It didnt stop the other clubs taking our money off us whenever we visited their rinks, I might add. Every body hated the Steelers and some still do hate the Steelers for dragging their cosy little game and organisation kicking and screaming into the nineties. It appeared that some in UK ice hockey actually liked the fact that the game was watched by mere hundreds in pokey damp rinks and stadia (nowt wrong with that-plenty of atmosphere, trust me). It irritated them that people actually wanted to OPEN UP this game to the masses.. They didnt like the fact that Sheffield even in their English league days played in front of 8,000 spectators in warmth and comfort and NOISE (lots of it). As a result of Sheffield's success as an 'Arena-based team' several other arena were spawned, notably Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham (ironically one of the most erudite opposers of the Steelers rise as an Arena team) and the phenomenon known as Belfast Giants.
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THE ISL YEARS
Thus British IceHockey Superleague was formed. The Steelers coaching staff changed following a stale season in the inaugural ISL season and in came a previously unknown coach (in this country anyway) Don McKee. A highly successful College level coach in North America, it was hoped that his new ideas would reinspire the Steelers players to their former glories.....WRONG....All the Steelers had to show for 18 months of Mr. McKee's stewardship was the (at that time, anyway) undervalued Challenge Cup. Despite being won in front of 9,000 of the Sheffield faithful, it was as a result of the trophy's tiny size, a source of much ridicule amongst the other teams of the ISL...May have been a different story if any other team had won it mind!!! The team actually played for the latter half of the season with the constant worry of not getting paid.
Half way through the next season, Don McKee was replaced by Mike Blaisdell the former coach of our greatest rivals Nottingham Panthers. Mike had always produced a good hardworking and skilful team at Notts, usually on a shoestring.
Steelers supporters looked forward to seeing what he could do with a few bob in his pocket. The team unshackled from their rigid coaching, demolished in their first game under Blaisdell (ironically),the Nottingham Panthers 10-0. The passion created swept the Steelers to finish 2nd in the ISL and again to win the Challenge Cup, again v the Panthers, this time in London. A disappointing playoff tournament saw the Steelers lose to a much underrated Newcastle Riverkings side in the semi final (again much to the glee of the rest of the ISL). some may apportion this to the fact that Blaisdell had, in fact, let it be known that he would be changing the side he had mostly inherited from Don McKee(as a result of contract dealings previously) in the next season...
The close season saw the departure of the top scoring line in British Icehockey, namely Ed Courtenay, Teeder Wynne, and Dale Junkin. This prompted big changes at the House of Steel and not a little squawking amongst some of the fans.. It did however give Coach Blaisdell a chance to create his own team, and upon that rested his managerial head... We had faith...
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Grand Slam or Grand Sham?
And that faith was fully justified .....Despite early season injuries to key players Paul Beraldo, Kent Simpson and Steve Roberts, Mr. Blaisdell had the foresight to bring in players to cover these long term injured...Both were former Nottingham panthers players who had worked for Mikey B. before: Brent Bobyck and (gasp..) Paul Adey...There are many, including myself that would never have thought to see Paul Adey grace the Teal and Orange and to us this was a dream come true..It was at a price though. Due to the wage cap it was determined that we could really only retain that one extra player. Brent was found a job at Manchester Storm and amid much gnashing of teeth (in my part of Steelerland anyway) Steve Roberts was released to find fame and fortune with the newly formed Belfast Giants (which he is doing, it has to be said !) Mr. Adey was retained....amidst a few hoo-ha's along the way, notably bench clearances and unsavoury scenes V. Manchester & Nottingham (Scott Allison receiving a disputed 14 game ban for his part in the Notts debacle) ............and a few dodgy moments on the financial side !!!!!!!
The outcome of all that was:
On Day 2 of the Superleague season 00/01
the Sheffield Steelers went to the top of the ISL table......
IN DECEMBER 2000
the Sheffield Steelers met the Newcastle Jesters in the Benson & hedges cup Final at the Sheffield Arena, in front of a 10,000 crowd. The result was a 4-0 shutout to the Steelers. the first trophy of the season went to the Steelers
ON SUNDAY 11th FEBRUARY, at the Docklands Arena, London, in front of a sell=out crowd (including a couple of thousand Steelers supporters) the Sheffield Steelers claimed the ISL Championship, having led the table since day 2 , and by an unhitherto heard of points margin of TWENTY SIX POINTS !! Yes 26 points....The team are being hailed as the best team put together in ISL history and possibly of British hockey so far...Feel free to contradict me, Nottingham fans !!!
On Saturday 10th March 2001, the Steelers faced our old friends, the Ayr Scottish Eagles in what would be the 3rd consecutive appearance in the Challenge Cup Final for the Steelers...Part three of the mission was accomplished quite comfortably with a 5-2 victory against a very feisty Eagles side who had the majority of the neutral support on their side..them Celts stick together. It didnt spoil the victory celebrations after, in the many Belfast pubs and hotels that the Steeler throng inhabited for the weekend.
On to the playoff's
….and amidst a lot of 'umming and arring' on the financial side of the team, a reasonable ride through the play off grouping ensued. The Steelers played and beat the Bracknell Bee's (the dark horses of the Play Offs following a fine end to the regular season) in the 2nd Semi of the weekend, leading to a fascinating final against the London Knights, last years winners...again the neutral support went to the opposition, but it there was grudging admiration emerging from many who had previously called the Steelers...A pulsating final was settled by Scott Allison ('he shouldn't have been playing' was the cry from one or two of our more fervent critics!!) in a 2-1 victory to bring the Grand Slam Crown home to the Socialist Republic once more...
Remarkably not one of the team was in the top 10 points scorers, reflecting a move away from the 'Star-man' attitude which prevailed over the previous couple of seasons. However we do have the top net minding tandem in the UK with Torchy at the top and Mike O' in number 2 spot......Amazingly enough there weren't many of the 'I love Teeder/Eddy/Kip crew' shouting their mouth's off at this particular juncture...
Step forward Messrs Blaisdell and Simms (not forgetting bench coach Rick 'U57' Brebant)...the Steelers supporters salute you !!!!!
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NEVER A DULL MOMENT!!
Nah then..Almost as soon as the ink had dried on the Star's celebratory Grand Slam Special, there were whispers of an investigation by the ISL into the financial irregularities down at the HOS. To start with, after Mr. Brown had been shuffled away from the Steelers and his sporting empire (sine die ban from the ISL), there was still the matter of who would pay the players their wages..we were still in the regular season with a handful of league games to go, the title to decide, the CC final to play in and the Play Offs to enter
remember. Step forward a consortium of interested parties called CJS. They entered into a verbal agreement with Ian Taylor of the ISL that they would
bankroll the team through the rest of the season. This amounted to a sum in the region of 200K by the end of the season. All was well and the Steelers achieved the trophies mentioned above. Not just CJS had help cash wise but various members of the Steelers organisation, including Dave Simms, Rick Brebant and Shayne McCosh helped out on that score...all dipping into their own pockets at some point to help out.
CJS eventually took over Darren Browns shares in the club and worked with the supporters reps and FOSSL to try to disentangle the mess that Brown had left the club in...
It was to no avail and the best course of action was considered to dissolve the old organisation and reform, with CJS holding the Steelers name, under license from the Pittsburgh Steelers (an arrangement entered into some 2-3 seasons previous), with the idea of playing in the ISL in the coming season..Sadly the ISL disputed that CJS had any right to the Franchise as they said the verbal agreement did not exist..The Franchise was thrown open to bids...CJS took the unprecedented step of taking the ISL to court in a bid to establish that a verbal agreement was as good as a written one..The judge didnt agree.. and the ISL awarded the franchise to a bid from Chesterfield millionaire Norton Lea and the EYE group (who had, earlier on in the year, approached Darren Brown with a view to purchasing his shares in the Steelers)..A good sized piece of the Steelers support was up in arms and came out in support of the CJS consortium who had taken the steps of contacting and meeting with fans regularly whilst all this was taking place..Around 2000 supporters attended a rally, along with many fans of other ISL teams, who all wanted this sorted out and SOON!!
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NO SUCH LUCK!!
NO contact was forthcoming from ANY of the other bidders...A deafening silence was all that was heard...CJS then announced that the Steelers had taken precautions by paying a bond into the Findus British National League with a view to playing in that division if all had gone wrong with the ISL... So now we had the situation of two teams wanting ice time at the Sheffield Arena..the Arena authorities decided in their wisdom, after listening to both sides that they 'would not enter into a contract with Norton Lea and the EYE Group' with a view to providing ice time...Norton Lea was the man that Darren Brown followed at Chesterfield FC and was entwined with the man in other ways...matters were to be taken further as the Fraud Squad were later to charge Mr Brown in relation to 'financial irregularities' at CFC
Couple this with talk of stripping the Steelers of their hard won titles (well all except the League was hard won..)and its was all a bit hectic here in the Socialist Republic for us hockey fans....
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UNCLE NORTONS TEAL AND ORANGE ARMY
Bloody Hell...it was an eventful period
...following a bit of a performance with the FBNL accepting then not accepting the Steelers into their ranks, amidst many claims and counter claims by both sides, the CJS bid had to bite the dust. SIV in their revolving door wisdom, decided that Norton Lea's ISL franchise bid WAS to get the nod, providing he lost contact with the EYE Group...which to give the owd bugger some credit he did. Then there was the question of the 'intellectual assets' i.e. the name and logo of the Sheffield Steelers. The license was updated by CJS shortly
after the organisation went to the wall, a very crafty move, and one that surprised the people who had accused the CJS group of being naïve business-wise.
This meant that anybody who acquired the franchise, would in effect need the
name STEELERS to try and keep the faith with the fans. So it was that 'Uncle'
Norton Lea told a group of Steelers supporters at a packed meeting at the Hilton in Sheffield that he had 'permission' from the liquidator to use the name
until the matter was officially sorted. We still held the titles we won last year, as some reckoned it was to sweeten the bid from Norton Lea in a bid to get. So it was either ISL with the Sheffield 'Whatever's' or FBNL with the Sheffield Steelers... a concrete buyer for the franchise...much to the chagrin of the ISL old guard...hehehehe...
Amongst the fans there was uproar..round about 1500 bits of uproar to be exact..that 1500 is about the number of fans that do not attend games at the HOS any more, mainly because of the way that Norton Lea was handed the franchise. Some came back after trying the product out but there still remains that missing 1500, much to the dismay of the Steelers management and the fans of other teams that had decided that as Steelers fans were all sheep anyway, they would not stay away...WRONG!! As it stood we struggled to reach 4000 gates, with sub 3000 appearing now and again. In a bid to win these missing people back, Uncle Nort asked the old war horse and idol of thousands, Rocket (or Rickety as he's known in 219) Ron Shudra back as commercial manager, to try and repeat the Steelers phenomenon of the old days. Sadly that bit failed, but for Ron it lead indirectly to another seasons worth of play in the ISL (and damned well the old sod performed too, with a goal on his home return) as a catastrophic injury crisis virtually ended
the Steelers season just as it started. Back came Simmsy to irritate all and
sundry as Announcer and Press mogul, and best of all Uncle Nort had the nouse to bring back Blaiser...
Due to the ISL awarding the franchise to Mr. Lea VERY late in the summer, there was doubt as to whether the Steelers would start the season with the rest of the much reduced ISL..(No Newcastle thanks to the EYE Groups performances, and no Cardiff either, as Bob Phillips ripped the guts out of the south Wales hockey community). The doubts were realized and the Steelers were to start a few weeks later than the others amid grumbles from a few uneducated souls around the league whining about us being able to pay
more cos the season would be shorter..erm..same number of games though yeah? Then came September 11th which prevented many of the players that Blaiser had recruited at short notice, travelling for weeks. A short note on Blaiser's recruitment here...Previous to the Grand Slam season Mike Blaisdell and Dave Simms looked at the CV's of near on 400 hockey players; this season, due to the time available they looked at 46 CV's..and its showed...
A couple of the players brought in had NHL pedigree Paul Kruse, the Steelers captain, and Brad Lauer being amongst them. Last years back up netminder from Nottingham Eoin McInerney was brought in as was ex-Florida Panthers nettie Ryan Bach. A few young untried lads were drafted into the organisation such as Cal Benazic (bless you!!) and Jason Mansoff. Then there was the return of a couple of last years team, in Jeff Sebastian, Rick Brebant and 'the Bobber', Brent Bobyck. It was a very short bench and we were told that we'd had to go for quality not quantity what with the reduced wage cap (400 miserly K) and the time span involved.
A good start to the season in front of a curious 5000 crowd saw the Steelers hammer a Storm side that would struggle all season...it was not the way things were to pan out as eventually we found ourselves at the bottom, at times swapping places with the Storm for a few weeks..Round about Christmas time came a small boost for the fans in the news that an agreement had been reached, well away from the press, between Norton Lea and CJS (who had moved on to taking over the ailing FBNL side Hull Thunder from
...tadaaaaa!! Darren Brown...DON'T ASK!!) over the use of the name and logo of the Steelers. All of a sudden merchandising, which had been conspicuous by its absence up till then, suddenly appeared. Seems CJS had been in the right all along...Did any of the other ISL fans that had doubted that hold their hands up and say they were wrong? Did they chuff!! In true ISL tradition they 'moved swiftly on'
Whether its the quality of players brought in or (as I and many others think) its been down to a huge injury crisis that at one point had the Steelers cancelling a game v the Bees because they couldn't ice a minimum number of skaters even taking into account a couple of youngsters from the Queens Road set up brought in to make up the numbers. Something had to be done and Ron Shudra dropped his mantle (and wages) as Commercial Manager to play as a utility player to good effect. some may say that was the start of our season on the whole, as Blaiser then brought in one of my all time favourite hockey players in Britain, Chris Brant to cover for injuries..Marc Dutiaume who had been playing up in Fife in the FBNL was the final player brought in to cover.
As it stood then, with the ISL title going to Belfast Giants and the Challenge Cup to be decided between Ayr and Belfast, (our feathery friends shocked everybody and pasted the Giants in their own building…stop sniggering that man in the kilt!!) there only remained the Play Off Championships to aim at. It has to be said that the Steelers came into a reasonable run of form as we
approached Play Off time. They can finish 3rd in the league above the Panthers (hehehe..and who said we were dead and buried by Christmas then?) and us fans remained optimistic that the squad that Blaiser had brought in was hard nosed enough to be a successful aggressive play off team.
Well we bloody well were…despite being behind to the Manchester Storm throughout a nail biting final in the NIC, (once more a Neutral venue for the Play-Offs) we came through, equalising in the dying minutes of regulation, almost taking it in OT, breaking our good friend and ex-Steeler Torchies heart to win on penalties..those of you old enough to remember the penalty win over the Panthers at Wembley many moons ago will have died a dozen deaths all over again during that game..
It wasn't a season of good hockey, (openly admitted to at times by MikeyB,) but at least we had some hockey to watch. I was one who said I wouldn't
watch a team owned by Uncle Nort, but I gave it a go and the old bug bit..THANK GOD!! And some of what looked like penny pinching at the beginning of the season to a lot of folks is now beginning to come out in the wash as a bit of sound financial jiggery pokery. It basically meant that we now had a little bit of continuity in the organisation and that we could move on to better things..
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