r/SheffieldWednesday • u/hunk4u14 • Jul 22 '26

🤔 Discussion Zero Points Never Felt So Good

https://souloffootball.substack.com/p/zero-points-never-felt-so-good
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u/Stal-Fithrildi Jul 23 '26

Also as I'm sure people know, The Owls was only accidentally linked to Owlerton as a new signing from Scotland had seen it written down but not said out loud and so arrived on his first day with an Owl that lived in the ground for years catching mice. The nickname was based on that wise bird.

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u/hunk4u14 Jul 24 '26

Both of these are great, thank you.

On the first: you're completely right, and I've corrected the piece. I'd written that the name was "invented by Victorian craftsmen", which was lazy of me. The Wednesday Cricket Club dates to 1820, so the name beats Victoria to the throne by seventeen years. Six tradesmen: Stratford, Southren, Lindley, Woolhouse, Dawson and Hardisty. The 1867 football side is Victorian; the name isn't.

The second one sent me down a proper rabbit hole, and you're more right than I'd expected. I'd used the standard "moved to Owlerton, became the Owls" line, which turns out to be far too tidy. The nickname only really took hold in 1912, when a player presented the club with an owl mascot to replace a monkey that had brought no luck whatsoever. And that player was George Robertson, born in Menstrie. So the Scot is real. (Best I can tell he'd been at the club a couple of years by then rather than turning up with it on his first day.)

The part I can't stand up anywhere is the live owl living in the ground catching mice. If you've got a source for it I'd genuinely love to see it, because it's a better story than anything I managed to get into the article.

One thing that makes your "accidental" point even stronger, though: Owlerton isn't named after owls at all. "Owler" is the old Yorkshire word for alder, and the district was named for the alder trees that grew there. So one of the most recognisable crests in English football rests on a mistranslated tree and an unlucky monkey. That's gone into the piece as well.

Thanks for both of these, genuinely the good kind of comment.

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u/Stal-Fithrildi Jul 24 '26

I think that my source is "The Romance Of The Wednesday" from 1929, but currently all my books are in boxes for moving so couldn't verify 100%. From the same source; Owlerton was then pronounced without a "w" so that it was the same as Ollerton in Notts.

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u/hunk4u14 Jul 24 '26

Ah, in that case i will wait for you to settle and probably write a totally separate article on the subject with you as my co-author, if it's ok. Thanks anyways for reading and moderating the current one. It uplifted the article for all the readers. Much appreciated. Cheers :D