Richard Sutcliffe: The Battle of Bramall Lane anniversary got me thinking ...

Or that’s at least what the morally upright brigade would have had us believe in the immediate aftermath of Sheffield United’s First Division clash against West Bromwich Albion being abandoned due to the Blades not having sufficient players to continue.

Three red cards being followed by two United players limping out of the action after manager Neil Warnock had made all his three substitutes meant referee Eddie Wolstenholme had no option but to call a halt eight minutes from time with Albion 3-0 ahead.

The fall-out from the events of March 16, 2002, saw all manner of accusations fly back and forth, including then Albion chief Gary Megson claiming the Blades coaching staff had been ordering their players to feign injury in order to force an abandonment under the law that states a game cannot continue when one team is down to less than seven men.

This accusation was later disproved when Michael Brown, one of the two United players who left the field in the wake of the red cards brandished at Simon Tracey, Patrick Suffo and Georges Santos, failed to play again that season due to the injury that had forced him out of the action against the Baggies.

Away from the respective club loyalties, others also had plenty to say with some commentators even going so far as to suggest the very fabric of football had been damaged.

For many fans, however, the ‘Battle of Bramall Lane’ was not something to deplore with there instead being nothing quite so certain to get the juices flowing than a good, old fashioned scrap.

So, in honour of the many, many on-field dust-ups that have kept fans entertained down the years, this column has chosen the tenth anniversary of the ‘Battle of Bramall Lane’ to list its all-time top five.

In fifth place is the contretemps between Billy Bremner and Kevin Keegan at the 1974 Charity Shield that led to both players being sent off and, bizarrely, leaving the field without their shirts.

Just ahead of that famous row in the notoriety stakes is the spat between Rudi Voeller and Frank Riijkaard at the 1990 World Cup when Germany’s most famous perm was left covered in Dutch phlegm after both men had been dismissed.

David Batty and Graeme Le Saux coming to blows in Moscow also deserves mention due to the two being Blackburn team-mates at the time they exchanged punches on the pitch in a Champions League tie, while runners-up spot must go to the infamous ‘Battle of Santiago’ in the 1962 World Cup.

Not only did Chile and Italy spend the entire 90 minutes kicking, punching and scuffling with each other but the set-to also elicited perhaps the best post-match comment from a referee, English official Ken Aston saying: “I wasn’t reffing a football match, I was acting as an umpire in military manoeuvres.”

As memorable as this clash was, however, there can be only one winner in this most unscientific of polls and it is the 1984 Spanish Cup final between Barcelona and Athletic Bilbao at the Bernabeu.

The blue-touch paper had been lit the previous year when Maradona, then of Barcelona, had suffered a broken ankle courtesy of an ugly challenge by Andoni Goikoetxea, who went by the delightful moniker ‘the Butcher of Bilbao’.

Bernhard Schuster likened playing Bilbao to “going to war in Korea” then further heightened tensions ahead of the Cup final, as did Javier Clemente, the Bilbao coach, when he branded Schuster “a retard” for making the earlier comment.

The ill-feeling that simmered all the way through a 1-0 win for Bilbao then exploded at the final whistle as a running battle broke out between both sets of players that included Maradona flattening Miguel Sola as others exchanged kung-fu kicks in front of the horrified King of Spain.

Eventually, peace was restored and Bilbao were able to get on with their celebrations at winning the Cup. Twenty eight years on, however, it is not the win that is most remembered in Spain but the post-match aggro.

Naughty? Undoubtedly. Unedifying? Most definitely. But memorable all the same. Happy anniversary, the ‘Battle of Bramall Lane’.