Alan Woodward, who played as a winger for Sheffield United from 1964 to 1978, died on Thursday aged 68.
A native of Sheffield, Woodward made his League debut on October 7, 1964, against Liverpool. Under the management of John Harris, the Blades had re-established themselves as a force in the First Division, and as this was also a time when arch-rivals Sheffield Wednesday were riding high in the top flight, the Steel City Derby was one of the big fixtures of the First Division calendar. During the mid-1960s, Sheffield United brought through young talent which included Woodward, Alan Birchenall, Len Badger and Mick Jones. All four of whom would come to prominence during the 1964-65 season, when old guard players like Alan Hodgkinson and Joe Shaw, the latter having made his debut for the club as far back as 1948, and Woodward would finish the season with seven league goals (one of which came in a 3-0 win over Liverpool in March 1965).
Although it was a poor league finish from the Blades, this would be followed by two top half finishes as Woodward’s star rose. A winger who seemingly had speed and skill in abundance, he would become a deadly striker and remains the club’s highest post-war goalscorer and was also the club’s season top scorer on no less than six occasions. He was lethal from dead ball situations and corners, and was a constant menace for opposing defences. He established a partnership down the right-wing with full-back Len Badger. Relegation, however, followed in 1968 despite the acquisition of the prodigious playmaker Tony Currie, with whom Woodward was to establish a telepathic understanding that would be much celebrated at Bramall Lane.
Three years of Second Division awaited, in which Woodward continued to star and John Harris, in his second spell as manager, built a team that would win promotion around players like Badger, Currie, Woodward, Gil Reece, Geoff Salmons, Billy Dearden, Eddie Colquhoun, Ted Hemsley and John Flynn. Promotion came in 1971, and the Blades kicked on in the top flight by making a blistering start before eventually finishing 10th. Some of the football played, as you would expect from such players, could be exquisite. Highlights of the season included a 7-0 win over Ipswich Town in which Woodward scored a hat-trick, and moments that are now viewable on Youtube such as these:
With Ken Furphy now in charge, Sheffield United would finish 6th in 1974/75, their second highest post-war position and only four points off the top in a tightly contested league. But this was to be as good as it got, as relegation followed. Yet Woodward continued to star and in fact he scored double figures in the league for 10 consecutive seasons, and missed few games over that period.
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A lot of his career coincided with an era where some managers, culminating with Alf Ramsey, experimented with doing away with wingers altogether. Even England winning a World Cup doing so by no means provided vindication for this way of thinking. Hence Woodward would be one of a long list of players who never got the England cap they deserved.
Woodward left Sheffield United in 1978 and moved to the USA to play for Tulsa Roughnecks in the NASL. After retiring from the professional game, he continued to live in Tulsa.
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