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‘I’m the Lisa who organised Sheffield Wednesday coach – I’m never doing it again’
Lisa Butterworth had never organised a football coach – and she never will again.
The Sheffield Wednesday fan unwittingly became a social media sensation this month thanks to one piece of A4 paper put up in her local pub, The Fox.
A poster with her phone number on advertising travel to Wembley for the League One play-off final, which they hadn’t yet reached, looked to have backfired massively following a 4-0 first leg defeat to Peterborough.
But after being inundated with thousands of texts and calls, Lisa got the last laugh thanks to one of football’s greatest ever comebacks. Her and friend Emma Thompson, who created the poster, explained how it all came to pass in a chat with Daily Star Sport.
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“Once we’d finished the last game of the season against Derby, I knew from that moment Wednesday would make the play-off final,” Lisa recalled.
“Call it a hunch, intuition, whatever you want to call it – I just knew from day one, and I said to all my friends it would be a Wednesday vs Barnsley final, without a shadow of a doubt.
“So I rang Emma, and just said ‘Hi Emma, do me a favour. Would you mind just putting a poster together for the play-off final?’ The one thing she missed was the word ‘provisional’.”
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The pair met in their local later that day and placed it on the notice board, expecting it to be seen just by their fellow regulars. So how did that picture of it end up all over Twitter, Instagram and Facebook?
Well, The Fox’s untimely refurbishment left it at the mercy of the builders who entered to begin working the following week. And with Sheffield being a two-team city, there was an obvious answer.
Lisa revealed: “I’d been told the poster had been taken down. Clearly the poster hadn’t been taken down. I know for a fact that a Sheffield United supporter found my poster and thought he’d have bants and take the mickey.”
Within hours she’d received countless messages teasing her anticipation of Wednesday reaching the final. But what began as harmless local fun quickly snowballed into a barrage of abuse from far and wide after the first-leg thumping.
“My phone was hotter than the sun,” said Lisa. “I was trying to watch the game and my phone was just constantly ring, ring, ring. I think by the end of Friday night I’d got 1,500 text messages, 1,500 calls, a hundred WhatsApp messages.
“These are from fans all over the country. Peterborough, United, Barnsley, Rotherham, Sunderland, Ipswich, Plymouth – even as far as Newcastle and Middlesbrough.
“I’d even had a phone call from Australia, America. And I was like ‘What is going on here? What actually is going on?’”
Emma added: “Up until then, it was all really funny. We was just laughing at the banter, we expected to get hounded because we’d jumped the gun a bit and that’s what people had seen.
“As a friend, you’re trying to support her. And when all the banter’s kicking off the first time it was quite funny. Then after that first game at Peterborough I just thought ‘oh god, what have we done here? This was a bad idea. I shouldn’t have done this, I should’ve talked her out of the poster’.”
Courier Lisa, who was getting no moral support from her United-supporting partner, initially put her phone on aeroplane mode as a temporary fix – but she was forced into a change of number as it continued to blow up.
The saga threatened to overshadow the second leg. That was, until Wednesday’s miraculous comeback which was completed by a 98th minute equaliser from Liam Palmer, before they went on to dramatically win on penalties.
“At half-time, Emma said to me it’s 2-0 and I said my bus now has two wheels. And then we got to full time I’m like absolutely buzzing, it’s now got four wheels.
“I literally felt like we’d won the Champions League in Istanbul,” said Lisa, whose foresight this time came in handy, as she took her old sim card to Hillsborough with her.
Her and Emma not only revelled in the post-match pitch invasion, but also the apologies that rained in from those who had given the stick.
“We’d like to congratulate Darren Moore and the team for such a fantastic performance because the atmosphere was out of this world,” Lisa continued.
“In 35 years of being a football fan, I’ve never ever experienced a game like that. All the emotions, the excitement, the adrenaline, the anxiety. We even had tears at the end. It was absolutely amazing.”
Lisa’s 49-seater coach will be Wembley bound next Monday, with IT accounts manager Emma putting her creativity to use once more.
She explained: “I’ve got little posters, we’ve got a flag with Lisa’s coaches on, we’ve got pictures to put up in the coach.
“We’ve got some T-shirts coming with Lisa’s coaches on and I expect us to be making a bit of fuss in Wembley.”
Lisa joked she’s content with her reputation being back in tact regardless of the result, but does have one request for the person who caused her all the grief: “Builder blade, reveal yourself.”
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