John Smith’s PNE fans’ panel view: A show of Steel for three points at Sheffield United

The majority of runners in the London event would tell you the pain they had felt at various stages was only temporary, compared with the real sense of pride in reaching the Mall to complete the 26-mile course.

In similar fashion, our fans have also felt pain on the road while watching their team several times this season.

Although they could take some pride from this result, on a lesser scale than the ones felt by the exhausted athletes, they did not receive the medals they all deserve for their tremendous vocal support during the 2025/26 campaign.

As is the tradition for many clubs’ fans on their last away day outing of the season, many of ours arrived in fancy dress.

Although I did not see a Batman this year, I did manage to spot a Caped Crusader out on the pitch in man of the match Liam Lindsay whose two headed goals were the catalyst to ensure The Witch, The Final Boss, numerous Arabs, Hawaiian-shirted fans and even a pair of bananas all left in a joyous mood.

Our fans had arrived in Sheffield, ready to party in much larger numbers than the handful who had ventured to the midweek game at Birmingham City.

The noise they made must surely have spurred on the players in helping us race into a 2-0 lead inside the first 20 minutes, one which we comfortably held until half-time.

Russ Abbott loved a party with a ‘happy atmosphere’ and it certainly became one for our fans, who advised the larger number of mainly silent home fans that they would have been better off going to watch the snooker at the Crucible.

They also taunted them with chants of ‘can we play you every week?’, hardly surprising considering we have scored three times in winning all four of our games against both United and Wednesday this season.

The blunted Blades looked a bit sharper in the second half but our defensive block appeared to be coping well in dealing with any threat.

Things took a turn for the worse when United converted what I thought was a soft penalty with fewer than 20 minutes left.

It came minutes after Lewis Dobbin looked like he was going to put us in an unassailable 3-0 lead when he had an open net after great work from Daniel Jebbison, but the grounded keeper made a world class reflex save.

Dobbin made up for this when he rounded the keeper to restore our two-goal advantage five minutes later, but this only lasted a few minutes before the home side reduced the deficit again.

Wins at Bramall Lane have been very sparse since I saw the legendary Alex Bruce score the only goal of the game in a 1-0 win in 1978.

The Blades have scored many late goals on a number of times since and I feared this was going to be another one of those occasions.

Despite a few scares, particularly in injury time, we held firm to record our third win in the 25 league matches played there since the days of Brucey.

It is doubtful whether we could afford to sign Dobbin on a permanent basis but, if we could, he might become a cult hero here like Bruce and – one day – have his portrait painted on the Town End mural if it was to be extended.