The Blades have been flying the Red Flag for some years now, and still many times a season we have the same two questions:

What flag is that?
It’s Albania

Why Albania?
Well……

For many summers, The Blades travelled to France for a weekend’s cricket in front of the chateau at Les Ormes. In 2006, the World Cup was on, France got to the final, and the locals would sing “Allez Les Bleus“

That year, Blades won both games and in the bus on the way back from dinner on Sunday, amongst the many songs belted out was the chant “Allez Les Blades”. This caught on among the team and so did the hashtag #ALB

Fast forward a couple of years, suddenly any WhatsApp messages and tweets with the hashtag would automatically have a red box with a black dot added. What was going on? Well we finally worked out that the red box was a flag and the red dot was a double-headed eagle. The Eurovision was on; the technology was seeing #ALB and, assuming we were showing our support for Albania in the Contest, was adding the Albanian flag.

So from then on, The Blades have adopted Albania as our proxy Home Nation, and The Red Flag flies proudly whenever The Baggy Blues take to the field.

#ALB

Proud to be a Blade.
Proud to be an Albanian