I do not normally find myself cheering Sheffield on, and especially not after all the bad feeling at the end of the last football season, but tonight they are in the final of University Challenge against Christ Church College, Oxford
I have no particular affiliation with either Oxford or Sheffield. I know people from both places, and have visited neither (passing through Oxford in a car doesn’t really count). I am using the rule of thumb method outlined by one of my colleagues recently: if one team introduces themselves saying they are “reading” a subject and another says they are “studying” a subject, then go for the more down-to-earth team.
In the case of Sheffield this is an easy decision. I am pretty sure that last week a couple of them said they were “doing a PhD”.  Quite apart from that, they have been bloody good so far.
And if our cheers can drown out the cries of ‘rah, rah, rah, we’re going to smash the oiks’ so much the better. Your tenuous connection is that your Northern brother-in-law was at Sheffield Uni. And certainly studying engineering, not reading it…
Of course you wanted Sheffield to win. Your only doing what we all do over here in the Uk you want the underdogs to win. I was doing the same this Saturday when I was cheering on Barnsley to beat the posh millionaire Chelsea boys of the premier league. They won as well lol.