Hello everyone, I'm doing a roving reporter job here, sitting in the newly revamped Sportsman pub on Warminster Road, Norton Lees.

I started going in The Sportsman in 2004 when I first moved to Norton Lees from Nether Green, and really liked it. Then it gradually went downhill until last year it looked like it had hit rock bottom. I've heard tales from locals of "the old days" of The Sportsman, when it had the best snooker table of any pub in Sheffield and all the regulars knew one another, when women felt comfortable coming in for drinks on their own; one big happy family, and was wondering what the newly revamped Sportsman was like and whether it looked like it could possibly reach the giddy heights of the good old days.

Well, I'm sitting in the corner having a well-deserved pint of Stella having worked 15 hour days for several weeks now, and all I can say is, it's great. The refurb job is lovely, the distressed leather seating works very well with the rest of the chocolate and cream decor, the gold framed pictures (not real gold, duh!) are suitably inoffensive (unlike my debut novel!) and the girls behind the bar are lovely. And...customers are talking to one another, just like in The Sheaf.

Wonderful, really great. And of course I'm on my laptop - so it's got Wifi.

Well done, keep it up! :thumbsup:

Over to Yog Sothoth who's sitting next to me to report on the beer...

Thank you, The White Rose. You must be the woman in the mad hat, sat over there?

I can confirm that the Sporty is in better form than I've seen it for donkey's. More importantly, for lovers of real ale, the sour horrors of last year have been replaced by a superb example of the notoriously temperamental Tetley's Bitter (and I know my Tetley's - I'm a Leeds lad) and Greene King's tangy IPA. My fellow members of Sheffield CAMRA take note. ;)

They do some decent pub grub too.

Sounds like an ad, all this, but it ain't. If the place were rubbish I'd say so, but the pubco and new tenants have framed themselves and fettled the place. I'm just extolling its virtues because I think they've turned it into a decent pub and one that deserves the custom. It is my local, after all, and I want to see it succeed.

Well I never! One of the lasses behind the bar has just plonked two drinks on the bar and said "A gentleman in The Sports Bar has just bought these for you."

Turns out it is one of our closest friends who was, coincidentally, drinking in the adjacent bar (the one with the beautifully refurbished snooker table.)

Maybe he spied my mad hat through the partition or, more likely, heard my tinkling ladylike laugh. :banana:

He's wondering if anyone knows where the old snooker trophy cabinet went with all the old snooker trophies in. It would actually be nice to have them back on display in the new Sportsman, to link the old to the new. Oh, and, being a renowned local silversmith, he actually designed and made one of the trophies!

So...where are they? Anyone know? :partyhat:

It's actually 'The Sportsman, Harvey Clough Road'

I popped in a couple of fridays ago for a quick pint.
Lookin good.

It's actually 'The Sportsman, Harvey Clough Road'

(shrugs) Some people refer to it as The Sportsman, Warminster Road. Whatever. So, rather than merely correcting me, have you got anything positive to contribute to the thread? :hihi: Any opinions of your own to give about the pub? Mmmm? Have you been in? What do you think of it?

I popped in a couple of fridays ago for a quick pint.
Lookin good.


Dan! Thank you so much for fixing our roof the other day, it is now leak free! You and your colleague did a superb job and it was lovely to see you again after so long!

Dan! Thank you so much for fixing our roof the other day, it is now leak free! You and your colleague did a superb job and it was lovely to see you again after so long!
Glad it was such a quick, easy (and cheap!) fix for you.
Our paths may cross again in the Sporty some time.