On this day in 1969, former Sunderland defender Gareth Hall was born in London. Originally, he joined the club on loan from Chelsea but was then brought to the club permanently just one month later. Hall was voted Sunderland’s and Chelsea's worst ever player in two seperate unrelated fan polls and prevented Dariusz Kubicki from matching SAFC’s post-war consecutive appearances record.
Hailing from Croydon, Hall started his career as an apprentice at Chelsea and made his debut for the club in 1987. He ended up playing over 150 games for the Blues, winning a Full Members Cup and featuring in the Cup Winners’ Cup along the way. The defender’s game time was limited by the presence of his teammate (and current Scotland national team manager) Steve Clarke however.
In December 1995 he signed on loan for Sunderland and made his debut just five days later off of the bench in a 3-1 defeat to Derby County away from home, Marco Gabbiadini scored for County that day. The Wales international (eligible through his mother) then didn’t feature again until the transfer was made permanent but it was a day to forget for him playing Leicester City, as he was sent off through two yellow cards after 88 minutes. Luckily, we were able to keep the game goalless to earn a point at home despite this in the same game in which Shay Given made his debut.
Another 12 appearances followed in the 95/96 campaign but it was the next season, with Sunderland in the Premier League for the first time, where the bulk of his involvement in our kit came. He started all but six of our 43 games in all competitions. Game number one of his season was probably the most notable however. With Dariusz Kubicki set to break the aforementioned post-war consecutive appearances record in an away match at Derby, he was inexplicably dropped in favour of Gareth Hall. The only explanation seeming to be that Kubicki and manager Peter Reid had had some kind of falling out. We’d gotten off to a decent enough start back in the top flight, only losing one of our opening five matches but we materialised to lose 1-0 to Derby and we’d win just one of our next four league matches following this. Although he was widely seen as absolutely terrible, it does make you wonder how he would have fared for us in the Third Division or League One and if he would have been considered one of our worst ever players had he been playing alongside the likes of Calum McFadzean, Glen Loovens and Joel Lynch.
Eventually, Sunderland were relegated by the margin of just a point, on a total of 40 points which was very unlucky. Relegation pretty much brought Hall’s career on Wearside to an end and in the following season he played just twice more for us and played more games out on loan at Brentford in a month long loan spell. At the end of the campaign he joined Swindon Town.
During his three years at Swindon, he suffered relegation in 2000 to the third tier and in the following year he moved to non league football with Havant and Waterlooville, where he stayed until 2006 ending his playing days.
Post-playing he’s been the assistant manager at Hayes and Yeading United and Farnborough as well as coaching at Gordon’s School. In 2018 he was appointed as the Head of Football Operations at AiScout, a company that uses data to aid with player performances.
On the international stage, he earned nine caps for Wales, once helping to keep a clean sheet against Italy in a 1-0 away victory.
