I’m writing this on May 4th 2023. It’s a day that many people refer to as Star Wars Day. I’ve never seen Star Wars and I’m not likely to bother after all these years, but the day means more to me than a film ever could. It was the day that the biggest adventure of my young life began and it still resonates 50 years later.
We lived in a council house in the picturesque (?) village of Esh Winning in the county of Durham and just a week or so earlier, we’d had a fire. I can’t recall the exact date, but the cricket season had started because my Dad was still out after the game and the football season was in full swing as I’d been allowed to stay up to watch Match of the Day, so I went upstairs to wash my hands and face, clean my teeth and get my pyjamas on, but could smell burning.
Those houses had upstairs fireplaces and we had them covered with wallpaper to keep out draughts, hard to believe these days, but the one above the living room where the fire was always lit to heat the range cooker must have caught light from a spark and my sister’s bedroom was ablaze! My Mam had to run round to next door to use the only phone in our street to dial 999 and, to get a bit nearer to the point, the upshot was pretty bad smoke damage and the council rehousing us to a two bed flat a few hundred yards away. To make that work better, I stayed at my Grandma’s house for a few weeks.
And so, scene set, I awoke on the morning of May 4th and went downstairs to get dressed in front of the fire, where my clothes for the day at school were in a tidy pile on an armchair. Part way through, I came across my red and white scarf and bobble hat, both knitted by my Mam, but hardly needed in early May.
“Grandma, what have you put these here for?”
“Well, you’ll need them, won’t you?”
“What for, it’s not cold!”
“You’re going to Wembley son! I think you’ll need them there….”
We’d been to Hillsborough for the semi and I’d stood on my swing in the Kop end with my Dad, my Uncle and his girlfriend. I remember my Old Man saying that I should get used to the idea that we’d lose, but to me there was no better team than SAFC. No better player than Dennis Tueart, no better keeper than Monty, and no way that we would not be able to beat Arsenal. Same rules applied to Leeds. Whoever they thought they were, as a 10-year-old, I just knew and I knew I loved Sunderland.
So in minutes the car pulled up outside and off we went to London. I can’t remember much of the journey, but I do remember defending the music of Slade, the Sweet and T Rex that was in the charts over breakfast and my Uncle’s girlfriend sticking up for me against the scoffing of the two blokes, and then we went up to Central London.
It poured down! So much so that my Dad had to get another pair of trousers from Army & Navy on Victoria Street that he then wore for the Cup Final in the afternoon. He had those trousers in his possessions till the day he died. Obviously, he just couldn’t get rid, even when they were knackered, and still wore them for gardening and jobs around the house well into his 70s.
The game is a bit of a blur if I’m honest. We had seats down near the Leeds end while my Uncle was behind the goal with the Sunderland fans. He told us afterwards about the panicked shouts from people around him…
“Ha’way lads, keep them out”
“They are keeping them out!”
“Why, ha’way then, keep keeping them out!”
People asking how long was left every few seconds till that whistle went. I can remember the goal going in, but other than that I have nothing other than TV pictures to remind me of what happened, and I have watched the game a few times – Ritchie Pitt’s tackle on Sniffer Clarke being a favourite moment along with the iconic saves and celebrations of course.
We left the stadium, me happy in the certainty that I was right all along and Sunderland were, indeed the greatest football team on earth and my Dad I can only guess. These days with the benefit of age and hindsight, I think I can imagine his disbelief, the raw emotions of what he had witnessed, and being there with his son, something that these days means so much to me when we go to see Sunderland, must have been overwhelming. Good Lord, Dennis Cirkin’s second at West Brom had tears in my eyes watching on the box, so how he kept it together as we trudged up Wembley Way, I’ll never know.
Another highlight of the day was finding a pound note on the road on the way to the station. My Dad put it in his pocket and said that it was mine for when we got home. For years I ribbed him that I never saw it again, though I’m sure I did – at least he always said so!
And then my memory of walking through the crowds in Wembley Park station, just creases me every time. Through we went to the small opening from concourse to platform and a train was in the station, and there right in front of us I saw my Uncle jumping onto the train and shouted out to him. Out of 100,000 people, to be there at the same moment was miraculous.
To my dying day, I will have the faces of those two brothers etched in my memory. They remembered the 1937 win – Ronnie aged 16 at the time and Albert a going on 7-year-old – they’d been to Sunderland through the Alan Brown years and had taken me to see my first game with crowds as low as 11,000. That look of disbelief, of mutual understanding and the almost imperceptible headshake – how did that just happen? I’ll never forget the moment of silence, stillness, as their eyes met before the return to normal bluff northern-ness and the laughter and singing on the tube.
Football you see, it’s more than just a game, certainly not a business, not to us. It’s ours and its heart is not for sale. I hate what money, greed and capitalism has done to this game but I stand by my club and those memories will be with me to the day I die. Here we are 50 years later, with the most exciting young team I have ever seen. With a mountain to climb if we want to be back in the top flight and that whole financial jungle to negotiate if we want to stick it out.
But win, lose or draw, I am proud to be Sunderland – it’s who I am and I hope none of us ever lose sight of that in the maelstrom of emotions and arguments that the game throws up.
As ever, Keep the Faith – we ARE Sunderland!
