Born on this day in 1966 is local lad and boyhood Sunderland fan, David Corner. In just his fifth appearance for the Lads, David made a fatal error in the 1985 Milk Cup Final that he was never able to forget...
Corner’s career started brightly- he was just 18 when he made his Sunderland debut against Nottingham Forest. He was hauled off however, when future Black Cat Peter Davenport scored a hat trick.
Corner’s fourth appearance was in an impressive 3-1 win against Norwich. The same opposition we would face at Wembley just a week later. He was given a start at the back, replacing suspended skipper Shaun Elliott; despite our best efforts to appeal the suspension.
Our back five had managed to keep a clean sheet going into the break. But right at the start of the second half, Sunderland’s rookie centre half tried to usher the ball out for a goal kick, but he was dispossessed by the persistence of John Deehan, and Norwich scored- via a deflection from Gordon Chisholm’s chest. “I should have kicked the ball out,” said Corner, who "didn't think there’s a day goes by where that game isn’t mentioned”.
Norwich went on to lift the cup, and the mistake haunted Corner throughout his career. Shortly after representing England in the World Youth International Championships, held in Russia 1985, he was sent to Cardiff on loan to gain League experience.
After 17 first team appearances for Sunderland in 1986/87, he quickly faded out of sight under new gaffer Denis Smith. He appeared just four times as the Lads stormed Division Three back in 1987/88, with his season including a brief spell on loan at Peterborough.
Corner went on to play for Darlington after Leyton Orient, and his final season in League football earned him a Fourth Division Championship medal with the Quakers. He played alongside fellow former Sunderland men Mark Prudhoe and Frank Gray.
Corner suffered endless abuse due to the mistake, which started as soon as he got off the team bus back in ‘85. He was just 18 at the time, a young lad who made a daft mistake in a game of football. But no one deserves the torment he was put through for years to come.
A couple of years later he was assaulted in a Sunderland nightclub, leaving him hospitalised for 12 days with a fractured eye socket and broken cheekbone, while a separate occasion saw him punched and left with broken teeth and stitches.
Local journalist and TV presenter Jeff Brown even did a play exploring David Corner's abuse, and the lifelong impact the mistake had on his day-to-day life:
"Sometimes the best ideas come to you in the middle of the night, and one time I just thought of David Corner. I didn’t know him at the time, but I approached him at the Whitburn cricket club and asked him about it. He was a bit surprised, but we sat down once and he talked about life. We recorded that and a lot of the play was David’s own words, but it was a great experience to see his story brought to life. It was great to see him get his redemption, he made a massive mistake in the final, and got a lot of abuse. So, it was a great experience and I turned it into an audio book. We tried to sell it on Amazon, but someone uploaded it to YouTube a week later!"
Why didn’t he just put it into Row Z?!
