Born on this day in Mauchline, Ayrshire is former Sunderland player Hughie Wilson. He captained the ‘Team of All Talents’, winning three top flight titles in nearly a decade at the club. Surely even better on a personal note, ‘Lalty’ sits in 5th place on the ALS list of the 100 best Sunderland players, only behind Ned Doig, Bobby Gurney, Charlie Buchan and Raich Carter, which cements his legendary status.
Lalty was a wing half with a prodigious goal scoring record. In his 258 appearances, he found the back of the net 45 times. Speaking of his appearances, he is the only man in the club’s history to have played in Sunderland’s first ever League game and play our first game at Roker Park . On a less impressive note, he was the first Sunderland player to be sent off in a League game, which is likely why Lee Cattermole had a poster of Wilson up in his room as a boy (probably). Lalty is Sunderland royalty, even if no one alive has ever seen him play.
If we had been able to see him play, we would have been watching a seemingly entirely different sport, not just because Sunderland were the best club