Born on this day in Birkenhead in 1961 is forward Peter Davenport. Peter played almost 100 league games for the Lads, but managed just 15 goals.
Dav began his professional career in 1982, signing for Nottingham Forest after being scouted playing semi-pro on Merseyside. The transfer was a strange deal, as Forest suggested that instead of paying a fee, they would give his club Cammell Laird a new home kit – typical Brian Clough! It turned out to be a stroke of genius from Nottingham Forest, as Davenport was their top scorer for two seasons in a row. By the time he’d left, Davenport has racked up an impressive 54 league goals in 118 appearances, including a City Ground hat-trick against his future club Sunderland in 1984. His impressive performances won him a solitary England cap against Eire in 1985, and also prompted Manchester United to pay £570,000 for his services, replacing the legendary Mark Hughes in March 1986. However, it took Davenport 10 games to find his first goal for the club, which came in a 4-0 win over Leicester. It would be the only goal he scored in that 1985/86 season, as he was unable to replicate Barcelona-bound Hughes’s impressive form.
Davenport joined Middlesbrough in 1988, before arriving at Roker Park in 1990 as a replacement for the ageing Eric Gates. He was signed to get the best out of star man Marco Gabbiadini, and their partnership got off to an impressive start. Despite this, the lads were relegated and Peter was part of the club at a time where we were at a low ebb.
A neat and tidy player in both appearance and performance (he really looked the business in the white Vaux away top), he was popular at Roker Park, as many players were, for his work ethic and commitment on the pitch. Davenport scored in Sunderland’s famous 2-1 win over Chelsea in the 1992 FA Cup quarter-final, although his opener is overshadowed in the history books by Gordon Armstrong’s outstanding header. Shortly after this, he scored an absolute screamer against his former club, Boro, as we won 1-0 at Roker, and then played in the FA Cup final as we lost to Liverpool. Had Don Goodman not been cup-tied, it might have been a different story – which two of Dav, The Don, and John Byrne would have been the preferred partnership?
After leaving Sunderland, Davenport spent time north of the border with Airdrieonians and St Johnstone, before winding down his career back in England with a number of clubs, notching his 100th league goal while with Macclesfield, and eventually retiring in 2004. He’s managed sides in England and Wales, most recently assisting at Bradford Park Avenue, while working in education.
Away from football, Dav was a collector of art, particularly works that featured Liverpool’s waterfront – a secret passion that was revealed in 2010 when 27 of his paintings went up for auction. He revealed that few, if any, of his colleagues had known anything about this secret passion for marine art which had been inspired by paintings owned by his parents. As wages in the top divisions were nothing like the astronomical size they are now, Dave spent wisely to build up his collection, and said: “I don’t think one of my football colleagues ever knew about the art – it was a subject that never came up. One or two may have said ‘nice pictures’ when they visited the house, but that was it. I never bought for investment, it was always what I liked the look of. It is a wrench... they might prove to be hopeless investments, but I’ve enjoyed owning them and looking at them.”
The money raised funded purchases of early railway carriage prints, and rail transport and tourism posters as his tastes in art changed course a little.
Despite his Merseyside roots, Dav’s kids have apparently been raised as Sunderland fans, proof positive, as if it were needed, that once a Sunderland man, always a Sunderland man.
