Born on this day is FA Cup winner and Sunderland hero Richie Pitt. The Ryhope-born defender’s career was sadly cut short due to injury, but not before he won silverware with his boyhood club.
Pitt was an international for England’s schoolboys, as well as playing in Sunderland’s 1969 FA Youth-Cup winning side. He made his professional debut in the First Division, aged just 17 years old in a 3-1 defeat at Coventry.
One of the most memorable moments in Sunderland’s FA Cup win in 1973 came less than a minute into the match. The lads were huge underdogs going into the cup final, with Leeds being one of the best sides in the country and Sunderland being a second division team. We had to make some sort of impact early on, and up stepped Richie Pitt. With just thirty-three seconds on the clock, Pitt threw himself into a robust tackle on Leeds’ Alan Clarke. Pitt Later said: “The tackle sort of set the tone for match.” As we all know, Pitt would be on the cup-winning side that day.
After only a few more games, and only in his early twenties, Pitt sustained an apparently minor knee injury which proved to be a cruciate ligament injury and effectively ending his professional career. He went on to play for non-league club Blyth Spartans, and trained as a teacher working at Thornhill School, later becoming assistant head of Duncan House. In 2013, he was working as a mathematics teacher and head of year at Seaham School of Technology.
