When I was a young teenager growing up in Horden (late 70's), I used to go to every home game at Roker Park. It started with getting the Select coach on the top road. It would park down near the water and me and my mate would walk up the back streets to Roker. Close to the ground was a church where we would get pie and chips and then on to the game. After the game there was such a crowd walking those back lanes I'm sure my feet never touched the floor making my way back to the coach. Happy friggin days for sure. It feels so commercialised when I go to games now, I kind of hanker for those simpler times.
i've posted many times before that i'd give my right arm for 1 more match at Roker Park and i sincerely mean that, my 1st game was v West Ham and we won 6-0. It was 1977 and from then on i can remember missing only 1 game(Boro) because of illness until we moved to the sol, as you say mate happy days indeed, walking from Southwick, through Fulwell across the green railway bridge and down the small streets near Fulwell Road, in Redby chippy as that's where the back of the queue was to get in the Fulwell End, paying 70 pence to get in, walking up the steps before looking down on our magnificent lush bright green pitch, bloody hell i'm filling up, RIP Roker Park, i'll love you forever
My formative years were the 80's, matchday was soooooooooo much better then, totally different atmosphere. Feel sorry for younger supporters who have only experienced the Sky years.
Murray out, you just reminded me about the pitch at Roker Park. God! it was in such beautiful condition. I used to dream about running out there and playing in the red and white. Outside of wembley at the time I would say we had the best pitch in England.
where have the years gone from the late 50 to date great match days my favorite years the 70 and the skp erra many more to come
Vince, they went by in a flash and the older I get the quicker they seem to go. But your right, many more great match days to come.
Unlucky Vaughan, best atmosphere I've ever experienced. Was there with 45,000 others when we beat West Ham to get promoted. What a brilliant night...
Opened 97 mate, sad day. Nicer stadium don't get me wrong, but Roker Park holds lots of special memories for most of I would say.
47000 haha, best atmosphere i've ever witnessed, including all the derbies the semi finals and finals i've attended, absolutely deafening, incredible
I think there are a lot of rose tinted specks being worn here regarding Roker Park...Yes I remember there being some magical atmospheric games there, mainly cup or promotion games. And the atmosphere was great almost every week in the 4 or five seasons following the 1973 cup win..However, once thet decimated the Roker End, it was never quite the same, and in the last few years at Roker Park, the singing in the Fullwell End was poor to say the least.. It's not stadiums that make atmosphere but the fans that are in them, and the SoL can be every bit as good as Roker Park at its best when the fans are in full voice.
Myself, My parentss and my 2 brothers used to go in the 80's for less than £30 including a programme and a pie/cuppa - now I pay £435 for a season ticket (which isn't bad considering) but money has destroyed the game of football in every way from what we knew in the 80's
The best atmospher has to be the 1973 cup replay against Man City any body who was there will know what I mean. It was the first time I have seen the ground sold out and the noise OMFG was louder than I have ever heard
Sadly wasn't born till '75 so missed out on this one by a bit - but my dad agrees with you - although the club pissed him off bis style in 73 as he hadn't missed a home or away game for 6 seasons leading up to 73 and the ballot for the tickets meant he didn't get one for the final so he was annoyed (especially as his part time supporting neighbour got one and he'd ojnly been to half of the home games that season)!!
I was there that night, and it was an incredible experience..I remember a reading a southern-based national newspaper the next day, and the reporter said that he had stopped back after the game to try and find hidden microphones because he didn't believe that a crowd could actually make that kind of noise without them! That night, the team must have felt invincible with that kind of fanatical backing behind them, and it is perhaps one of the reasons that I still bang on about the important role the crowd can play, particularly at our home games.
I think that game, more than anything else, alerted us to something magical happening at Sunderland. Four or five months earlier, we'd had crowds of eight or nine thousand in that ground. In the four short months he'd been there, Stokoe turned the whole club around, the team looked like they wanted to play, and the crowd that night was 53,000! From then on, anything became possible. Between December 1972 and Mach 1973, Bob Stokoe gave us an entirely different Sunderland. The club, the town, and Co. Durham changed. We'd seen nothing like it since the mid-1950s.
For the West Ham game you mention, I was sat on the Paddock advertising wall above the S in the Visionhire advert, aged 9 lol. I know this because over the years they have occasionally shown the goals for that match on Tyne Tees and I can see myself there. Talk about a good viewing point. Happy, simple times which I sometime yearn to revisit.
