For me we were mid table Division 3 in about 1987. I remember York beating us 3-1 a few weeks later and our fans invading the pitch and pulling the goals down. My first game was a 1-1 draw with Wallsall that same season. As shyte as this all sounds I walked into a packed out Roker park and the moment I walked up them steps and looked down at the pitch I might as well have been at Wembley as far as I was concerned!
Dont know mate to young to remember but I know my first match was against Burnley I think and we got beat then aswell also think Hurley was playing.
Im 37 now but I haven't got a clue how old I was then? I reckon we are the most suffering fans in the world in terms of quantity of support vs success!
Div 2, Denis Smith and the Marco days. We've had a good run recently, 8yrs in top division. Not a disaster if we go down as long as we go with youth and create an identity
What i find amazing is all the happiest times i have had following the lads has been in the lower divisions apart from about 4 half seasons in the prem so not a lot to shout about, about being in the prem at any cost.
1967, balmy autumn Wednesday night, man utd sir bobby, bestie et all, Fulwell end, sharing tabs with the lasses, jumpers for goalposts Marvellous
Not compared to the **** I watched when I first started going. All 5 managers we've had this spell in the prem have been better than Crosby, Buxton, Butcher etc. In this run we've had players such as Bent, Gyan, Zenden, Malbranque, Defoe, Brown, Gordon, Mensah, Cattermole, Cana, Johnson. All good international footballers, albeit few of them had their best days here. I remember Jamie Lawrence, Andy Melville, Paul Stewart, Derek Ferguson and Thomas Hauser.
Back in old Div1 48-49 season, the opposition was ManU who had just won the FA cup, players with bald heads, middle partings boots with toe caps and goalies wearing cloth caps and getting barged all over the area. Full backs that defended as if their lives depended on it. Today's pansies would not last five minutes.
I've a lot of sympathy for that, Blunham, and have always thought the sacking of Ian McColl one of the biggest mistakes this club ever made. Ian was here for three years, and never failed to finish three positions higher - 3rd from bottom his first year, sixth from bottom his second year, ninth from bottom his third year, and you could see the sheer excellence of Jimmy Baxter rubbing off on every single player around him. Okay, Jimmy was already one dram past from his best, but there was magic in that man and it was having a noticeable effect. In those days, Sunderland were real up-and-comers. When the board sacked McColl to bring back Brown, my father stopped attending Roker Park for the first time since the late-1920s. McColl had trained in Civil Enlineering at Glasgow University as a youth, and when SAFC sh*it on him, he went back into that field. He never took another football job again. A very sad moment, and wholly unjustified I thought. My own 'christening'? - 1948, never been out of the first division in our entire history, and had just signed the magical Len Shackleton a few months earlier.
