Blunham - sorry not to get back sooner. The point I'm making is without shipyard money from J. L. Thompson around 1887/8 Sunderland would still be a school teachers' hobby and little else. James Allen had formed the club, but by 1887/8 Thompson bought his way in as Chairman, and brought his yard manager, James Marr, in as Secretary. Nobody is denying (or can deny) that coal mining had its place too - the Treasurer was Samuel Tyzack, whose family owned quite a few mines in eastern Co. Durham, and, as Commachio has found out, an engineering firm in Fulwell Rd. Some of this stuff can be found in the thread at : http://www.not606.com/threads/the-135-years-of-safc-history.281384/#post-7216504 The crunch came in Spring 1888. Sunderland won a cup tie at Middlesbrough (off the top of my head, 4-2,). But we'd played three or four professionals from Scotland, and the rule at that time was that someone had to live in the area two years before they could play for the local team - and they hadn't. After an appeal, Sunderland were thrown out of the competition, and had to pay all the expenses of the enquiry. James Allen and many of the players left to form Sunderland Albion. Sunderland were left in tatters. That summer, they only had four players left! It's at that point that the decision was made to establish the best pitch in N.E. England (holding 15,000 people at Newcastle Rd.) and to employ a professional manager, Tom Watson. The standard of the game was higher in Scotland at that time so Watson and Tyzack made periodic trips up there. Watson identified the player he wanted and then Tyzack would go to work with the money side. The thing about Tyzack that most left his mark on the club was he wasn't very fussy about details - some of his deals were 'exotic' to say the least, and that approach to player payment stuck with the club right through till 1957 when the only thing that kept us in the league was that throwing us out for illegal payments would have disrupted the rest of the season's fixtures. A lot of bad feeling still existed between Sunderland and Albion so in 1890, two 'friendlies' were arranged In the second, Sunderland went ahead 3-2 with a late disputed goal. The goal stood, and many of the Albion players walked off the field. The crowd was disgusted, and on their way home to Hendon, Albion's horse-drawn carriages were stoned. James Allen was hit in the eye. Thompson began to pay the best teams he could find to play against us, and Sunderland won most of them. The most famous of these was away to Aston Villa. Their Chairman (McKenzie?) was the man who came up with the idea of forming the Football League, and had enormous influence in the game at that time. After Sunderland beat Villa 7-1 in Birmingham, he dubbed us 'The Team of All the Talents', and helped our push into the Football League. But, again, you can't discount shipyard money. The football league was based entirely around the Midlands, south Yorkshire and south Lancashire (in fact, Football League headquarters was in Sheffield). They didn't want an expensive trip to Sunderland. So Thompson offered to pay every club's expenses when they came here. The deal was done and we joined the Football League. In the first four years, we won it three times, and won it again in 1897. It isn't a coincidence that in 1891, Thompson's launched their first two ships over 4.000 tons. They remained the top yard on the Wear for the rest of 'the 'nineties'. And whatever Sunderland AFC wanted, they usually got it. I'm sorry mate, but ditching the ship on our badge is plain sacrilege. It's an integral part of the story of SAFC.
