1997/1998 was the first season that Sunderland played in their new home at the Stadium of Light.
We’d been relegated the season before after our final game at Roker Park and I always remember thinking how fitting it would’ve been for the Lads to play in the Premier League during our first season at the new stadium, but it wasn’t to be.
In hindsight, it was the best outcome in the long term, for it enabled us to build a team that was more than ready for the top flight.
Peter Reid had saved us from a second
stint in the the third tier in the 1995/1996 season, and got us promoted the following year — probably far too early to cope, as it turned out. So to have gone straight back up again and as romantic as it would’ve been to grace the new stadiun with Premier League football, it was probably for the best that we just missed out — but boy, how we did just miss out!
It was very tight at the top of the table; a four-way shootout between Nottingham Forest, Middlesbrough, Charlton Athletic and ourselves.
Only six points separated the top four clubs with four games to go and this win over Crewe Alexandra was much-needed after two damaging draws allowed Boro to leapfrog us into an automatic promotion spot.
In the eighty fifth minute, the outstretched leg of Lionel Perez saved the victory for the Lads after a shot by Kenny Lunt. No wonder it was Perez that captain Kevin Ball ran straight towards after the final whistle. He knew that final save had lifted the Lads back into the top two.
For much of the game and before those nervy final minutes, Reid’s claim that the pressure wouldn’t get to his young team seemed to be a correct assumption.
Indeed, if there had been any nerves at all, they vanished after Ball put us ahead after only four minutes, and it was man of the match Allan Johnston who got it started, showing fast, nimble feet on the wing before putting in a low shot.
Crewe goalkeeper Jason Kearton couldn’t hold on and as it spilled, Ball was there to stroke it home. Only the reflexes of Perez just two minutes later stopped Alexandra equalising almost immediately, blocking a shot from Kevin Street.
A fast breakaway from Sunderland in the twenty second minute, gave us a more comfortable lead. Niall Quinn knocked the ball down for Kevin Phillips, who laid the ball in the path of Lee Clark, who burst through to score his thirteenth goal of the season.
The willingness of Dario Gradi’s team to flood forward wherever possible to support lead forward Steve Anthrobus was rewarded when Crewe got a goal back on the half hour, with defender Phil Charnock being afforded too much space in our box and turning to superbly place a shot inside the far post.
This gave them some hope, but this hope could and should’ve been extinguished after an extended period of Sunderland pressure. Clark and Summerbee came close before Johnston hit the bar with an audacious chip, but the best chance fell to Quinn, who had a shot cleared off the line in the thirty ninth minute.
The Lads were unable to exert the same degree of pressure after the break, with Gray and Quinn coming close before the late scare at the end from the visitors.
Sunderland now had three games left. We won two but crucially lost away at Ipswich, meaning we would enter the playoffs — which ended with a never-to-be-forgotten defeat at Wembley to Charlton Athletic.
Like I said, hindsight is a wonderful thing, because during the following season, we were more than ready, ending with a 105 point haul and then two seventh-places finished in the Premier League that we still talk about with so much fondness.
18 April 1998
Nationwide Division One
Stadium of Light
Attendance: 40,441
Sunderland 2 (Ball 4’, Clark 22’)
Crewe Alexandra: 1 (Charnock 30’)
Sunderland: Perez, Holloway, Craddock; Williams, Gray, Summerbee; Ball, Clark, Johnston; Phillips, Quinn
