I have found myself in the last week or so comparing and contrasting the best of my sixty years of supporting the Lads. It has been a great way to idle away sunny afternoons in my retirement.
I am a Sunderland supporter of unquestionable allegiance. Through thick and thin, win or lose, this club has me till the day I depart this mortal coil. I say this not to big myself up or question the allegiance and intensity of such in others, it is just a simple fact of my being. I am heading for seventy years
old, if I don’t know myself by now, I never will!
I also know there are many others like me and I am blessed to know quite a few with whom I share this marvellous and at times heart-breaking obsession.
Given all the recent good times and with the promise of more to come, why did I find myself in the last twenty-four hours, catapulted into the dark memory of the one very real occasion when I seriously thought I would never return to Roker Park?
The short answer to this question is Roly Gregoire! Or more accurately Jeff Brown and my Roker Report colleagues Martin Wanless and Andrew (silky tones) Smithson!
The compelling documentary on BBC iPlayer, ‘Finding Roly’, and the very recent Haway the Podcast edition, with Jeff, Martin and Andrew discussing the documentary and the events that fuelled the making of the programme, dragged me out of my happy malaise debating the very best of SAFC times, to a time I would rather forget.
In the 1977/78 season I hardly missed a home game and went to about half of our away games. It was a challenging season on and off the pitch, in many respects I felt we were only three good players away from being a very good team, and I could see what Jimmy Adamson was trying to do. However, the way he tried to do it at times was a bit irritating and sometimes mystifying.
One thing I always liked about Jimmy Adamson was his ability to support, nurture and offer opportunity to young players. In this regard I felt he was a bit like his former Burnley manager Alan Brown, one of his predecessors as Sunderland manager.
In 1976/77, in the most intense of times for the club, he thrust young players into a desperate relegation fight that almost paid off. Gary Rowell had already debuted, but Kevin Arnott, Shaun Elliott, Alan Brown, Tim Gilbert and Mick Coady would all get a go. It was a magnificent effort and the Roker fans bought into these youngsters. The connection was deep and powerful.
We commenced the 1977/78 season with fair reason for optimism. There were more good young players in our youth and reserve team, the hugely talented Peter Stronach and Rob Hindmarch, to name just two.
Added to this clutch of talented youngsters, Adamson spent a little bit of money on Wayne Entwhistle and Roly Gregoire, two nineteen-year-old forwards. It looked like these lads were an investment for the future, to join with the young talent already at the club.
As I have already said, I did not always understand what Jimmy Adamson was planning and doing with our senior players, but I had a lot of confidence in his eye for a young player and his ability to bring them on.
As far as many of us younger fans were concerned, Joe Bolton was our first skinhead, Wayne Entwhistle our first punk-rocker and Roly Gregoire, well whether you were a younger fan or not, he was our first black player!
What a threesome we had in the team, a trio of firsts!
Entwhistle made his debut on December 3rd at Charlton and scored on his debut. I missed that one, but despite the defeat, wished I had seen his debut goal. Roly had to wait another month for his debut, which I did see.
It was a tough battle against a Hull side who came for a point. John Hawley was their centre-forward that day and I swear to you he got a nose-bleed when he crossed the half-way line on forty minutes!
Despite the bus that was parked around the Tigers’ goal, we won that game with two Gary Rowell goals in the second half. Gregoire showed some promise in that game, he was rapid across the grass and elusive as well. He got a nice touch on Mel Holden’s cross to tee up Gary Rowell for his first goal and pulled a good save out of Hull keeper Eddie Blackburn with a sharp header.
Jimmy Adamson spoke in glowing terms after the game about Gregoire when he told Kevin Francis of the Journal, “He’s a silky competitive fellow that is certainly going places”.
Francis, in his match report the next day, agreed when he wrote, “Sunderland began 1978 with something new in the exciting shape of nineteen-year-old Roly Gregoire, what a debut he had”.
This all sounds great. Just short of 30,000 of us saw that game and the win gave us all a sense of charging into the new year. Roly had got his opportunity because of the very late withdrawal of Wilf Rostron. If I remember the story, I think at 2pm he was deemed fit to play and at 2.15 he was withdrawn. Maybe the late inclusion had worked for Gregoire; he certainly did not look nervous that day and handled the occasion quite well.
I had one area of concern from that game. There were people in the crowd who were shouting really inappropriate things at Gregoire. Even though in this particular game the nature and tone of the shouting was supportive, at times it sounded like we had been dropped into a hybrid stadium that functioned on a continuum that had On the Buses and Till Death Us Do Part as its two extremes. Don’t get me wrong, I had heard some of this language at Roker Park before. Players such as John Chiedozie, the Orient winger and Ricky Hill, the Luton forward, both fine players, had come in for some of this kind of abuse from sections of the Roker Park crowd. Whatever the rights and wrongs of it, I was shocked at the casual way some of our supporters were referring to one of our own players.
Maybe it will die down as Roly plays more games and fans see what a good player he is, was one of the conversations in the car driving home after that game. “Sticks and stones” was parroted at me by one of my fellow passengers. Maybe it was just me, there again I could see that at least one other passenger in the car was perturbed.
If you do watch ‘Finding Roly’, listen out for his story of what happened on his debut after the game.
Roly went on to make eight more appearances that season, three from the bench. He also scored a goal in a 3-1 win at Luton (again I missed that one), but I did see him play at Spurs, as well as the home games against Notts County and Charlton (when Joe Bolton almost scored a hat-trick). I definitely thought we were seeing the blooding of a young player for the future in these games and credited Jimmy Adamson with a good ‘pick up’ of the young forward.
Despite the season finishing on a relatively positive note, with four wins from the last five games, all of which Gregoire played in, our hope that the racist language would die down was forlorn sadly. It continued without pause and at times seemed particularly vicious if things were not going our way. From the point of view of some of us, some players were getting a bit more stick than others (Bob Lee, Mel Holden, Mick Docherty) from sections of the crowd. Roly was being served up a special diet of insult and name-calling from a section of our support, some of whom turned up to games carrying inflatable bananas!
Our next campaign 1978/79 saw Jimmy Adamson depart the club in October. He had never quite won over the majority of the crowd and following a poor performance in a one-goal defeat at Oldham, which I witnessed, Adamson left.
Whilst all this upheaval was going on, we had not seen Roly Gregoire in the first team squad. An injury in a reserve game was hampering his season and it was not until the home game with Wrexham that we saw him come on from the bench for Wilf Rostron for the last twenty minutes. He looked a tad rusty that day, but what could we expect? Young players are notoriously inconsistent and injuries will do that to you.
The season was really beginning to boil up. We were on a great run with Billy Elliott in charge. From November 25th till the season end we lost only four league games and won fifteen. Following a bad start, our run had propelled us to second in the table coming into a crucial three-games-in-four-days series over the Easter period.
I had seen the home victory against Notts County and travelled to Leicester the next day to witness our 2-1 victory against the Foxes. The Lads were flying and next up was bottom of the table Blackburn, who looked doomed for the drop and cannon fodder for our heroes.
Just over 35,000 turned up that day. A raucous crowd pre-kick-off was a tad surprised at the team changes. Out went Mick Buckley and Bob Lee, two players who at times had felt the wrath of sections of our support. In came Alan Brown and, out of the blue, Roly Gregoire.
I particularly remember this game for a number of reasons. In the hope of impressing a new girlfriend, I had agreed to take her younger brother to the game. It was his first match ever, he was a bright, curious thirteen-year-old. I was sure I had picked a good game to bring him to, a big crowd and surely a victory to go with our four points so far over the Easter programme.
The crowd was only our second over 35,000 that season. I would guess we were on an average of 25,000 that campaign, but something I had noticed was that when we got these extra fans in for the big games, the level of impatience and abuse, if things did not quickly go our way, could ramp up at an alarming rate. So it was in this game. The players appeared to lose their passing game that had taken us to the brink of success. Long balls were being punted upfield and Derek Fazackerley was having a field day as the ball seemed like a magnet to his head!
Not that long into the game Alan Brown fed Gregoire in front of goal, it was a good opportunity and he did not take it. The response from the stands was infectiously vicious and just grew in numbers and volume as the game was played out. The abuse that was directed at our young number 11 was unprecedented in my time of coming through the gates. It was both shameful and painful in equal measure. Those engaging in the Alf Garnett ranting did a far better job than any defender might have done at nullifying our flyer.
Gregoire was not the only one to miss a chance that day. What was obvious was he was the only black player to miss a chance!
Blackburn were awarded a very dodgy penalty on thirty-three minutes, which Fazackerley buried into the net sending Barry Siddall the wrong way. Somehow this was Gregoire’s fault as far as the ranters were concerned.
In the second half the referee missed a blatant barge in the box on Mick Docherty. This too was Gregoire’s fault in the eyes of the ranters around us.
By the time the game had finished some of the ranting had stopped, because some of the ranters had already left. Ranters and deserters, eh!
Blackburn had some “canny hands” in their team that day (Duncan McKenzie, Noel Brotherston, Simon Garner, John Bailey to name four) but were largely uninterested or unable to attack. We created chances and Chisholm, Arnott and Docherty never stopped trying to prise open the Rovers’ defence. The anxiety as the game progressed fuelled the frustration which triggered the verbal abuse. That is not an excuse for the abuse, simply a fact.
We lost by that solitary goal and missed the chance to go top of the division. It was the worst of days.
When our team needed to be at their best, they were not. When we supporters needed to be at their best, we were not. What happened to Roly Gregoire that day was wrong. It shamed us as Sunderland supporters.
My girlfriend’s brother asked some awkward questions on the journey home. I couldn’t explain to him why the scorn and derision had rained down on our only black player, when clearly there were others who were struggling too. In his innocence he asked me if those ranting at Gregoire were trying to make him play badly. All I could do was assure him I had never seen a player in this situation play any better because of the abuse. I could not really answer his question because the people he was talking about were, I thought, my people. They wore the same colours as me and sang the same songs. It was too painful to consider that I might not actually be one of them.
There were others in the car who were shocked too. Our conversation on the journey home was not about the actual game and the disappointing result, rather the behaviour of that sizable and vocal minority who had scapegoated a young inexperienced player in the vilest manner, and let’s not beat about the bush — the abuse was racial.
My Dad, who was blind, always enjoyed a match report when I got back from the games. I was still perplexed by what I had seen and heard and told him I was not sure I was going to go back. He assumed that it was because we had been beaten and said so, chiding me that it was not my way and I needed to sleep on it. Defeat was something I had to cope with if I was going to enjoy the victories. I had not the energy to tell him what had occurred at the game, that it was not the spawny defeat, but the behaviour of my fellow fans that was crushing my spirit at that point.
I awoke the next day in a similar frame of mind. I was adamant I was not returning. A conversation with an older fellow fan later that day gave me pause for thought. He too had been shocked at the abuse that had been aimed at Roly Gregoire. He told me the supporters’ branch were already talking about inviting Roly to our next supporters’ function by way of showing him that those ranting at him were not the majority.
We never got the chance to do this. We never saw Roly Gregoire on our turf again. I felt he was gone before we could make amends.
It has crossed my mind a number of times since that there was no level playing field for Roly Gregoire when he came to Sunderland. Roly just needed the same opportunity and support as his fellow (white) team mates.
That game was a chastening experience for me (I could only guess how Roly must have felt). I have only once since experienced such collective racial hostility in a football ground. On January 1st 1985 at St James’ Park, such was the racial venom emanating from the stands that day toward Gary Bennett and Howard Gayle, I believe decent Newcastle fans were minded to form the anti-racist group ‘We Are All Black and White’.
A good friend and fellow fan convinced me to return to Roker Park, partly because I had the car and he needed a lift to games, but really because we could not, as he put it, “let the lunatics take over the asylum!”
Things of course have moved on. We are generally a much more tolerant and diverse community and all the better for it. We do, though, need to remain vigilant. Romaine Mundle and Lutsharel Geertruida will testify to racism still being a factor in our football stadiums.
It was great to see Roly Gregoire at the Man United match and to see fans affording him the respect he deserved. He looked like he was enjoying himself.
If you have not done so, get a listen to the Jeff Brown pod on Haway the Podcast and get a watch of ‘Finding Roly’ on BBC iPlayer. This is a compelling, at times difficult, but life-affirming watch, that left me rooting for Roly Gregoire again.
Something else my friend said that day he persuaded me to return has resonated and returned to my thoughts quite often in the last twelve months. He told me in 1979 that black players would become a normal part of football life in this country and that the sooner we woke up to that fact, the sooner Sunderland might win the league again!
Amen to that.
