I started last week’s OTD in a similar theme, because as a group we’ve been doing this for five or six years now, and we usually check to see what others in the group have written about before us before we pick one and get going.
At this time of the season, however, you realise that all the fun and generally happy ones got snapped up in the first few years, and there aren’t many options left other than the type that occurred on this day in 1997.
In typical Sunderland fashion, the two years leading
up to this point were an absolute whirlwind.
The club had been sleepwalking from one crisis to another after relegation from the top flight under Denis Smith, which incidentally occurred on this day in 1991.
Malcolm Crosby was half-heartedly given a chance after spoiling Bob Murray’s plan by reaching the FA Cup final, then Terry Butcher was given the money to spend that probably should have gone to Smith a few years earlier, then Mick Buxton was handed the job because he was in the building when they gave Butcher the boot.
It all came to a head at Oakwell when we threw the dice on two new signings making a difference on a Friday in Barnsley. Turned out one wasn’t very good, the other wasn’t registered properly, and we lost 2-0. Buxton was out.
Because we were all sleepwalking at the time, it meant the appointment of Peter Reid as manager gave the club such a shot in the arm that we not only stayed up, but the following season we won the title with pretty much the same squad of players.
Although football didn’t start in 1992, this meant we were part of the relatively newly formed Premier League for the first time.
At the same time as all of this was happening, there was movement on a new stadium. The plans had been public for years, but the club had seemed to have put all its eggs into one basket with the Nissan site, only to see it fall through. Then, around the time Reidy started to do his thing on the pitch, the site of the old Wearmouth Colliery opened up, and things began to snowball.
In Reid’s first year on Wearside, we went from a club that was falling to the third tier in an old ground that – although we loved the place – was dropping to bits, to a club in the top flight of English football that was a year away from moving into a purpose-built stadium with over twice the capacity of Roker.
So our final season at Roker was always going to be emotional, but now we had the added pressure of trying to stay in the Premier League while building a new stadium. Which is why the BBC should be given credit for preserving the memories forever in Premier Passions.
We lost big signings in Tony Coton and Niall Quinn through injury early in the season, but at the end of January, we sat 11th in the table and seven points clear of the bottom three. Fast forward to the final game of the season – at Selhurst Park against Wimbledon on this day in 1997 – and we had just felt the emotion of the final league game at Roker, which ended in a 3-0 win over Everton.
The win meant the final day was a three-way shoot-out between ourselves, Coventry City and Boro on the final day.
The Sky Blues travelled to Spurs, which automatically meant they kicked off fifteen minutes late because they’re Coventry, and Boro – who had been deducted three points because they couldn’t be bothered to play Blackburn at the designated time during the season – went to local rivals Leeds.
We had seen the late kick-off thing before, of course, but on this occasion, even Alex Ferguson stated the fact that Coventry were once again allowed to kick off late a “disgrace”.
We could go through the details, but I won’t. The fact is, it was in our hands that if we won, we stayed up, and we were crap and lost 1-0.
The highlight of the day was a female streaker, which, due to the fact I was a teenage lad at the time, means it’s pretty much the only thing I remember from the day… along with a Sunderland fan attempting to steal a police bike and ending up hitting a wall.
We were the first side to go down with forty points, something that has only happened twice since and only bettered by West Ham United in 2003 when they went down with forty-two.
Tears were shed. But the next four years made it all worth it.
Saturday 11th May, 1997
Premier League
Wimbledon 1-0 Sunderland
[Euell 85’]
Selhurst Park
Sunderland: Perez, Hall, Howey, Ord, Gray, Williams, Bracewell (Johnston), Ball, Waddle (Russell), Stewart, Quinn (Bridges) Substitutes not used: Woods, Rae
Wimbledon: Sullivan, Cunningham, Kimble, Jones (Fear), McAllister, Perry, Ardley, Leonhardsen, Gayle (Ekoku), Holdsworth, Euell Substitutes not used: Heald, Reeves, Jupp
Attendance: 21,338
