West Ham come up as Sunderland’s opponents quite often in important games. After our great victory at Villa Park, we have set ourselves up for another vital encounter. If we don’t blow it with this one, our survival prospects should soar. Gordon Thrower*, a lifelong Hammers fan and co-editor of the Knees Up Mother Brown fans’ website, has other ideas. Two-one to them, he predicts. At least that’s not as bad for us as the time he saw us play when he was all of seven years old
“Can you write a few lines for us – something linking West Ham and Sunderland will do?”
I get a few e-mails like this every season. Sometimes they’re quite easy to write. If there’s a classic match from the past to recall you can write a few memories of that. Piece of cake.
However, I guess that if I mention October 1968 too many times you will rightly conclude that I am an old git who likes to live in the past. So I promise not to mention that day when, as a seven year-old, I saw West Ham United beat Sunderland 8-0.
So this leaves me scrabbling round trying to think of other classic encounters. I have very vague memories of a match played in my late teens at Roker Park where we let in six. I didn’t go to the match, I just remember seeing the goals on The Big Match on Sunday.
Actually, being of advanced years, I don’t even remember the goals. I do remember one bit of commentary though. After one particular bit of cultured genius from Brooking (in those days it was illegal to mention the word “Brooking” without either using the adjective “cultured” or mentioning the fact that he had A levels) the commentator (Hugh Johns maybe?) said something like: “I wonder what he’d be like in a really good side.”
Of course I already knew, since I’d seen him score for us about nine years earlier in a match in which we’d scored eight against someone (Hurst 6, Brooking and a rare goal from Bobby Moore in case you’re interested).
So in the interests of not depressing anyone I’ll steer clear of such catastrophes. Which leaves me the issue of how to fill up the rest of the page.
Your editor suggests to prospective contributors that they provide a brief blog as I believe you young people call these things (biog as it happens! – editor) dealing with how they first started supporting their team.
That’s easy. Anyone brought up in 1960s Plaistow (that’s pronounced Plar-stow by the way) was always going to support West Ham. Any kid sad enough to announce that they wanted to support someone else usually disappeared never to be seen again. “He’s gone to live on a farm with that puppy you used to have,” we’d be told. And they’d never be mentioned again. Wild playground rumours used to abound about such kids being sent to laboratories to have parts of their brains removed and, whilst nobody ever had any evidence that such experiments ever took place, when you think about it, it would go a long way to explaining Millwall’s support.
Which brings me finally to the one real connection I have with Sunderland. That is the fact that Roy Keane and I share a former club. Sort of. Whilst I hail from E13, as did my dad and paternal granddad, my mum’s origins are altogether more exotic. My mum hails from a town in Co Cork called Cobh (that’s pronounced “Cove” by the way).
Cobh has a number of claims to fame. It was the Titanic’s last port of call, having popped in to stock up on ice on its way to New York. It is the home town of the Olympic runner Sonia O’Sullivan. And it is home to the Ramblers. Cobh Ramblers are the local football team and are currently back in the top flight of the Eircom League for what may be one season only.
As everyone knows Roy Keane used to play for them. And so did I. Well sort of. I used to spend all my summers out in Cobh and one of my uncles used to play left wing. Thus it was that your correspondent turned out as a 15-year-old in a pre-season friendly that had been arranged when half the normal side were on holiday. I’d like to say that I played alongside your manager that day but to be honest it was probably a good 13 years later by the time he made his debut – and by that time I was out earning a living sufficient enough to enable me to take my holidays somewhere infinitely warmer and drier than Ireland’s Atlantic coast.
However, I’d like to think that, should our paths cross when I visit the North East on the March 29, Mr Keane and I would be able to share a knowing look about our times at St Coleman’s Park – after all, the Ramblers’ colours to this day are still Claret and Blue!
Ah….. some questions:
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