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The headline narrows it down a little. But Salut! Sunderland today launches a modest competition*, and only supporters for whom the Stadium of Light has always been our home ground can enter. You may be too young to have visited Roker Park. You may, for whatever reason, have started attending games only after the move to the Stadium of Light. Write about the SoL, what you like about it, what it means to you, the best and worst times you’ve had there, anything you dislike about it. Salut! Sunderland will publish the best entries AND award a first prize to the value to £100 (there may be runners-up awards depending on entries. Send them to colinrandall@hotmail.com … we’re looking for passion and imagination rather than a budding Hemingway or Hornby, but don’t be put off if you have genuine writing talent.

Let’s kick it off with the reminiscences of another old codger from the days before Roker Park was a private housing estate with silly street names evoking the grand old stadium. Jeremy Robsons piece explained why, for a Murton lad exiled in deepest Canada, Roker means so much to him that he cannot even bring himself on trips home to go near what has become of the place. It originally appeared a few months ago but will be new to many of our readers ….

It’s almost 12 years since we left Roker Park.

To this day I’ve never returned to the old site. I remember standing gazing around the wonderful old stadium for as long as the stewards would let us after the Everton game, in a feeble attempt to take in the magnitude of those last few moments in the place where we’d all spent so much of our lives, and where history was written, where reputations were won and lost, but most of all a place where millions of memories were generated amongst countless thousands of us. All different, all shared and yet all unique.

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