One of the more delicious snippets to be found in Sunderland AFC’s glory-and-gloom history is that when Charles Buchan was signed from SAFC by Arsenal in 1925, the Gunners’ boss Herbert Chapman was chuffed to bits at being able to beat down the asking price from £4,000 to £2,000 plus £100 for every goal scored in his first season. Charles responded by scoring 21, thereby increasing the fee Sunderland had sought to £4,100.
But fast forward to 2008. And bugger Hull! Just when we might have thought it was a good time to get stuck into Arsenal, the Humberside upstarts produce what will presumably be a rare upset this season, beating them at the Emirates (all the more impressive because far from wasting time at the end, Hull just kept on pressing forward at every opportunity). That leaves many of us fearing the worst for Saturday.
Mike Amos*, a giant among North-eastern journalists, comes from Shildon, smack in the territory always claimed by Sunderland as “County Durham’s team”. He has supported the Lads, keeps a soft spot indeed. But he supports Arsenal, regards another Charlie as his hero and has a matchday prediction calculated to break our hearts. One of the images is of him, the other – from the estimable charlesbuchansfootballmonthly site, is not……
If you want to know when the earth really moved, it was that afternoon in the spring of 1971 when the lank Charlie George fired inside Tommy Lawrence’s right-hand post and, double won, prostrated himself on the Wembley turf to see what happened next. The picture still hangs on my office wall; that night in the Bloomsbury Park Hotel was a bit seismic, too. She was only the Lord Lieutenant’s daughter….
Me dad was from Muswell Hill, that’s why. Posted to Catterick, he married me mam on condition that they stopped in Shildon, her birthplace. The Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders were infantry, but she couldn’t stop him being a Gunner.
He first took us on Sept 1 1956, 4-1 against West Brom, five bob on the North Bank. I can still see Jack Kelsey in goal, still taste the ham sandwich, still remember relishing the feeling of filial pride.
I was Jack Kelsey for a couple of years after that but then, perfidiously, became Reg Matthews. Probably it was something to do with the fact that Reg Matthews had a yellow polo neck jumper and so had I, though his probably didn’t have patches on the elbows or a hole from a Bonfire Night banger.
For all that, for all that early and unalloyed allegiance, I saw far more of Sunderland and shouted more for them, too.
It was just what happened in our late teens, four or five of us in a Morris Minor and great queues down Houghton Cut. It was the era of Montgomery, Irwin, Ashurst and so forth but the real excitement was that Colin Nelson, the reserve full back, was a pharmacist who sometimes did locum work at the shop on my milk round in Shildon.
No matter that chemists didn’t very often start their shift at 7am, I always looked out for Lord Nelson. Last I heard he was in Redcar, though probably prescribing no longer.
I remember the Man United cup games, raw days on the Roker End. I remember thinking that Nick Sharkey was underrated and being delighted when he scored five. I remember, a few years later, getting so drunk after the 1973 FA Cup final that I fell in a heap off a barstool. The party just carried on.
I remember, very much more recently, having two hours in the company of the late Ian Porterfield and realising, not for the first time, what wonderful people many of these “old” players were. None, incidentally, is more charming, personable or utterly approachable than Charlie Hurley.
But always there was Arsenal, always the notion that paternal blood was thicker than Roker water, always the rather enjoyable feeling of being different and the hope that the bairns would be “different”, too.
Apart from that FA Cup semi-final against Sunderland, the match in which Jeff Blockley conclusively proved that a lump of wood really would have been better at the heart of defence, it’s never caused a problem.
I suppose that, if pushed, I might even suppose that Sunderland were my “second” team. They could never replace Arsenal in my affections, though. They never had Charlie George.
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