Sixer Says: thanks for memories of beating Arsenal en route to Wembley glory

Pete Sixsmith, minus the flares

Just when we’re all down in the dumps, Pete Sixsmith rides along on his white steer to cheer us up a little. A wave of nostalgia swept over Sixsmith Towers after Salut! Sunderland‘s associate editor John McCormick alerted him to a showing of the 1973 FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough. Sixer revelled in the reminder of his best day out as a SAFC supporter …  …

Read more

Recalling Sunderland’s most memorable games in history

[polldaddy poll=9939797]

A just-for-fun poll introduces this look at some of the greatest games in Sunderland AFC’s history. Many readers will approve of the choices made by Ben Jones, a sportswriter and ‘massive Sunderland fan’. Others might add the 4-1 defeat of Chelsea in the first of our seventh-top Premier seasons under Peter Reid. Or the first FA Cup 6th Round replay against Manchester United at Roker Park in 1964. Back in 2013, a Roker Report piece on great games over the festive period threw others into the mix: the last-second win against Man City on New Year’s Day, 2012; a 4-1 Boxing Day romp at Bradford in 2000 and two Old Trafford classics (a 5-3 win on Boxing Day 1950 and a 2-1 defeat on New Year’s Day 2003. You decide …

Since Sunderland became the first new team to join the Football League in 1890 and from the earliest seasons, their name has been embroidered prominently in the tapestry of English football history.

Read more

Is loyalty dead? Jimmy Armfield 17 years at Blackpool, Arsenal men can’t wait to move



What does Bobby Gurney
have in common with Tony Adams, Jimmy Armfield, Billy Liddell, Matt Le Tissier, Sam Bartram, Packie Bonner, Jamie Carragher and Jack Charlton? All were one-club players, each clocking up hundreds of games without ever leaving for bigger, better, richer or more fashionable teams.

Silksworth-born and starting at Bishop Auckland, Gurney scored 228 goals in league and cup, the highest tally in Sunderland’s history, in 390 games for what was his only professional club in a career stretching from 1926 to 1944. See Stat Cat site for all the fascinating detail.

Will we ever see his like, their likes, again in an age when players and managers seem to regard clubs as mere stepping stones and football owners, in common with most employers, give the impression they would struggle to spell loyalty let alone demonstrate it?

Read more