Massively Violent & Decidedly Average

by Lee Howey

  Martin Scott scored a penalty a few minutes into the second half and the Southend players began to harangue Mr Barber about the conditions. They wanted an abandonment. Obviously we were of the opposite opinion, partly because we had flown all the way down there, but mainly because we were winning.

  ‘Come on, ref. This is ridiculous. You can’t see your hand in front of your face. You’ve got to abandon this.’

  ‘Don’t listen to them, ref. You can see easy. Crystal clear.’

  Footage of the game confirms that the match should indeed have been abandoned. This was despite our patently nonsensical claims to the contrary, and the fog only got worse as the minutes passed. If a Southend defender had stabbed me in the jugular with a cutlass, there would have been no other eye-witnesses.

  I had worked hard and was tiring, so I was replaced by Michael Bridges with about ten minutes to go. I didn’t mind being substituted. In fact, a complaint would have been more than futile because twenty-five seconds later Michael had scored. It was his first goal for the club and he was overjoyed. From the dugout we knew that the ball had gone into the net, but had very little other detail. It was followed by silence as the information filtered through the ground. The Sunderland supporters were at the other end of the stadium and only received news of our second goal by word of mouth. The final score was 2–0, which was a goal glut by our standards.

  We didn’t care. Two poor performances and a farce had yielded three wins. When you’re winning you can get away with anything: bad performances and bad behaviour. Although in fairness to ourselves, we passed the ball well at Roots Hall, controlled the game and were the better side. We deserved the victory, even if not everyone in the ground saw it happening.

  The fog had not abated when we returned to the plane, but the pilot said something like: ‘Ha’way then. We’ll take a chance.’ This was not what the more nervous fliers wanted to hear. Yet, after a near-vertical take-off, with passengers clinging to cans of Budweiser (an obvious essential of aviation safety), we were above the clouds and all was well.

  The next game was considerably more convincing. We travelled to Blundell Park for a televised Sunday fixture at Grimsby Town, who were struggling. We flattened them. Bally gave us a half-time lead and when Craig Russell got the second it was a matter of how many we would win by. Four–nil, as it turned out. Phil Gray scored from a mile out before Bridges got another one from the bench. I was an unused substitute but still happy. We were becoming a team that no one wanted to play. Our run was grounded in a solid defence. Our nine consecutive victories were to feature seven clean sheets and we would only concede thirty-three goals all season. I’m not entirely sure how we did this, but it was essential as we would only score fifty-nine – a very modest total for champions. Bearing in mind that twenty-two of our goals came in just six of the forty-six games, it was all the more remarkable (for those of you who can’t be arsed to do the maths, it means that the other forty fixtures produced less than a goal a game – and we won the league!).

  Six days later came the biggest match of the run, before a sellout crowd at home to Derby County, who were now the only side above us in the division and hadn’t lost in twenty matches. They had comprehensively beaten us at the Baseball Ground at Christmas.

  We were about to be even comprehensiver. We won 3–0, a scoreline that flattered Derby. We were in peak form and so were the Sunderland fans. Craig scored an early one, Aggers added another. The only quibble was that we ought to have been unassailable by half-time instead of a measly 2–0 ahead. No matter: Craig got another. Derby – with Gabbiadini, Chris Powell, Dean Sturridge, Russell Hoult and all – never got started. Three–nil.

  A bonus was the return of Paul Stewart. He only played for an hour, but what an hour. The fans can’t have been expecting much from him. During his two appearances early in the season he had looked far from match fit. Now here he was returning from six months out with a knee injury. But he barely made an error that day. He held the ball up, won headers and made intelligent runs. The first half was essentially The Paul Stewart Show. It was like watching a different player. All that was missing from him was a goal.

  The belief of the fans was now turning into expectation. We were still second, but had just dismantled the team in first. Not only had we won five in a row, we hadn’t conceded a goal. Teams were intimidated by us and we began to feel invulnerable. Opposition supporters would happily settle for a draw before matches had even kicked off. It’s a wonderful feeling, although Peter Reid would not allow us to get ahead of ourselves. There was still much to do and plenty that could go wrong. But it didn’t. We had a will to win and were running like a Swiss watch. Everyone knew their job – and everyone else’s – by instinct and by rote.

  Three days later we were at Boundary Park to face Oldham Athletic in the fixture that had been postponed on New Year’s Day (fingers crossed that Mr Jones and his travelling offspring were in attendance this time). I was back in defence in place of the injured Andy Melville. Oldham had Chris Makin and Paul Gerrard in their side; two very good players. It didn’t help them. We dominated, and Micky Gray gave us an early lead. Lee Richardson had the temerity to equalise a minute before the interval, but Kevin Ball scored with a few minutes remaining to win a game that now has a misleading look on paper. Our 2–1 victory with a late winner gives the impression of a hard-fought victory. It wasn’t. We dominated again and did a professional job. The winning goal just happened to come later rather than sooner. In and out of the side though I was and always had been, this was the stuff of dreams: being part of a genuinely impressive Sunderland squad. It was even better than dispatching envelopes around an office block for BT.

  I hadn’t done anything wrong against Oldham, but Melville was available for the game at Birmingham City; another televised fixture the following Sunday. I wasn’t even on the bench at St Andrew’s, so I was naturally disappointed. But I expected it and didn’t mind too much. Mel and Richard Ord were the first choice centre-backs and the manager’s selection was vindicated further when Mel scored the second in a problem-free 2–0 win, putting us back to the top of the table after Derby’s draw with Watford the previous day. I was still mightily pleased with the team and with life generally. Becoming as much of an option at centre-back as centre-forward was, overall, paying great dividends.

  I was happy to make the team when we had been crap. Now that we actually had a good side, I could barely stop smiling.

  • • •

  The social side of all this was another joy, and something that wouldn’t happen today.

  Fixtures permitting, most of the squad would be out on a Saturday night, out again for a few on Sunday, train Monday, then train very hard on Tuesday, which meant that we felt entitled to a few in the evening. Wednesday was our day off and could often be an all-day session before we were back in training on Thursday. This was a cycle that continued for many weeks, and all the while we were winning games so no one could complain. We would drink in Sunderland, Newcastle, the Dun Cow in Burnmoor, the Bowes Incline Hotel in Gateshead, or pretty much anywhere with a bar. We would generally end the evening in a Sunderland nightclub – Fino’s or Annabel’s (both now long gone).

  We played cards on the bus on the way to games, but only for fun, so that no one would be depressed when we kicked off because they had been cleaned out. It would be a proper card school on the return journey. The bus’s cargo, nestled between the trolleys full of kit, would be tray, upon tray, upon tray of Budweiser, as well as a good many bottles of wine for the more refined among us. Steve Smelt, the physio, would sometimes hand out Mars Bars, just to give our bodies something to work with other than booze, and in fairness they did help us work, rest and play three-card brag. As we had usually swallowed a few cans before the driver had even put his key in the ignition, it was sometimes a physical achievement to alight the bus and land upright on the pavement. Pavements can be deceptively flat.

  The team bus was the venue for some of our best nigh
ts out. Virtually every away trip involved a diversion into Wetherby on the return journey, so we could fill our faces with fish and chips, or chicken and chips for the more health conscious. The order was phoned in ahead and the chip shop would be kept open until all hours for our benefit (and their own). There were various drop-off points depending on where people lived, with Roker Park the final destination. But for a Saturday game, hardly anyone got off the bus before Annabel’s, where we would clump in wearing our tracksuits and stagger upstairs. Dress restrictions were waived for footballers, as were rules about being clearly and utterly crapulous.

  That then, is what the average coach journey back from an away game entailed in the Peter Reid era. Work hard, play hard. The level of jolliness was largely dependent on the result of the match, but the drink played no small role too. I couldn’t but help compare and contrast all of this gay abandon with the mobile monastery that Mick Buxton had insisted upon after that aborted trip to Swindon on the second day of 1995.

  On nights out with my old friends from outside football, there was never an issue in Sunderland city centre with the other revellers. On a bad day the odd comment might be made about how crap the team, or I personally, had been, but it never went beyond banter. Sometimes people might pat me on the back, or pump me for information about what was going on at the club. There were no problems.

  Today this sort of socialising from footballers is virtually extinct. You rarely see a player out and about in the town he represents on the field. This is partly to do with the money involved: the potential cost of something silly and unfortunate happening to a footballer on a night out is enormous. Then there is the immediate snitching from social media if the modern player is spotted after 8 p.m. with a Taboo and lemonade.

  There is also the issue of the sheer quantity of booze we used to sink. Players are fitter these days and it isn’t such a bad thing that the drinking culture, quite spectacular at Sunderland while I was there, has been eroded from the game. But the lack of sociability, the detachment of footballers from the ‘ordinary people’, particularly at the top end of the game, is all but complete. And that is a shame.

  I couldn’t have been aloof even if I’d wanted to be. I was still the same bloke from Thorney Close. I just happened to play for Sunderland and was no better or worse than the next fella. Most players of the day had the same attitude. The 1995–96 season was the best time I ever had as a professional footballer; on and off the pitch. Both ends of the candle were burned and life was lived to the full. Britpop footballers. Oh, happy days.

  This attitude was prevalent across the game. We were perhaps more than averagely out on the tiles, but were by no means unique. At Arsenal, for example, with Tony Adams, Paul Merson and others, it had clearly gone too far. We were invited each year to the PFA awards in London, but didn’t always make the ceremony, preferring instead to embark on a pub crawl. It was the same at virtually every club.

  • • •

  The parties continued to be interspersed with the occasional game of football. Next came a home fixture against Oldham, only eleven days after playing them at Boundary Park. This time we won 1–0. Huddersfield Town came to Roker on 30 March, with Tony Norman in goal. This was a tough one; Huddersfield twice took the lead before Michael Bridges came off the bench with fifteen minutes remaining. He scored two and we won 3–2 (incidentally the only two goals Shay Given would ever concede at Roker Park). Everything was going right for us and for Bridges in particular. However, Huddersfield proved to be the last of the nine consecutive wins.

  Watford were bottom of the league when we played them at Vicarage Road on 2 April. But Graham Taylor had returned as manager and although he didn’t ultimately avert relegation, they were better organised and forced a 3–3 draw after trailing 2–0 and 3–1. It was a very good, end-to-end game.

  The run of consecutive wins was over, but the unbeaten run now extended to a dozen games and, as it was Sunderland’s best winning streak of the twentieth century and we remained top of the league by four points, we weren’t exactly grief-stricken.

  You get greedy. After a tenth win we would have wanted an eleventh and so on. However, it should be noted that the nine-victory run was the club’s best sequence in 104 years. Thirteen straight wins were racked up in the 1891–92 season. We couldn’t match those lads. On the other hand, they were all dead. Swings and roundabouts.

  The hardest-fought victory of the season came at Barnsley. It would have been even harder if what almost happened to me actually did. I was very nearly called upon to go in goal.

  Midway through the first half we took the lead through Craig Russell at the Pontefract Road End of Oakwell and looked good for the win. But just before the break, Paul Stewart was sent off for violent conduct. The one-man disadvantage meant that the second half seemed to last for about six months, with ball after ball being played into our penalty area.

  With fifteen minutes remaining, another high one came in, with Shay Given bashing his ribs in the mêlée that followed it. Substitute again, I was told to warm up to replace Michael Bridges. But in truth it was to replace Shay rather than Michael, who had only been on the pitch for twenty minutes himself as a substitute for Craig. There were only three subs on the bench in the First Division in those days – and none of the three would ever be a goalkeeper. I was deemed to be the nearest thing due to my height and because I would occasionally go in goal during training. I was unofficially, therefore, the emergency goalie. Fine by me – although when you plan for an emergency there is an assumption that it will never happen. I wasn’t a bad keeper or, to put it more accurately, the best of a bad bunch under the circumstances.

  I affected, or attempted to affect, a James Bond-like coolness, as though this was an everyday occurrence. In reality, my stomach was revolving like a tumble-dryer. Had the winning margin been two or three, then it might have been a bit of fun. A single goal advantage and the ongoing siege in the Sunderland penalty area meant that it would be anything but.

  Mercifully for all concerned, except Barnsley, it didn’t happen. Shay was able to continue. I came on anyway for Michael and played as a third centre-back. We held on. It finished 1–0 and all player and supporter bowels were restored to their rightful positions (at least 8,000 Sunderland fans were at Oakwell). It was a tremendous victory and, although we couldn’t allow ourselves any sort of complacency, the pundits were now discussing how we would fare in the Premier League – not if we would make it there.

  Sadly, Shay Given would never play for Sunderland again. He was X-rayed and although no break was found, his injuries were deemed sufficient for him to be withdrawn. So a very cheesed-off young goalkeeper was sent back to Blackburn Rovers. But what a three months he’d had.

  Alec Chamberlain came back into the side for the final six games and I was delighted to see him keep five clean sheets. The first two were goalless draws at home to Charlton and away to Sheffield United (then managed by Howard Kendall). He made a particularly superb fingertip save at Bramall Lane.

  Three days later, Birmingham City came to Roker. We had won easily at St Andrew’s a month earlier and their erratic gorblimey manager, Barry Fry (who famously used forty-four players that season), had made noises about coming to Sunderland to avenge this. ‘I want to go up there and give them the fright of their lives.’

  His ambition was soon downgraded. The game was over in twenty minutes. Micky Gray scored a thirty-yard corker at the Fulwell End on eighteen minutes; probably our goal of the season. Shortly afterwards, Paul Stewart finally headed the Sunderland goal he thoroughly deserved. It was his last game of the campaign, as he was suspended for the final three fixtures. Craig Russell rubbed salt into Birmingham’s wounds in the second half and it ended 3–0.

  For as long as I played for Sunderland at Roker Park, there was a table near the door in the home dressing room. The table top was two feet square and sat bearing a number of football essentials: tieups, strappings, tape, chewing gum and, for some reason, a large bott
le of Bell’s whisky which was never opened – until we played Birmingham that night.

  All fourteen players on pitch or bench were ‘up for it’, shaking hands, wishing each other good luck and man-hugging in the minutes before kick-off. At the door stood Bobby Saxton, whisky bottle in hand with its top finally unscrewed, offering every player a generous swig. There were one or two takers, me being one of them for reasons that remain unclear even to myself. As I looked along the line I could see a few of the lads coughing as the alcohol burned home. What would sports scientists and dieticians think of this now?

  It would probably drive them to drink.

  • • •

  Perhaps oddly, that was the only one of our last six games that we won; four of those matches finished 0–0. But however uneventful the games themselves were, the excitement on Wearside could be felt in every street, pub and schoolyard. We were six points clear with three games remaining. Superior goal difference meant that a Sunday victory against Stoke City at Roker Park in the next game would guarantee us Premier League football. As it transpired, we were promoted before we had even gone to bed on Saturday.

  It is an historical quirk that the goal which ensured our promotion was actually scored by someone who wouldn’t play for Sunderland for another seven years. On Saturday 20 April 1996, Paul Simpson gave Derby County a fifty-sixth minute lead over Birmingham at the Baseball Ground. Eighteen minutes later, future SAFC centre-back Gary Breen headed one home from ten inches to equalise. There were no more goals. Derby’s failure to win meant that they couldn’t catch us and Sunderland were a top-flight club again. That led to a massive night of celebration on Wearside, which, I hasten to add, the players had no part of.