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that I went sleepwalking but if Sunderland ever do win 7-1 again, I’d be happy to give it another go. Mind you, it took me about ten years to live down that initial effort as it was regularly brought up at family gatherings.
It was Wednesday 20th March 1963 and the place was 31 Elmwood Street in Sunderland. I was almost nine years old and had attended my first match at Roker Park six months earlier but the result against Norwich and especially Nicky going nap had obviously excited me even more than I’d realized. I hadn’t been to the game as it was of course a night- match and bed-times for little kids were early in those days.
Our team that night was Montgomery, Nelson, Ashurst, Anderson, Hurley, McNab, Davison, Herd, Sharkey, Crossan and Mulhall. We were three-up at half-time and apart from Nicky, our scorers were Stan Anderson and Johnny Crossan. In my memory I’d always thought that it was a League-Cup game but it was a League match and it did our promotion push nothing but good as we headed towards that final game against Chelsea.
Nicky had first played for us in April 1960 when he was only 16 but didn’t get a game for two periods of a year or more before Brian Clough’s injury on Boxing Day 1962 gave him his chance to shine. He certainly took it, scoring 11 goals in half a season. He made 117 appearances in all competitions for Sunderland and scored 62 goals, which is some record. When we were promoted, he continued to score prolifically in Division One but all that was to change. After Ian McColl
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