Page 38 - 368603 LP250721 AWY AWY AWY Book (238pp A5)

In summer 1965 we signed the great Jim Baxter from Rangers but his debut, a friendly against Celtic on 7th August, turned out to be memorable for non-football reasons. I was trainspotting at Newcastle Central Station and saw the arrival of hundreds of very pissed Celtic fans, men not teenagers, who changed from the Glasgow train – it must have been a football special – and crossed over to the local Sunderland connection. However, a lot of them didn’t go via the elegant footbridge but just strolled across the tracks. I’d never seen anything like this before and people in Sunderland still talk today about this invasion of rat-arsed guys wearing overcoats with bottles of booze sticking out of the pockets staggering all over town, and in some cases by the side of roads out of town, and in one or two cases trouserless. I don’t remember there being any violence, though. Celtic beat us 5-0 by the way and with it being Baxter’s debut, this must have added to their joy.
Late 1965-early 1966 was a very interesting period in my relationship with Roker Park because I used to go training in the team gym, located at the angle of the Roker End and the main stand. Our Graham played for the football team at the nearby Roker Methodist church, though he didn’t attend the church itself, and the team trained in the gym at Roker Park. I used to watch him play on Saturday afternoons either down by the fairground at Seaburn or just off Hylton Road in Pallion. Once another spectator, and there were very few of them on those wintry afternoons, got chatting to me and soon piped up, “I don’t think Graham Mole is very good.” “He’s
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