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recent Cliff Richard Eurovision hit ‘Congratulations’ echoed around the ground as my mate and I strained to see above the throng of heads in front of us. We were there just to experience the buzz and when the game started we quickly got bored, especially as it was very crowded and uncomfortable, and so we left and had a wander around town. When we got back to the station more than an hour later, we met a lot of other Sunderland fans who’d been to the match too and were getting our train home and then we got our second big buzz of the day.
Other much bigger fish were being fried in Division One that afternoon with lowly Sunderland away to champions-elect Man United while second-placed Man City were away to Newcastle. Nobody had given us a cat-in-hell’s chance of getting a result but we shocked everyone by coming away with a 2-1 win and thus allowed City, who won a great game 4-3, to take their first title since 1937.
Sunderland’s played 4-3-3 that day and the team was Montgomery, Harvey, Hurley, Todd, Ashurst, Porterfield, Harris, Herd, Stuckey, Suggett and Mulhall, with Albert Brown as unused substitute about whom I remember nothing at all. Six of those players had been in our promotion squad in 1964 while only Monty and Porterfield would play at Wembley five years later, though Martin Harvey was still coaching with us then. Kenneth Wolsten18 ptholme was doing the commentary for Match of the Day and I’ve always remembered that as the teams warmed up he said,
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