Page 89 - 368603 LP250721 AWY AWY AWY Book (238pp A5)

room near Euston Station and it was like giving water to a man in the desert. We followed this with three more wins - 4- 0, 6-1 and 6-0 - and in the second half of the season our form was even better than League Championship winners Liverpool. We still went down, though.
As the end of the 1976/7 season approached we were undefeated in nine games till everything came to a head on Thursday 19th May when our last game of the season took us to Goodison Park. Crucially our immediate rivals Coventry and Bristol City who, like us, were on 34 points, were playing on that same evening and we’d all worked out the statistics which meant that if either of them won, then we’d stay up as long as we got a draw. However, if they drew, then we’d have to win. We could also lose as long as...etc. Our line-up was Barry Siddall, Mick Docherty, Joe Bolton, Kevin Arnott, Colin Waldron, Jackie Ashurst, Bobby Kerr, Shaun Elliott, Mel Holden, Bob Lee and Gary Rowell with Tony Towers an unused sub. The crowd was thirty-six thousand and I don’t know how many of us were there but it must’ve been around ten thousand. Everton came into the match on the back of five draws and only had pride to play for.
I’d moved back to Sunderland at the end of February that year and I managed to get a ticket for the match as well as a lift down there. As we approached Liverpool on the M62 we were among a convoy of Sunderland fans and I spotted a classmate from school whom I hadn’t seen for years driving alongside us. I’d travelled with the same folks for the West
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