Page 29 - 360633 LP236168 A Love Supreme 48pp A5 (April 2022)

STRIKERS
ALLY MCCOIST
BY GILES MOONEY
I was, almost literally, born into a Gary Rowell world. A world where there was only one striker that really mattered, and that was Lord Rowell himself, even if he often played out wide. But
then we were promised a new young striker was going to join. Someone who had amazed Scottish football with almost a goal every other game for St Johnstone was coming to Sunderland and he was going to change everything.
He was only 18 but attracted all sorts of interest and was, at £400,000, our record signing. Alan Durban had decided he was the man to form part of the great new start that was going to pull us away from battling to stay up each year. He was sadly wrong Ally, scoring only two goals that season and only six more the following year. So how come he has made it into this article? Because he was my first great hope.
Being a Sunderland fan, a lot of the time is spent wondering who will join the club and make all the bad days go away. The older you get, the more you suspect the answer is no-one, but back then I was naïve, and was convinced that Ally McCoist would be the one. We’d be challenging Ipswich and Liverpool any day now with McCoist scoring for fun alongside the saviour (still not 25 himself) Gary Rowell.
I first saw him play on September 2, 1981 when he
came on as sub (funnily enough I read today for club legend, John Cooke) in our first home game of the season. We beat Villa 2-1 with the winner coming from, you guessed it, Gary Rowell.
I remember him coming on. I remember his
mop of hair and, of course, he was wearing ‘that shirt’. I still can’t decide if it’s my most hated or one of my favourite Sunderland shirts, but that’s for another day. There were rumours he wasn’t happy almost from day one, a young lad, moving away from home, spending a lot of his time on the bench, you can see why but then his dream move to the club he supported appeared on the horizon and, after two years of ‘any day now, he’s going to start scoring and be an amazing striker’ he finally did. But he’d left Sunderland.
I was brought up being with no knowledge, under the impression that Celtic was the only team in Glasgow. I’d never have admitted it to my Dad’s family but, for quite a few years, I just loved Ally’s success at Rangers. Goals followed goals and, inevitably, titles followed titles, 355 goals came over the next 15 years along with 22 trophies.
I’ve got excited about more new signings than I care to remember over the years but not-so- super Ally was my first. He was as good as I hoped... just not for us.
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