On this day in 1996, the Lads all but sealed promotion from the Championship with a home win over Birmingham.
Having saved us from the drop in the seven games he managed the previous season, Peter Reid had put together a side that was functional and effective rather than the swashbuckling side he assembled a couple of years later. Well, apart from the 6-0 smashing of then table-topping Millwall in December, after which there were few hiccups on the way to the title. We’d hit the top with a 2-0 win at (ironically) Birmingham and simply stayed there. In fact, after a loss at Wolves at the end of January, we didn’t lose a game until the last day, by which time nobody cared. Nine consecutive victories, man! Star loanee was a young keeper by the name of Shay Given, but he went back to Blackburn after our win at Barnsley as a permanent move couldn’t be negotiated, and Alec Chamberlain was back in for the last half dozen games.
There were just under 20,000 squeezed into that was left of Roker Park when Mad Barry Fry’s Brummies came to town on a cool Tuesday night, and promotion was already in the bag – not mathematically, but it would have taken a crazy set of results in the last rounds of fixtures to have prevented it. Sunderland fans hit the charts with Cheer up Peter Reid (often copied since, but never bettered) as Simply Red and White took a tongue-in cheek swipe at our gaffer’s by then legendary touchline expression. Oh what can it mean, to a Sunderland supporter, to be top of the league?
The visitors featured former Lad John Cornforth and future Lad Gary Breen, while we lined up:
Chamberlain
Kubicki Melville Ord Scott
Ball © Bracewell
Agnew Russell Stewart Gray (M)
It was a classic 4-4-2 or 4-2-4 line-up, depending on how you classify wide-men. Steve Agnew (he’s got no hair but we don’t care, Stevie Agernew) was no winger, but solid on the right, while Micky Gray was fast and energetic enough to be very effective on the left. Behind them, and the Paul Stewart and Craig Russell front pair, were Ball and Brace. One wins it (guess which?) and gives it to the other, who finds someone forward of him. At the back was a solid four of which played a total of 192 games between them that campaign. Proper solid.
We must have lost the toss, because we attacked the Fulwell in the first half, which would never have happened had we been given the choice. With the floodlights and the general mood of positivity around Roker, the atmosphere was bouncing. After Aggers won a header near halfway, Paul Stewart picked it up and laid it square to Micky Gray, who galloped down the middle and unleashed a curly wifter off the outside of his left peg from inside the D, and it duly swerved first outside the keeper’s left hand post and then inside it – with the keeper pretty much rooted to the spot. Only eighteen minutes gone, and we were on our way.
We were even further on that way three minutes later, when Stewart got his first (and only) goal of the season. A typically accurate free-kick from the left by Martin Scott was met near the back post by Stewart, and the thumping header evaded the keeper’s outstretched left had to fly high into the net. That was it for the first half, and we had to wait a whole seventeen minutes of the second for Russ to wrap it up. Another assist by Stewart, who picked up the ball just over halfway and slotted it perfectly into the path of Russ, who carried it straight down the middle and placed it carefully, low to the keeper’s right, from near the spot and into the net. I swear I saw Reidy smile, but it could have been a bit of chut getting stuck between his teeth. We didn’t bother using any of the three subs, which was a shame in a couple of cases, as Michael Bridges and Lee Howey might have livened things up a bit. Gareth Hall might have done OK as well.
Man of the Match was almost certainly Paul Stewart, who’d used all his experience to score one and set up the other two.
We’d done what we had to do, and another point was all we needed to be certain of going up – however, second placed Derby couldn’t win at Birmingham(!) the following Saturday, leaving them and third placed Palace five and six points adrift of us respectively with two games left. Oh, and they had to play each other, so that was that and meant that our remaining home games, against Stoke and West Brom (that point made us champions) were, despite no goals in either, promotion parties.
OTD: BIRMINGHAM '96
OTD: BIRMINGHAM '96
OTD: MCMENEMY GONE
OTD: MCMENEMY GONE
OTD: MCMENEMY GONE
OTD: MCMENEMY GONE