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The Gaffers, Sunderland AFC’s Managers Through The Decades, is Rob Mason’s latest title and is available for pre-order now.
Pocket-sized and published by local firm twocan, who’ve worked with Rob on several projects before, it fills a gap on any Sunderland supporter’s bookshelf — think The Absolute Record: The Players, but for managers.
Every Sunderland boss, whether full time or just holding the reigns as a caretaker, is covered with a run down of their career, tenure at the club and the stats that made up their Wearside record included. As official club historian and somebody that’s met scores of the people featured, Rob is able to sum the gaffers up better than anybody else, and very graciously allowed me a sneak peak whilst he was pulling everything together too.
Obviously, I turned to ‘my’ first boss, Denis Smith, first, yet the pages that intrigued me most were the temporary hot-seat dwellers; the men that filled in whilst Sunderland got their act together after another departure and looked for a longer-term replacement.
DENNIS SMITH, EX-MANAGER, SUNDERLAND. (Photo by Neal Simpson/EMPICS via Getty Images)
DENNIS SMITH, EX-MANAGER, SUNDERLAND. (Photo by Neal Simpson/EMPICS via Getty Images)
PA Images via Getty Images
Caretakers, especially the ones that didn’t oversee any competitive fixtures, are sometimes little more than a footnote in the history books yet they get fair billing now, and readers will come away knowing a bit more about these less heralded figures.
Fred Dale, for example, born in Monkwearmouth before it officially became part of the borough of Sunderland but still essentially a local lad, was an early stalwart.
Not only did he captain the Lads before they were elected to the Football League, but he would later serve as a scout for Bob Kyle, who’d been selected ahead of him when the pair both applied to be named Alex Mackie’s permanent replacement in 1905.
Dale took charge of fifteen competitive games, winning seven. At that point in time he was only the second person to ever be made caretaker — Alex Watson having been the first when he oversaw things for three and a half months in 1899.
Watson was originally from Cumbria but moved to the town as a child when his father found work in a coal mine and, rather sadly, he passed away in Sunderland also. His death on this day in 1931 was something of a shock, and brought an end to a life that had been dedicated to the local community and in particular the growth of the game on Wearside.
At teacher at Thomas Street School, where club founder James Allan had also worked, in 1883 Watson became secretary of Wearmouth AFC — a team set up by a group of teaching colleagues that had been marginalised at Sunderland due to the influx of players from other backgrounds.
He then went in the opposite direction however and was working on administrative matters at Roker Park when Bob Campbell’s departure was announced, staying on once Alex Mackie arrived after the summer and remaining as financial secretary.
He was suspended from the role though in late 1904, one of several casualties of a dispute the club had with former player Andy McCombie that eventually prompted the FA to become involved. During their investigations, the directors were found to be paying benefits to players that contradicted league rules, and whilst Watson wasn’t necessarily involved in that issue, he was nevertheless banned for not keeping mandated records up to date.
The suspension, due to run until May 1906, was delayed temporarily until a replacement could be installed, with J.W Hugill taking up the post ahead of the November deadline.
Alex Watson
Alex Watson
Watson, according to the Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette published the day after the FA’s hearing, had a large involvement with local football also and “For many years evinced a keen interest in the smaller clubs.”
A member of the Durham FA and chairman of the Sunderland and District League, he had also just been named vice-chairman of a new charity competition that was being organised, with his ban meaning “the removal from active work among the junior amateur clubs of the town of a very valuable man.”
Once allowed back into the sport, in 1908, Watson beat 134 other applicants to the position of secretary at Birmingham. He spent two seasons in charge at St Andrew’s — a rather ironic situation given that he died aged sixty six in the vestry of St Andrew’s on Talbot Road back in Sunderland.
Living at the time on Park Lea Road, which sits roughly equidistant between the church and Roker Park, at this stage he was secretary of the St Andrew’s Parochial Church Council and a member of the choir there, and was preparing ahead of a morning service when he collapsed unexpectedly and died before a doctor could attend.
The local press the following day reported that two members of the congregation fainted upon witnessing the tragedy and stated that Watson had attended the church since it was first built. Leaving a wife and daughter, he had taught for a total of forty years and was three years into his formal retirement when he died.
*The author of “The Gaffers”, Rob Mason, is due to make a guest appearance on an upcoming episode of Roker Report’s ‘Haway The Podcast’, so listen out in the coming days!