Confusion was in the air, but the night ended in relegation

I’ve played for and watched Sunderland many times at Goodison Park, but one game I’ll never forget was when we were relegated there back in the late 70’s.

I had just broken into the team regularly that season and in the last few months we put together an unbelievable run, but lost the last game at Everton that sent us down.

Two things stand out about that game, one was the amount of away fans we took for what was a midweek game, and the other, the utter confusion in the dressing room afterwards.

Sunderland fans today are rightly proud of their away support, it is second to none, but that night there was an estimated 15,000 Sunderland fans and on the coach to the game, all we could see was red and white.

There’s no way that could happen today in the Premier League, but going back a few years it wasn’t uncommon for Sunderland to take such huge numbers especially if it was the last game of the season at places like Liverpool, Man City and many more.

On the same night we lost to Everton, the other two teams who could have gone down, Coventry and Bristol City, were playing each other and as long as that game didn’t end in a draw, despite our loss, we’d still be safe, but unfortunately, for the younger Sunderland fans who might not know, they did draw.

But that wasn’t the end of the story, we are Sunderland after all so there had to be a twist in the tale, and that’s where the confusion in the dressing room comes in.

Coventry and Bristol had kicked off 15 minutes late and when they heard of our defeat it was flashed up on their scoreboard and as they were level at the time, both times had no interest in scoring and basically downed tools.

Back on Merseyside we had no idea of any of this, our season was over yet no one even knew what division we’d be playing in next season, due to false information.

Remember back then, there was no 24 hour Sky Sports, the games weren’t even televised live, and it was the only the next day when the full story came out.