Lost Teams story

Sunderland 1973: A Second Division Cup

Sunderland, FA Cup winners in 1973.

Wembley, 5 May 1973.

November

Sunderland were in the Second Division and third from bottom of it when Bob Stokoe arrived in November 1972. He had been at Blackpool. He was forty two.

The club had not won anything since 1937.

Leeds

Leeds United were the holders and had been the best or nearly the best side in England for most of a decade under Don Revie. That season they also reached the Cup Winners' Cup final. They had Bremner, Giles, Lorimer, Clarke and Charlton.

Nobody gave Sunderland anything. No second division club had won the cup since West Bromwich Albion in 1931.

The goal

Thirty two minutes. Billy Hughes took a corner, the ball came out to the edge of the area, and Ian Porterfield controlled it on his thigh and volleyed it in with his left foot, which was not his good one.

The save

Around the sixty fifth minute Trevor Cherry met a cross with a diving header. Jim Montgomery pushed it out to his left, straight to Peter Lorimer, who had the goal open from about six yards.

Montgomery, already on the ground and moving the wrong way, got his forearm to it and put it onto the crossbar. Commentators at the time did not realise it had not gone in.

After

Stokoe ran onto the pitch at the whistle in a raincoat and a trilby, which is the other photograph from that afternoon.

Sunderland went back up in 1976 and have not won a major trophy since. There is a statue of Stokoe outside the Stadium of Light, in the coat, running.